Urbanist Websites Confuse Philly With Boston — and With Bristol, CT

Websites that write about cities should probably keep a keen eye on which city is which, especially when aggregating content or using copyrighted photographs. Let’s take a couple recent examples.

Here’s a screenshot from a Web Urbanist piece about crowdsourced urban planning projects:

Funny thing, though:

The photo is of Old City, Philadelphia — not Bristol, CT. It was taken by B. Krist for Visit Philadelphia, this city’s tourism agency.

Then there’s Planetizen’s James Brasuell. In a post headlined “Containing the Impacts of Gentrification for Long-Time Homeowners,” he summarizes Timothy Williams’ recent New York Times piece on that subject:

Williams cites the example of Boston, which recently passed two pieces of legislation meant to support longtime homeowners in its urban areas…

Not so, James. Those two pieces of legislation — the Homestead Exemption and LOOP — were enacted by Philadelphia not Boston, as Williams makes quite clear.

Is it so hard to admit that Philly is Philly? Guess so.