Category: Cities
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NYC Streets Metamorphosis
A video look at the changes to the streetscape in NY City :: Via the gothamist NYC Streets Metamorphosis from Streetfilms on Vimeo. There’s nothing more dramatic than looking back five or ten years at Streetfilms footage to see how much the streets of New York City have changed. In this wonderful montage, check out…
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Get Shaking
One thing of note in Seattle is that it is a city of varied topography, and that this obviously guided the evolution of where settlement occurred, while creating districts and landmark areas (many ending with ‘Hill’). An interesting post related to this topographic urbanism is the seismic stability of my new city. From the Seattle…
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The Death of the Cemetery?
It was interesting to see the multi-author story a few weeks back in the NY Times on “Too Many Bodies, Too Little Space,” which focused on the combination of traditional burial techniques and population booms making for shortage of cemetery real estate. The following views of Washington Cemetery in Brooklyn show that New Yorkers take…
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Portland | Seattle
Well, it’s finally here. This month, starting early November, after 16+ years in Portland, I’m relocating to Seattle (which also explains my posting absence). It’s a bittersweet moment, as i am attached to my adopted hometown (after fleeing the cold of North Dakota), but excited about opportunities in work and professional growth, as well as…
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The Urbanist – Podcast (80)
A great podcast worth checking out is The Urbanist, a weekly show hosted by Andrew Tuck and found on Monocle 24 (or via your favorite podcast download spot like I-tunes). I subscribed a bit ago, and now have finally started working through the catalog in reverse chronological order, with an eye on doing a quick…
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High Density
Density, maxed out. Kowloon Walled City – a high-rise squatter camp in Hong Kong, demolished 20 years ago this month – with 50,000 residents – approximately 50 s.f. per person. Via Technocult: “A historical accident of colonial Hong Kong, it existed in a lawless vacuum until it became an embarrassment for Britain.”
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Reimagining Mapping
Always good to see modern cartography – and the unlocking (unleashing?) of potential of digital tools and mobile devices. An interesting short post at Fast Company’s blog Co.Design looks at some work in mobile mapping (Nokia’s Next Platform) and some interesting tools, many that use nested tiling to make them more nimble. I attempted to…
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Lost Rivers
I am eagerly awaiting the Lost Rivers Documentary to come to a local theater, in the interim, there’s some great information on their website of the six cities covered in the film, including London, Seoul, Yonkers, Brescia, Toronto, and Montreal. Lost Rivers – OFFICIAL TRAILER from Catbird Productions on Vimeo. Once upon a time, in…
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Sim City Chronicles
Todays NY Times, an article ‘Sim City, For Real: Measuring the Untidy Metropolis’ under the rubric of ‘Bright Ideas’ focuses on the data-driven, ‘Smart’ city – described as “the global drive to apply modern sensor, computing, and data-sifting technologies to urban environments…” The main focus is the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress. The…
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Crazy Train
A fascinating video of the Maeklong Railway Market in Bangkok, Thailand – and interesting example of shared space (or maybe more along the lines of Hou’s Insurgent Public Space) that would never happen in the safety and litigation prone United States. Lots of info about this online via a web search, if you’re interested. A…