Landscape+Urbanism

Category: maps

  • Natural Boundary / Political Boundary

    I’m really glad that Strange Maps featured the interesting (albeit never realized) notion of John Wesley Powell‘s watershed-based approach to defining political boundaries in his 1890 ‘Map of the Arid Region of the United States’.  The concept reframes the Jeffersonian national grid, using drainage districts as “the essential units of government, either as states or…

  • Artificial Rivers

    A post on Gardenvisit discusses the historical idea of creating artificial landscapes, in this case the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park, to appear ‘natural’. :: image via Gardenvisit “In 1730 Queen Charlotte ordered the damming of the Westbourne River as part of a general redevelopment of Hyde Park and Kennsington Gardens by Charles Bridgeman. The…

  • New City Landscape Denver

    From Urban Tick, an interesting graphic display of social media that creates a new ‘landscape’ of the City of Denver.  Check out the site for more maps from around the world.  (images are screenshots from the interactive map) Some info:  “This New City Landscape represents location based twitter activity as the tweetography of the city.…

  • 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…

  • The Wilderness Downtown

    I have in the past alluded to the ‘Soundtrack of Spaces‘ linking music to our physical environment.  I know most people have amused themselves with this video experiment, but I finally found myself engaging with the Arcade Fire’s interactive video ‘The Wilderness Downtown‘ – perhaps a literal interpretation of the space/music connection.  The narrative film,…

  • Patch, Mosaic, Corridor

    While urbanization and sprawl into every nook and cranny of the ecosystem has left large habitat patches in North American relatively difficult to attain, a post by Treehugger shows that the less dense South American continent has the potential to provide a large mosaic of territory for the native Panther – Jaguar onca – (aka…

  • Mapping Racial Diversity

    Serendipitously continuing on the topic of mapping, some interesting ones (spotted on Seattle’s Publicola) offers many color-coded maps of racial diversity from major US cities. The work is from a familiar name, Eric Fischer (an earlier post showing some of his work is here), and he has developed another comprehensive set of urban maps highlighting…

  • Reading List: The Exposed City – Mapping the Urban Invisibles

    If you love maps, not as just as visual artifacts but as part of design and planning methodology, Nadia Amoroso’s recently published ‘The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban Invisibles‘ (Routledge, 2010) will validate, comfort, and quite possibly amaze you. That’s the effect it had on me – after quickly devouring this visually rich resource –…

  • Animurbanism

    I thought this was pretty funny (and ridiculous) when first heard on NPR, then seen in multiple locations. The story centers on the layouts of these planned Sudanese cities, shaped like indigenous animals and even fruit from the region. This has been all over the place lately in media snippets, with a reaction of surprise,…

  • Restoring the Garden of Eden

    A great feature from Spiegel Online covers the work of Azzam Alwash, a US/Iraqi hydraulic engineer aiming to restore what were once vibrant wetlands flourishing in the cradle of civilization through an organization called Nature Iraq. While most news coming from the region focuses on bricks and mortar rebuilding, it’s important to note the power…