As a native of Newark, New Jersey, Myles grew up in an urban environment with vacant lots, empty skyscrapers, hundreds of acres of surface parking, and the mixed legacy of urban renewal. In an environment shaped by race, politics, and the memory of the 1960s civil rights movement, Myles gravitated toward history as a lens through which to examine today’s divided landscape.
His research examines the history of the New York metropolitan region, in addition to studies of how politics, race, and culture are imprinted on the urban form. Through writing, art, digital humanities, and community engagement, he aims to introduce new audiences to history. In some form or another, all of his work reflects Winston Churchill’s observation that “we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”
Myles is a current Ph.D. candidate, studying 20th-century American urban history. His dissertation examines how capital eroded the social infrastructure of mid-size American cities. Institutional forces and new technologies, like the television and automobile, eroded the social infrastructure of neighborhood civic groups and corner grocery stories. Using the historical tools of archives, architecture, cartography, this work challenges the popular misconception that the decline of American cities was inevitable.
Name in Chinese: 张之远
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Education:
University of Michigan, 2026
PhD in architecture and urban history
University of Cambridge, 2020
Master’s degree in history of the carceral state
Columbia University, 2019
University of Oxford, 2018
The Hudson School, 2015
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MYLES IN THE NEWS
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January 2025
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November 2024
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July 2024
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January 2022
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November 2021
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May 2021 for the Municipal Art Society
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December 2020
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September 2019
or read this article in Jerseyology
October 2019
or this article in Jersey Digs
July 2020
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August 2019
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May 2019
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March 2019
ALSO FEATURED IN:
– Laughing Squid March 2019
– Viewing NYC March 2019
– silive.com March 2019
– Open Culture April 2019
– Columbia Data Science Institute May 2019
– Library of Congress Blog May 2019
– Kottke.org May 2019
– NYNJ.com May 2019
– 6sqft May 2019
– UK Daily Mail August 2019
– LangweileDich.net June 2020
– Wikipedia
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March 2019
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January 2019
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August 2018
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March 2018
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April 2017
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February 2017
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September 2016
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April 2016
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