Nolan Gray a contributor to Market Urbanism and a graduate student in city and regional planning at Rutgers University. His research interests include land-use regulation, economic development, and urban planning theory. In addition to writing, Nolan also hosts the Market Urbanism Podcast. He is originally from Lexington, Kentucky.
You can find his contributions to Market Urbanism here.
Send your questions, comments, and frustrations to him on Twitter at @mnolangray.
For more elaborate concerns, send him an email:
Market Urbanism
Liberalizing cities | From the bottom up
Night City: the cyberpunk themed sandbox of William Gibson’s darkest tech-themed dreams, and despite the host of game-breaking glitches, home to all the anti-urban nightmares that the genre helped spawn. In this episode of Pop Culture Urbanism, I dig deep into the cyberpunk genre, the era that spawned and popularized it, and subsequent “unseen” opportunity […]
Posted: February 11, 2021, 8:16 pm
Welcome to Twin Peaks: home of black coffee, cherry pie, murder, intrigue, and the endangered pine weasel. To kick off season two of Pop Culture Urbanism, I dive into David Lynch’s eccentric nightmare/daytime soap opera world to examine the age old trope of the bad guy developer and how they manipulate environmental regulation to their […]
Posted: January 28, 2021, 5:00 pm
You might think the North Pole is the most magical place on earth. But behind the magic, our deep dive into the history of Christmas movies reveals that there’s more to it than that. In our firstPop Culture Urbanism holiday special, I explore the urban planning behind the North Pole. Be sure to follow future […]
Posted: December 26, 2020, 12:05 am
If there’s one thing that unites TV and film since the fifties, it’s the archetype of the dastardly developer – forever destroying homes and hiking rents. But it wasn’t always this way. Where did this trope come from, and is it true? This week on Pop Culture Urbanism, I dig into the cronyism and red […]
Posted: August 21, 2020, 12:53 pm
Has the Water Tribe gone full NIMBY? Can Avatar Aang overcome his angry impulse to preserve? Why is Ba Sing Se so segregated? And what can we learn from the success of Republic City? In this week’s episode of Pop Culture Urbanism, we explore the trade-offs and complications that every growing city has to deal […]
Posted: August 14, 2020, 5:54 pm
Nolan Gray plunges into the Sam Raimi "Spider-Man" trilogy to uncover the housing problems (and solutions) of expensive cities like New York.
Posted: August 7, 2020, 1:49 pm
With Spider-Man: Far From Home hitting theaters earlier this month, the Marvel Cinematic Universe has taken one of the series’ biggest risks yet: pulling Spider-Man out of New York City. The gravity of this decision is baked into the film’s title — with good reason. More than any other Marvel superhero, Spider-Man is a uniquely […]
Posted: July 17, 2019, 4:50 pm
We are blessed and cursed to live in times in which most smart people are expected to have an opinion on zoning. Blessed, in that zoning is arguably the single most important institution shaping where we live, how we move around, and who we meet. Cursed, in that zoning is notoriously obtuse, with zoning ordinances […]
Posted: April 16, 2019, 1:00 pm