Category: transportation
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Community Growth: Crisis and Challenge
Via Atlantic Cities, an interesting film from 1959 exploring the implications for sprawl… from the National Association of Home Builders and the Urban Land Institute. I particularly like the diagrams of the monocentric city towards polycentric city form in post WWII United States. The solutions include planned unit developments, cluster developments, townhouses, culs-de-sac, separation of…
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THINK.urban – Infographic: Portland, King of Bikeopolis
Cross Posting from THINK.urban (12/20/11): A simple variation on the biking infographic from yesterday, this animated version from GOOD shows how Portland leads in the bike wars, just barely, between US cities for percentage of commuters by bike.
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THINK.urban Infographic: Bicycling, the Present and Future
Cross Posted from THINK.urban: A nice one from Sustainablog, with some juicy facts about biking today (and tomorrow). Graphic produced by WellHome.
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THINK.urban: Introducing Megapolitanism
A recent article from John King at the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned the concept of using the Megalopolitan scale for planning purposes. The article references the new book by Arthur C. Nelson and Robert E. Lang entitled ‘Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America’s Metropolitan Geography‘ (APA, 2011). As an example, King mentions the…
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Chutes and Ladders
Hear this transit authorities, we need more of these in the urban realm… the ‘Transfer Accelerator’ is real life chutes and ladders, in this case a slide as a bypass to crowded stairway at the train station of Utrecht Overvecht designed by Utrecht-based firm HIK Ontwerpers. Function and whimsy. Gotta love it. :: image via…
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Greatest Grid
An interesting competition I am ruminating on proposing for, The Greatest Grid – from the Architectural League of New York along with the Museum of the City of New York – seeks ideas related to the grid and to reflect on the role of the grid, now 200 years old, impacts and shapes New York,…
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Walking the Turtle
While familiar with the concept of the flâneur, the inquistive wanderer, or “…detached pedestrian observer of a metropolis, a gentleman stroller of city streets”. Reading After the City last night, Lars Lerup, in discussing the idea of the ‘speed’ of the modern metropolis, made a passing reference to a 19th century custom of using a…
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Competition: Network Reset
An interesting new competition announced recently entitled Network Reset: Rethinking the Chicago Emerald Necklace, An international competition organized by MAS Studio & Chicago Architectural Clubwhich asks respondents: “…to look at the urban scale and propose a framework for the entire boulevard system as well as provide answers and visualize the interventions at a smaller scale…
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Black Friday
Let’s make the shopping experience a bit more dangerous… Asphalt Spot in Tokamashi, Japan by R&Sie(n). :: images via Space Invading
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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…