Category: planning
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Piggy-back Big-Box
An interesting hybrid assemblage of big box behemoths in Baltimore, shows a trend away from the sprawling power centers to a more . Via the Baltimore Sun, the development will place a Walmart atop a Lowes store in a piggy-back move: “The new location will be unusual for Walmart because it will be built on…
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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…
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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……
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Thickened Waterfront from AALU
An email from Jorge Ayala from the AALU shows off some recent Landscape Urbanism work, in this case an academic workshop with a focus on designing a Contemporary Garden in Xi’an, China. I’ve included the full text from Jorge, and some of the images of the project that were sent. Thickened WaterfrontAA Landscape Urbanism Garden…
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Paper Cities
Another great video from Digital Urban shows a snippet of ‘Metropolis’ a time-lapse film by Rob Carter showing the evolution of Charlotte, NC: “Made entirely from images printed on paper, the animation literally represents this sped up urban planners dream, but suggests the frailty of that dream, however concrete it may feel on the ground…
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Retrofitting Suburbia
A nice long video from TEDx Atlanta featuring Ellen Dunham-Jones on Retrofitting Suburbia that “…takes you through retrofitted suburbia, transforming dead malls into buzzing downtown centers.”
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Sprawl Repair Kit
I was not terribly impressed by the collective productivity of last years Reburbia competition. There were highlights, but one was left wondering what all the fuss was about – and if these short, open-ended festivities were worth the attention. One exception in terms of ideas is the Urban Sprawl Repair Kit (via Inhabitat) by Galina…
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Food City
Via ArchDaily, this study by MVRDV, The Why Factory and Stroom Den Haag looks at urban farming in the relationship to global food supplies. As David Basulto adds: “…urban farming goes more in the direction of the last phrase of the video: “could it (urban farming) help bringing some agriculture into the cities to bring…
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Bing Mapping
Since I was first introduced to Bing Maps, I’ve been quite intrigued by the Sim-Cityish axonometric views of the world that offers expanded possibilities for urban analyses. The architect of the system, Blaise Aguera y Arcas, shows off the features. (Via cityofsound)
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Hydrological Infill
As an adjunct to the recent post on the abstract ‘Blue Road’ that attempts to restore in spirit hidden waterways, the inverse process (proposed, but thankfully not implemented) of river removal from in NYC, circa 1924 as a way to alleviate traffic congestion – via Gothamist: “In this issue of Popular Science, circa 1924, there’s…