Anthony Bourdain is one of the two people who have most inspired my work on cities and urbanism. Where Jane Jacobs helped define my intellectual agenda, it was Bourdain, who died on Friday morning at age 61, who motivated me to spread the message of cities and urbanism broadly.
A brilliant chef-turned-writer-turned-TV-star who was as good or better on camera as he was on the page, most people saw him as a chronicler of food and culture. But I always saw him as a chronicler of cities, and a truly great urbanist. He may not have seen himself that way—in recent years he ceased to refer to himself as a chef or a journalist, so single-minded was he as a traveler and epicurean—but it’s a central part of his work and legacy.
