André Natta

@acnatta.bsky.social

3319 Followers 570 Following

I've been a journalist, a planner, and a hotel general manager. It's always about buying the ticket and taking the ride. Bronx native. Executive director/Executive editor, @bhamwatch.bsky.social

A view from Gate A74 at Detroit's airport as the sun sets on Jul. 10, 2026.
A pile of vines sit at the top of a slight incline, visible in front of a stacked stone wall along the side of a house.
A portion of the Possum Loop trail at Ruffner Mountain Nature Preserve as it appeared on June 27, 2026. Some longer portions of fallen trees sit over the path.
Picture of "Raise the Jolly Roger" located just outside PNC Park in Pittsburgh, Pa.
Shrimp and grits with pimento cheese and roasted okra in a white bowl sitting on a green-tiled kitchen countertop. It was tasty.
A social card promoting a session at SRCCON, a journalism conference held annually by OpenNews. The session, "Finding each other: A place for journalist-caregivers with young kids," will be facilitated by Tasmiha Kahn & André Natta on July 9.
A bright gree hosta in full bloom with pinkish purple flowers with red stones underneath. A rose bush sits to its left.
View from Oak Hill Cemetery in Birmingham, Alabama, looking towards the former Bellsouth building in the central business district to the south. Several mature trees in full bloom are in midfield with several older headstones placed throughout.
Gladiolus growing on an inclined piece of property with a driveway sitting in the background.
Pink hellebores with bright green leaves starting to bloom out of a leaf covered side yard.
Older Black man wearing a black T-shirt with the text in white, "First they came for the journalists. We don't know what happened after that " in front of a dark blue background.
A close-up of a Rudbeckia Maxima (giant coneflower) adjacent to a fire pit area.
Ceramic flask with "Fly Eagles Fly" written in light green sitting on a wooden table.
Text from "The Future is Analog" page 131: During the pandemic, the offices remained closed, but Torontonians kept going to parks and exploring neighborhoods on walks. We never stopped listening to music in public and talking with friends and strangers. We read about new shops and restaurants and went to great lengths to try them, even if that meant eating noodles on a curb. "It turns out that the downtown business district is important," Saxe said, "but it's not what defines us." As a specialist in infrastructure, Saxe (who grew up blocks away from me) told me that the physical environment is the skeleton structure of a city, the framework that facilitates those human interactions. All the components of it-roads and paths and sidewalks, parks and libraries and police stations, subways and sewers and cables and wires are more than the individual cogs you read about in some Richard Scarry picture book. Infrastructure is the lynchpin that shapes how a city's story unfolds. On its own, infrastructure is not enough to meet the needs of the city, but it makes everything that happens in the city possible. The smart city promised that our destiny lay in digitizing the city's infrastructure, but the pandemic revealed a deeper truth about the analog heart of city life.
Assorted Italian cookies from Addeo Bros. Bakery in the Bronx at the bottom of a small brown paper bag.
A print copy of the San Diego Union-Tribune on a seat in the boarding area at Gate 47, Terminal 2, San Diego International Airport, on June 13.
Photo of newborn and cream tabby cat laying on a lap in a residential setting.
The cover of Chad Orzel's "A Brief History of Time Keeping: The Science of Marking Time, from Stonehenge to Atomic Clocks."
A view from the mezzanine level of the Alabama Theatre as the crowd arrives at the opening night film for the 25th annual Sidewalk Film Festival in Birmingham, AL on August 25, 2023.
Photo of Philly Elmo and Positive Movement watching people standing and walking at the northwest corner of Market and 13th Streets in Center City Philadelphia on August 23, 2023.