Landscape+Urbanism

Category: history

  • Reading, Thinking, Observing: A New Direction for L+U

    Forgive my self-indulgent post, but my lack of blogging is not an indication of lack of thinking (and walking) – as my attention has shifted from following the various blogs (i used to follow many, and now have reduced this to around a dozen) and their myriad paths of discussion towards a more rigorous engagement…

  • More Hidden Rivers

    Always a fan of explorations of lost rivers, this one is takes the existing urban pattern and erases the former route of the Fleet River in London (via the Londonist) “As most readers will know (and we’ve seen first hand), the river is now entirely underground and used as a sewer, but you can still…

  • More on the Urbanism Wars

    GSD as Epicenter The escalation of voices in the (let’s call it debate for lack of a better term) about some of the urbanisms out there – most notably New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism, has kicked up a notch even in the past few weeks since the initial salvos. There has been a fair amount…

  • On Agrarian Urbanism

    An opportunity for point-counterpoint on the topic of Agrarian Urbanism – one that, with the recent explosion of discussion and interest in urban agriculture – is vital to discussing the place of food in the city, and what impact this will have on the form and function of our urban agglomerations.  The topic is poignant…

  • New York City’s Amphibious Heritage

    Via the always interesting Strange Maps, a utopian proposal from the early 20th Century for New York City with current parallels of either the practical Dutch examples of land reclamation or the ridiculous Dubai examples of artificial islands.  Immediately making me think of Robert Grosvenor proposal for ‘Floating Manhattan’ – This 1911 proposal by Dr. T. Kennard Thompson entitled ‘A…

  • Island Life

    Greetings from sunny, partly cloudy Friday Harbor, where we are taking some late summer refuge from the urban areas of Portland. Life on the San Juan Islands gives one an opportunity to relax and live a more confined life -because you are literally confined with access either via plane, boat, or car (via ferry)… the…

  • Working the Line

    My current (re)fascination with the Center for Land Use Interpretation involves getting up to date on their latest events (as well as tearing through their bookstore and grabbing some gems to dig through – reviews/info coming soon). A recent announcement caught my eye. The ideas of margins and borders is constantly fascinating, along with the…

  • Urban Topographies

    From Urban Omnibus, Linda Pollak’s simple ‘Cuts & Patches’ explores remnant disturbances within the urban environment as ‘topographies’ (which more often than not tend to be coal chute covers from a long-gone infrastructure). Check out the great photos and interview. :: image via Urban Omnibus “As traces, these cuts and patches allow us to perceive…

  • Cartographic Rectification

    A recent post at the Fresh Kills Park Blog showed the beauty and function of the process of map rectification in GIS, where a map and image can be combined by matching ground control points in the mapping system to points in the image. As it may be well known, I’m constantly fascinated by historic…

  • Floating Manhattan

    Via Ptak Science Books, a proposal to float Manhattan into the adjacent Hudson River and seemingly into the Atlantic. “Robert Grosvenor had a delectable and memorable idea for a project in 1975: testing the sea-worthiness of Manhattan island. Grosvenor (b. 1937) was a well-known kinetic sculptor in Manhattan by the time of his detaching-Manhattan idea……