Izzy studies people and places through the lenses of geography, history, and literature. He explores the city as both a historical and an aesthetic artifact, recoloring faded experiences of the city through individual narratives and the yellow and pink tones of Sanborn fire insurance maps. He is currently experimenting with digital mapping as a means to analyze and tangibly present some of the disappearing subtleties of urban streetscapes.ological manifestations of social and economic histories, and to reveal the patterns underlying the human narratives of the working city.

Spruce to Raspberry: Mapping Street Hierarchies in Industrial Philadelphia

This project approaches the street as a means of categorizing urban life, through human, subjective and morphologically objective lenses. It will analyze architecture and urban form in order to document and explain street hierarchies in Philadelphia (i.e. residences on alleyways versus commercial streets or row-houses versus apartment buildings) as morphological manifestations of social and economic histories, and to reveal the patterns underlying the human narratives of the working city.

Focusing on the period from the gilded age through the First World War (1880-1920) in central Philadelphia, the project uses ArcGIS to document the social and morphological conditions of the city, search for historical patterns, and present them, via mapping, in both an analytical framework of urban form, and as a narrative understanding of the social spaces of the working city. Ultimately, this will reveal the city as it was experienced by its residents of the time—not only objective analyses, but also visual displays that represent the industrial city as seen by its inhabitants.