About Me

Kristian Taketomo is an urban and cultural historian with interests in city and regional planning, the production of urban knowledge, the evolution of urban form, and the history of gambling and gaming.

In 2025, Taketomo joined Special Collections and Archives at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas as the Curator for Gaming Collections. Before that, he was postdoctoral lecturer at the University of Pennsylvania’s Integrated Studies Program. He received his PhD in History at the University of Pennsylvania in 2022.

His current book project investigates the intellectual origins, development, and legacy the United States Census Bureau’s urban-rural classification scheme. Tracing the efforts of generations of government statisticians, demographers, and geographers to understand, quantify, and map the phenomena of urbanization between the late eighteenth century and the present day, this project excavates the origins of statistics about cities and regards the consequences of their production.

His full CV is available for download here. You can write him at kristian.taketomo@unlv.edu.