Essay · · 66 min read
What the City Was
Part 1 of three. Seven places where the Twin Cities were made, and what it cost the people who were already there.
Above | Below exists to make the city more intelligible and the conditions of urban life more actionable.
What we do
Above | Below GBC is an urban research and development institution in Minneapolis and Saint Paul. It studies the city as it is planned and the city as it is lived, and publishes what it finds with its evidence attached.
The work is urban phenomenology put to use: what a street, a shelter, a form or a system does to the person who meets it, set against what the plan says it does.
It is founder-led and in its formative years. What exists today is the Charter, four lines of inquiry, and this publication.
Write to us
Readers, funders and collaborators are welcome to write. The institution answers its own mail.