Landscape+Urbanism

Category: transportation

  • StreetMix – Transportation for the People

    Cool video from the Code for America summit and the StreetMix application, which “…is an interactive street section builder that helps community members mockup the streets they’d like to live on and offer these mockups as future plans for city officials and planners.” A screenshot of the tool below shows the initial concept – and…

  • 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…

  • 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…

  • Building a Bike Highway

    The video of the presentation for GOOD Ideas for Cities is up, along with a nice write-up from organizer Alissa Walker from GOOD – so enjoy. Also check out some more detail, and download a PDF of the presentation over at the THINK.urban site.

  • GOOD Times in Portland

    The recent event for GOOD Ideas for Cities happened last week in Portland, and generated some great dialogue.  I was also on one of the teams that presented.  A short recap. :: custom notebooks by Scout Books  “Each team was issued a challenge proposed by a local urban leader. At the event, the creative teams…

  • 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…

  • To New Horizons

    Oh the sick and twisted future… a film from General Motors in 1940 entitled ‘To New Horizons’ talking about the world twenty years later.  Yes indeed, “Man continually strives to replace the old, with the new!”  Spotted on one of my favorite new sites – Copenhagenize.  Check it out.

  • Science of Pedestrian Movements

     An interesting article from the Economist on ‘The Wisdom of Crowds‘ echoes much of the seminal research of William Whyte (City), Edward T. Hall (The Hidden Dimension), and others that have closely studied the behavior of pedestrians and other users of public spaces. The interplay of cultural habits that tells us to step right or…

  • Soundtrack for Spaces – Next Generation

    I have discussed the concept  previous posts on the ‘Soundtrack for Spaces’, where I was making connections between physical locations in the landscape and the potential to imbue place with appropriate musical accompaniment.  These varied, but included looking at the Fleet Foxes as driving music in the Columbia River Gorge, the video customization for Arcade…

  • Siftings 01.06.12

    Another round of Siftings from the past couple of days.  Starting off with a couple of Occupy-related posts, including a great article from Saskia Sassen and Hans Haacke from Artforum entitled ‘Imminent Domain‘.  The first sentence – “OCCUPYING IS NOT THE SAME as demonstrating…” points out a recent and annoying trend of calling any sort…