Category: urbanism
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Transamerica Hummingbird
A nice shot of some urban nature – San Francisco, circa Christmas 2012. photo © Jason King
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Visualizing Sagrada Familia
An amazing architectural masterpiece worth adding to anyone’s bucket list is the Sagrada Familia in Barcelona. Besides its immense size and complexity, the process of development has taken from inception in 1882 and the involvement of the amazing architect Antonio Gaudi. Check out this video showing the final stages of the design that will be…
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The Urbanist – Podcast (80)
A great podcast worth checking out is The Urbanist, a weekly show hosted by Andrew Tuck and found on Monocle 24 (or via your favorite podcast download spot like I-tunes). I subscribed a bit ago, and now have finally started working through the catalog in reverse chronological order, with an eye on doing a quick…
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High Density
Density, maxed out. Kowloon Walled City – a high-rise squatter camp in Hong Kong, demolished 20 years ago this month – with 50,000 residents – approximately 50 s.f. per person. Via Technocult: “A historical accident of colonial Hong Kong, it existed in a lawless vacuum until it became an embarrassment for Britain.”
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Reimagining Mapping
Always good to see modern cartography – and the unlocking (unleashing?) of potential of digital tools and mobile devices. An interesting short post at Fast Company’s blog Co.Design looks at some work in mobile mapping (Nokia’s Next Platform) and some interesting tools, many that use nested tiling to make them more nimble. I attempted to…
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Lost Rivers
I am eagerly awaiting the Lost Rivers Documentary to come to a local theater, in the interim, there’s some great information on their website of the six cities covered in the film, including London, Seoul, Yonkers, Brescia, Toronto, and Montreal. Lost Rivers – OFFICIAL TRAILER from Catbird Productions on Vimeo. Once upon a time, in…
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Downtrodden Detroit
A continuing theme in the mainstream media is the consistent eulogization of Detroit – perhaps due to the fact that, according to Paul Clemens, unlike other cities, Detroit “is one of those places that require you to have an opinion about them”. In his recent review of Detroit: An American Autopsy, by Charles LeDuff Clemens…
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Sim City Chronicles
Todays NY Times, an article ‘Sim City, For Real: Measuring the Untidy Metropolis’ under the rubric of ‘Bright Ideas’ focuses on the data-driven, ‘Smart’ city – described as “the global drive to apply modern sensor, computing, and data-sifting technologies to urban environments…” The main focus is the NYU Center for Urban Science and Progress. The…
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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…
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Historical Waterways
My fascination with historical mapping, particularly that focused on hydrology is a well known fact. A great resource spotted via Seeing Landscapes and Watershed+ gives a link to an older map of Manhattan published in the NY Times. ‘When There Was Water, Water Everywhere‘ looks at the 1874 map prepared by Col. Egbert L. Viele,…