Myles Zhang

As a native of Newark, New Jersey, Myles grew up in an urban environment with vacant lots, empty skyscrapers, hundreds of acres of surface parking, and the mixed legacy of urban renewal. In an environment shaped by race, politics, and the memory of Newark’s 1967 civil unrest, Myles gravitated toward history as a lens through which to examine today’s divided landscape. Myles has a keen interest in the urban and spatial history of the New York metropolitan region, in addition to his studies of how politics, race, and culture are imprinted on the urban form. Through writing, art, digital humanities, and community engagement, he aims to introduce new audiences to history. In some form or another, all of his work reflects Winston Churchill’s observation that “we shape our buildings and afterwards our buildings shape us.”

Myles is a current Ph.D. candidate at the University of Michigan, studying 20th-century American urban history. His dissertation examines the “redlining” process, in which state actors and market influences target specific urban neighborhoods and communities and subject them to displacement. Institutional powers created and profited from the “production of decline” in Newark and Newark-like regions. Using the tools of history and archives, this work challenges the populator misconception that particular urban neighborhoods are marginalized as a result of the work ethic of those who occupy and live there.

Name in Chinese: 张之远

Education

The Hudson School, 2015

University of Oxford, 2018, study abroad year

Columbia University, 2019, BA in art history
– Urban history senior thesis project with Kenneth T. Jackson
– Medieval history senior thesis project with Stephen Murray

University of Cambridge, 2020, MA thesis on the history of the carceral state

University of Michigan, 2026, PhD in architectural history
with committee members Robert Fishman, Ana Morcillo Pallarés, Matthew Lassiter, and Dan O’Flaherty