About Me

Kristian Taketomo is an urban and cultural historian of the modern United States with interests in city and regional planning, the production and use of urban knowledge, the relationship between place and identity, and the evolution of urban form.

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.

After receiving his PhD in History at the University of Pennsylvania in 2022, Taketomo joined Penn’s Integrated Studies Program as a postdoctoral lecturer. He completed his undergraduate work at Carleton College in 2007.

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