After thinking about it for a long time, I’m finally doing it. I’m starting an account here in Substack, a place where I can publish long-form posts in a way I cannot do in Twitter. It took me a while to take this step, but I want to try and see how it goes.
I’m an architect turned urban planner turned transit researcher. Not the most straightforward of the career paths, I know. That means I will be mostly posting about issues regarding cities and mobility, as I already do with my Twitter persona. If you are looking for an Italian recipe blog, that’s not the place.
Why this weird name? Because I’m bad with names and marketing, of course. But also, because I wanted to call to readers’ mind a famous precedent: Montesquieu’s “Persian Letters”. In this epistolary novel, two fictional Persian aristocrats write letters back home from their tour around early 18th century's France. Their foreign regard is the expedient the author used to highlights the weirdness of contemporary French to his fellow French people. As an Italian living in North America, I think that one of the added values I can bring to an already rich urban debate is my outsider’s perspective. I know it can also bias my understanding of the context I’m living in, and not always for good. But I do hope it helps make the discussion more interesting and open. Readers will judge.
Finally, there are two “rules of engagement” for the wannabe readers:
First rule: I will not commit to regular posting. I don’t have a lot of spare time. I’m badly organized and I will be posting here with the same approach I post in twitter: as a way to relax and take a break from more academic writings and professional activities, to think out loud, and to engage with the wider urban planning and transit community of scholars, professionals, and advocates. It is a hobby and I want it to remain that way.
Second rule: broken English will be part of the experience. If you are sensitive to that, that’s not your place. English is not my mother tongue. I tend to make mistakes and my writing is not extremely elegant. I’ll try to do my best, using typing and grammar assistants to improve it.
So here we go. I hope my twenty-five readers will appreciate my random ruminations.