Illustration by Ariel Aberg-Riger
The Rich American Legacy of Shared Housing
In an excerpt from her new book, America Redux, visual journalist Ariel Aberg-Riger remembers a time when "housing was more flexible, fluid and communal than it is today.”
Longtime Bloomberg CityLab contributor Ariel Aberg-Riger has a book coming out this week, America Redux: Visual Stories from Our Dynamic History, from HarperCollins/Balzer + Bray. It’s a non-chronological, hand-written, collage-style, exploration of American history in her signature style. It’s aimed at galvanizing a young adult audience, but it’s also for everyone. Aberg-Riger has been contributing to CityLab for six years, during which time she has developed her vision for illustrated nonfiction storytelling. In the preface to her book, she describes the format this way:
“Visual storytelling is a form and a framework that tweaks your brain into seeing differently and reading differently and digesting information differently. It’s not just the image that matters, but how it takes up space. It’s not just the event that matters, but how we shape the stories around it.”