Landscape+Urbanism

Category: history

  • Visualizing Sagrada Familia

    An amazing architectural masterpiece worth adding to anyone’s bucket list is the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona.  Besides its immense size and complexity, the process of development has taken from inception in 1882 and the involvement of the amazing architect Antonio Gaudi. Check out this video showing the final stages of the design that will be…

  • PDX Modern – Robert Rummer

    Perhaps nestled within the Landscape and the Urbanism is my love for mid-century and modern architecture and design.  An ongoing series will feature pics from this years Portland Modern Home Tour from March 9, 2013 – and perhaps some others. I really enjoyed the opportunity to see a true Robert Rummer house, and it’s worth…

  • 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.”

  • 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…

  • Historical Waterways

    My fascination with historical mapping, particularly that focused on hydrology is a well known fact.  A great resource spotted via Seeing Landscapes and Watershed+ gives a link to an older map of Manhattan published in the NY Times.  ‘When There Was Water, Water Everywhere‘ looks at the 1874 map prepared by Col. Egbert L. Viele,…

  • Happy Birthday – Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.

    In honor of Frederick Law Olmsted Sr’s birthday today, April 26 (1822, so let’s call it a round 190!), I would remind folks to go out and read more about the man in the great 2011 biography ‘Genius of Place‘ by Justin Martin  (Da Capo Press, 2011). Genius of Place traces Olmsted from his beginnings…

  • Got History?

    Hawthorne & 50th (1936) Aerial View of Portland (1936) My fascination with history and place is no secret.  While i am intrigued with urban history in many forms, there’s always a desire for a connection with the place you inhabit.  Typically this fascination comes via maps, which have been well documented, but the timeline of…

  • Essay in ‘Atlantis’ Magazine

    I am happy to report that a recent essay was published in ‘Atlantis’ Magazine, which is published by Polis and collects writings that make “…the link between students, academics and professionals besides the Polis activities. This magazine is our medium to keep you as member up to date about everything going on in the urbanism…

  • Shrinking Cities: Detroit’s Agony (1990)

    A clip that spawned a lot of conversation within our reading group, from 1990, Diane Sawyer reporting on ABCs Primetime Live, in a series called ‘Detroit’s Agony’ – which looks at Mayor Coleman Young’s legacy, and plays on Detroit as ‘the first urban domino to fall…’ [More after the video] The shock of ‘Devils Night’,…

  • Shrinking Cities: Sugrue Part I: Arsenal

    Arsenal Moving along with the Shrinking Cities readings, the first part of ‘Origins of the Urban Crisis’ by Segrue recounts the development of the City of Detroit around WWII as the ‘Arsenal of Democracy’ which made it one of the highest paying blue-collar cities in the US.  In the words of Segrue, “Mid-twentieth-century Detroit embodied…