Myles researches the urban and spatial history of the New York metropolitan region, as well as topics in urban history more broadly. He is interested in how ideas about 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 the observation that: We shape our buildings, and afterwards our buildings shape us.
Myles is a current Ph.D. candidate in architecture at the University of Michigan. Myles’s PhD research examined 20th-century American urban history. His dissertation project now examines how capital eroded the social infrastructure of mid-size American cities like Newark. Institutional forces and new technologies, such as television and automobiles, eroded the social infrastructure of neighborhood civic groups and corner grocery stores.
His dissertation also examines the “redlining” process, in which state actors and market forces target specific urban neighborhoods and communities, subjecting them to displacement. Institutional powers created and profited from the “production of decline” in Rust Belt cities. Using the tools of history and archives, this work challenges the popular misconception that certain urban neighborhoods are marginalized because of the work ethic of those who live there. Using the historical tools of archives, architecture, and cartography, this work interrogates the relationship between capitalism and cities.
