2. interzicerea cablarii supraterane [e o solutie foarte scumpa pentru ca presupune ca toate cablurile de internet, telefonie, televiziune etc. sa fie ingropate in tuneluri de serviciu];

3. scoaterea super- si hipermarketurilor in afara orasului [e o solutie scumpa pentru ca presupune relocarea celor deja existente in oras];

4. amendarea la sange a santierelor sau siturilor de constructii care polueaza atmosfera cu praf [e o solutie scumpa pentru ca presupune tehnici mai costisitoare pentru bariere de praf si existenta unor agenti de mediu care sa isi faca cu adevarat treaba]; 

5. reducerea proportionala de impozite si taxe pentru cei care infiinteaza si/sau intretin spatii verzi [e o solutie scumpa pentru ca micsoreaza incasarile la bugetul primariei];

6. interzicerea lucrarilor la infrastructura pe timpul zilei [e o solutie scumpa pentru ca presupune lucrul in schimburi de noapte];   

7. ...[mai adaugati si voi]...

n. controlul strict si aplicarea corecta a legii in toate cazurile de mai sus

All that talk about airports on the last post, and I forgot to mention "mine" - YYJ. Victoria's airport, fresh after some expansion and renovations a little while ago - it's still got that new airport smell, and does the city a fantastic job making those first impressions and last looks. It's been such a welcome "welcome back" the past two years.

Wood-framed floor-to-ceiling windows let in precious sunlight (precious - it is the rainy Pacific coast, after all)

There is a skybridge for the WestJet 737s and Air Canada Airbuses, but most flights are Dash 8 and Embraers, and you have to step out to the tarmac to board/deplane - fortunately (almost) never any cold or snow to worry about, and the rain canopy's only a few steps away

Plenty of art to fill the space and waiting time - it's actually worth coming early to take it all in! There's the whimsical

and dynamic - it moves!

and a taste of the Art Gallery of Greater Victoria collection on the walls too

As you'd expect from the "cycling capital of Canada", there's bike racks, and for those true Victorians who fly with their bikes, a reassembly stand to put it back together and get back to town

And banners in the carpark add some colour

This series actually used to be on streetlights Downtown (specifically, these ones in Chinatown), but they moved them out to the airport as a new edition of banners went live

Banners are great for city streets. They make so much more sense than permanent signs: you can change them and rotate them around between sites for variety, they take on different looks with the changing daylight, the fluttering in the wind adds a life and energy you can't get from motionless signs or ornaments, and when they're worn out, you can just make more!

I feel like I've said 'bye to Victoria so many times already the past two years, getting spun around for rural placements every few months. I always did a sort of "farewell" tour each time - one "last" run, one "last" coffee stop, one "last" Munro's book buy and all that - but of course I'd be coming back anyway in just a few short weeks, so they weren't really good-byes at all. I guess they were just sort of dress rehearsals for the "real" farewell, now.

Everything taken off the walls, unhung from the doorknobs, packed up and ready to go. I don't know how long it usually takes to pack up an apartment or house, but I thought the movers were pretty quick: my entire 1-bedroom, boxed up in a hour and a half.

The funny thing is, I guess having said all those "good-byes" over the past two years, it actually doesn't feel so sad to leave now. I know it's not that I wasn't around long enough to get attached to the place, or make enough memories and experiences - I do have 8Gb of photos (which, by the way, did get recovered from my laptop) to prove I lived here, after all. Maybe having left and returned so many times, to find everything just as I remembered it, and just as quality as ever, I know it'll always be there.

That's said, there's things I'm really going to miss. And I don't just mean the pretty touristy frills that are making so many cruise ships and tour buses stop by this time of year, and seduce people to marry and retire here (Victoria is home of the newly-wed and nearly-dead, as they say) - though of course, that was all bonus.

But I'm really going to miss the basics of city living it does so well that make the place great for people who actually call Victoria home. One of my preceptors looked at my rotation schedule and said I "go through cities like most guys go through women" - but I'm really not so promiscuous about it! It's a city's substance, the "inner beauty" that I'm looking for; the unappreciated things normal people don't take pictures of - like the airport, and those banners.

I'll miss the consistent street signs in Clearview

and the free-flowing roundabouts instead of frustrating stop-and-go intersections

and the hanging flower baskets

I'll miss all the cycling amenities

and that it's a place where bike stands actually get packed

and that they've got Momentum for free at newsstands! The usual bike magazines make cycling look like the exclusive domain of Lance Armstrongs and such; it's nice to have something that shows slower people doing mundane, everyday commutes can be cool too.

I'll miss the random wildlife that, urban as the city is, still manage to carve out their own niches

I'll miss cafés all over the place to write postcards

and catch poetry slams

and study

and study

and study

or just snack

I'll miss the street art

and the power transformer box and emergency supplies container art

and the independent cinema, that's always packed and popular: the Cinecenta at UVic

and random film fests

and all the restaurants - most restaurants per capita in Canada after Montreal; and since Victoria's so much less-spread out, it feels like there was a favourite on every corner. There's the Baan Thai

and Rosie's Diner

and the Little Thai Place

I'll miss that the local Filipino community has its own community centre, and has weekly home-cooked meals for people like me who don't have mums and dads around to cook up old favourites (or big kitchens and vents to dare trying making them at home)

I'll miss the things you just stumble into that pique your curiosity and get your heart and mind racing, like Café Philosophy

or Nato protests

or car accidents

and the things you just stumble into that pique your curiosity and get your heart and mind settled and calmed, like Botanical Beach

or Gowlland Tod

or the University Chapel

I'll miss that there's not just the usual public art galleries, but random independent private ones too

I'll miss that even low-rise apartment buildings, office parks and suburban strip malls put some effort and have some standards into how they're planned and built and look

And though I never used them, I'll miss that taxis are low-emission Priuses and not lumbering full-size gas-guzzling American cars

All in all, I'll miss that it was a city I could actually say I was proud of, that it was a healthy city, that it got the basics done pat. Kudos to everyone who, in their own way, big or little, appreciated or not, make Victoria what it is. Some of my medical rotations took me to not-so-nice places I wish I could be mayor for a day or year, so I could fix them up. But never Victoria. If anything, being Victoria's mayor must be a pretty intense, scary job - knowing that the city has so much going for it as it is, I'd be constantly worried about not keeping up and dropping the ball.

But at least as Mayor you get a great reserved parking spot Downtown - now that I'd take in a heartbeat

So one last rummage through the bargain books

get the mail forwarded to my parents' address

and one last café stop to post these photos

and, of course, add a UBC sticker to my car rear window - this is the real reason why I keep signing up for higher education, the stickers

And that's that.

The argument tends to go something like this:

TIRZ: "The lanes are too narrow, there's all this development happening over here, and we've got to improve traffic flow."

TFH: "The trees are about the only thing making Kirby bearable for pedestrians, all this development is of the dense, urban, pedestrian attracting nature, and it wouldn't take much effort to save them."

You can read a better recap of the story here and here.

Now, the argument has mostly been lost by those who would like a more complete city, in favor of those who care about nothing but their car going as fast as it can. So, at this point there's probably little chance of them doing anything better, but I thought it was worth revisiting this topic to discuss what should be happening on Kirby.

I strongly agree with the Trees for Houston folks, the trees can and should be saved. However, I think that the solution comes from thinking bigger than Kirby Drive, and that part of the dialogue has been sorely lacking.

The problem with Kirby Drive is that it is the only North/South connector through what has become a very dense, mixed-use area. Unsurprisingly, it's a bit of a monster. The street is packed all the time. However, the bottleneck zone is pretty small, just the most intensely developed area along Upper Kirby, roughly from Westheimer down to Bissonnet. So, while the road is busy all day, it never really stops moving.

The problem with this particular stretch of road is that you have tons of users from the nearby neighborhoods who need to get to and from their shopping, dining etc who have no choice but to use Kirby, and they clash with the many office workers who come in from 59, and also motorists from that neck of the woods who would like to use Kirby -> Allen Parkway as an alternate route into Downtown.

If you could remove just one small portion of these trips, you'd significantly improve the flow of the road. So how do you do that?

The answer is the network. Kirby is only so packed because it is the ONLY through street. But, incredibly, there are three parallel streets that almost make the connection.

Rather than spending all that money to tear up and rebuild Kirby, causing an absolute traffic nightmare that will undoubtedly put many of the smaller local shops that make that strip so unique under extreme stress, if not out of business all together, the City and the TIRZ should be investing in completing the network of local streets to support Kirby first.

With those local streets in place, and some signal timing synchronization on the cross streets (Richmond, Alabama, Westheimer), Kirby could become a truly dynamic urban center. And seeing as the light rail is going to be arriving in Upper Kirby shortly, this is the right time for such local area infrastructure improvements to occur.

Take a look at this map to see how this would work:

If Lake St, Argonne St, and Revere St were improved and connected, it would be a huge economic development boon to the area. These streets could be simple, one lane each direction with on-street parking. To help facilitate the type of dense, urban infill development Upper Kirby is experiencing, these streets could be configured with wide sidewalks and curb extensions (or 'bulb outs') like we see in some parts of Midtown. These have the benefit of traffic calming, while also helping to make clear the areas where parking is allowed and where it is not. They also would provide further pedestrian connections, helping to link some of the major residential which is located just off the major thoroughfares to the commercial development fronting on them.

Improving these streets would not require much in the way of property takings. Lets looks at the places where it would...

To the immediate north of US 59 each of these streets could be connected through parking areas or vacant lots. This would provide 'back entries' into the office cluster that is located at Kirby and 59, as well as giving neighborhood drivers a 'back way' to get to the 59 feeder without using Kirby. This is the magic of networks, you've alleviated traffic without widening the monster.

The area around Kirby and Richmond isn't quite as simple. Here you would need one significant property taking, and a few smaller takings, to make this all work. Two houses and a small rental unit would have to be demolished, in addition to the shopping center in the corner. Fortunately, this is exactly the right location for a massive redevelopment, one that could be coordinated as a joint venture between the City of Houston, METRO, and a developer. The Upper Kirby Light Rail Station will be arriving in the neighborhood at approximately this spot, so having effective land use/transportation coordination here is essential, not to mention some neighborhood parking for the station.

A redeveloped corner could accomodate the new through streets, and could look something like the image above. This type of develoment fits the character of the area and compliments the transformation that is ongoing, especially closer to Westheimer.

Finally, we get to the west side near the new West Ave. development.

Here we have an opportunity to signficantly improve access to one of the most exciting new developments in Houston: West Avenue. This is a precedent-setting project which, along with the Post Midtown Square project, will be a hallmark example of how to design the pedestrian realm in Houston.

All of these connections can be made fairly painlessly. These side streets could provide abundant on-street parking, much needed in this intensely redeveloping area.

Finally, after the side streets are done, Kirby drive could be rebuilt to a new, walkable standard. Instead of widening to add lanes, Kirby could be reconfigured to have two continuous through lanes with a large median (as it does north and south of the bottleneck) and on-street parking.

Then you'd truly have a world-class urban commercial corridor, just in time for the new transit investments that are coming this direction.

Then maybe it could look a bit more like this:

Now, why nobody in Houston cares to think outside the right-of-way when dealing with transportation problems, I don't know. But these are the kinds of solutions we're going to need more and more of if the city is going to continue to be reborn in an urban fashion. The old, fragmented street system in many places inside the loop, and ESPECIALLY in the Galleria area, will have to be connected and reconnected if we're going to be able to support any kind of density, and if we want our transit dollars to be well spent.

It's probably too late for Kirby Drive, but it's not too late for a good discussion. Please leave your comments!

Hat Tip: Chris Blattman's wonderful, smart as hell blog about development which I had browsed before but am taking a second look at it since Dani Rodrik from Harvard made some interesting comments about Chris's blog.

Watching the growth of Walmart across America - Interactive Edition
In the spirit of Toby's Walmart growth video, using data from Freebase, I mapped the spread of Walmart using Modest Maps. It starts slow and then spreads like wildfire.

http://projects.flowingdata.com/walmart/

In the carpark, unauthorised vehicles aren't simply "unauthorised vehicles", but "parking poachers". I've never heard that term "parking poacher" before, but if I did I would've assumed it referred to the driver (ie, the person who poached the spot; like a wildlife poacher) and not the car itself, but the sign's clear: it's the poacher (ie the car) they tow.

-

Fredericton's airport is an odd little place. I didn't mention it earlier, when I first arrived, because I wanted to experience both the arrival and departures sides of YFC before weighing in.

Airports are under-appreciated places. At least, my geeky interest in all things transport and architecture - and therefore, airports - makes me think so. After all, airports should be places of drama: they often signal both the start and the finish of vacations, jobs, phases of life; the sites of happy reunions and tearful farewells. BML once told me

I love writing at airports, because being at an airport usually means I'm leaving something meaningful behind - a lifestyle, a place, people - and going into something new, and challenging, or going "back" to something familiar

What's more, they also make both the first impressions and the last looks of the community, city or country they serve - and making those impressions and looks is part of that service, over and above the "utilitarian" role as a place for sub-sonic CO2-bellowing metal cylinders to pick-up and drop-off people and cargo. I always looked forward to Vancouver's towering totems, glass and carvings

or Prince George's exposed wood beams and stone floors

or Ottawa's waterfalls and locks

Yellowknife, Norman Wells and Ulukhaktok are no-nonsense, no-frills structures that, in their very no-nonsense-ness and no-frills-ness, exude something of stark Arctic character

though Inuvik does concede a little to the sightseeing tourist

Of course, normal people don't think the same way. There was a time where airports were about romantic things like connecting people, bridging continents, the marvels of technology. And in an expansive country like Canada, dependent on air travel, it's nation building, a part of our culture. But nowadays, Heritage Canada points out, "the aims of Canadian airport management have shifted away from the 'cultural institution' model, to much more pragmatic imperatives like revenue generation and efficiency".

So with the upcoming demolition of Winnipeg's iconic 1964 modernist terminal (it's on Heritage Canada's Top Ten Endangered Places List of historic sites), it's no surprise there's no love or fuss from Winnipeggers at large. A local radio news director reported

Airports are only way stations, a spot to land and takeoff, nothing more. Efficiency in getting you and getting you out is what airports are remembered for, not the architecture or the heritage aspects. Won’t be many tears shed here when Winnipeg’s comes tumbling down.

Anyway, Fredericton's airport. I think it's an odd place, because it doesn't fit into either the old "cultural institution" or "pragmatic efficiency" models of Canadian airports. It doesn't have much in the way of public art or landmark architecture befitting the triumph of science and industry that is air travel: one abstract metal piece on the front façade, backgrounded with a mosaic of beige tile and framed with the windows of the control tower

And not much in the way of first impressions: you deplane out onto the tarmac, greeted by a "Fredericton" in some blocky serifed font that looks very '70s to me, but I can't say for sure when it's from. That's it, no art on the airside of the tower

And when you enter the terminal: blah, you could be anywhere. Just a baggage carousel, some backlit ads, and around the corner a few car rental kiosks. No sense of identity of the city before you, the Fathers and Mothers of Confederation whose footsteps you're about to follow, the beauty of the Saint John river (the "Rhine of North America", because river cruising is so popular) nearby... when you arrive you should come with something in mind to look forward to, because this airport's not giving you anything to work with.

So hopefully while you're actually in Fredericton you get to experience what the town's all about. And hopefully you took lots of pictures and have lots of memories, because when you check-in at the airport to go home, there's nothing much on this side of the terminal either.

This is where "pragmatic efficiency" could be the airport's saving grace - but alas, you have some weird system where you first queue up to check in at the desks (no self-check computer terminals, you actually have to do this in person)

and then once you've waited for your boarding passes and baggage tags, you lug them over to the cargo X-ray and loading area. Yes, you have to take it yourself - all the extra work you have to do when there's self-check computer terminals, but without the speed and convenience benefit of having self-check computer terminals. More waiting lined up behind the big "Welcome / Bienvenue YFC" sign

No restaurant, but there is a charity snack shop - proceeds to the Canadian National Institute for the Blind. And the lounge does have free wireless like the rest of the city, so I guess that's one thing distinctively "Fredericton" about the terminal

The airside departure lounge and gates look like they were recently renovated. There's some small canvasses on the walls, and sculptures and vases on podiums, and an historical display case in the corner

You're hermetically sealed from the un-screened hoi poilloi behind floor-to-ceiling glass, but you can at least still wave 'bye to well-wishers on the other side

until it's time to go: no skywalks or bridges to the planes on this side either, you just find your "gate" (ie a glass door with a number on it) and walk through to the tarmac outside

Everyone pays an airport improvement fee on each flight in and out, so maybe there'll be some improvements in future. $15 a pop, so I guess I've put in $30 in the pot so far, before I've even moved in - hopefully I might get to live here long enough and see my thirty dollars worth!

I know this is coming a little late, but if Cultural Capitol ever gets more than fifteen readers, they should be aware of this article in the New York Times a few weeks ago. The question is how to create urban density that is aesthetically pleasing. Winy Maas's answer is shown in the picture above.

Maas's self-described obsession is "density": "the idea of using urban space intensely to create a sustainable future."

The Times article should be read next to this article in the Atlantic by Hanna Rosin, in which Rosin describes the perceived failure of Section 8 and Title VI housing initiatives that knocked down many of the inner-city tower housing projects of the 60s and sent the former residents to live in suburbs of cities like Memphis (featured in the article). In Rosin's view, the poor who were concentrated in the housing projects did not find themselves lifted out of poverty when placed in middle-class neighborhoods; rather, middle-class neighborhoods found that crime spiked. Rosin's conclusion is that the poor brought their crime with them, and that they lost their sense of community. She quotes Ed Goetz, a housing expert at the University of Minnesota, who says, "For all its faults, there was a tight network that existed [in the projects]. So what I'm trying to figure out is: Was this a bad theory of poverty? We were intending to help people climb out of poverty, but that hasn't happened at all. Have we underestimated the role of support networks and overestimated the role of place?"

That community is more important than geography appears to be the conclusion that Rosin comes to by the end of her essay, but she gives evidence that points in a different direction. She says that "demonizing the high-rises has blinded some city officials to what was good and necessary about the projects, and what they ultimately have to find a way to replace: the sense of belonging, the informal economy, the easy access to social services." What made the high-rises better than the suburbs for the poor was clearly their geographical proximity to services, that and the density fostered community.

Perhaps we can read this through WOW ideology. The idea was that concentrating poor people in ghettos merely concentrated poverty. Projects like the one pictured above (on Marcy Avenue in Brooklyn) were a giant rug under which the poor were swept. At the end of the WOW era policy makers decided the way to bring down rampant crime in the cities was to move poor people to where wealth seemed to be: the 'burbs. Obviously the 'burbs had better schools, more lawn space, and you had to have a car to get around -- an obvious sign of wealth.

Whether the irony was intentional or not is anybody's guess. I suppose they had forgotten that the projects were built to segregate African-Americans, Latinos and Asians in the cities while the Whites flew in their cars to the 'burbs. When seen through the WOW lens, however, it is clear that lawmakers tried to make up for their earlier failed policy of segregation by trying forced integration in the 'burbs. Was this just bad timing? Now that the white children of the 'burbs were moving back to the cities the poor were forced to evacuate their houses and take a federally funded housing voucher to an alien environment bringing with them the social problems of the ghetto, but with grassy space between the sites of crime.

What does this have to do with Winy Maas you ask? Density creates community, I answer. I propose the counter-intuitive notion that rural life is as dense as urban life, but on a different scale. In the city the conceptual unit of space is the street. In the country it's the house (oikos in Greek, which is where we get the term "economy"). Both of them are dense living situations where many people with different objectives must coexist. Everyone in a house is the same! you say, and cultural differences on the street lead to friction and perhaps violence. If we peer into the mists of history even a couple of hundred years, however, we can see the house is the home of manufacture, and that its residents do not necessarily belong to the same family, religious group, or ethnicity. Cities are industrial centers of economic activity, just as the farmhouse in the agricultural age was the center of economic activity.

With the growth of the suburbs and the decline of manufacturing in the US it has become commonplace to talk about "post-industrial" society. But why is that necessarily post-urban? The density of the street brings down crime, especially if it is close to good, middle-class jobs. Suburbs, being neither city nor country, have no density, and consequently isolate people from community, allow for anonymity, and promote crime. The difference between the suburb and the city in the minds of suburban residents is aesthetic. It's an ideal, that as Maas shows, can be implemented in the city. You don't have to build giant, ugly brick towers to get density. What's more, as this article by Amy Hoak at Marketwatch.com illustrates, density itself can be an aesthetic.

Even better, it's an aesthetic that, like the rus and the urbs, makes economic sense. As Hoak says "the Center for Neighborhood Technology recently released research that showed people who live near transit, jobs, schools and retail spend up to $2,100 less a year on gasoline than those who live in outer-ring suburbs, where more driving is required."

PARK(ing) Day in San Francisco (turning parking spaces into pedestrian mini-parks)

I love the term "human-powered transportation."

The first time I heard the words “Atlantic Yards Project” I was a junior in high school, freshly  moved from NYC to Southern California. I figured the project was some maritime “beautification” project taking place in Baltimore or somewhere around there (Camden Yards jumped to mind I suppose). A few minutes on wikipedia changed my perception of the venture obviously.

To put it simply, Atlantic Yards is a glorified housing project that’s landing right in the middle of some of the most prized real estate in the United States; Brooklyn, NY. Now for the people who still live in 1986 and think of Brooklyn as a ghetto, things have changed, for better or worse. Rich white kids from NYU started moving there around the turn of the century, listening to music that you’ve never heard of and usually sucks, and wearing jeans that even Chelsea deemed “too gay”. From then on, Bed-Stuy went from a place that worshipped the Mighty Mos and Grandmaster Flash to a place that plays way too much Ratatat and Animal Collective for anyones’ good. Williamsburg went from dive city to Hipsters Inc., though I guess hipsters do love dives anyways. All in all, Brooklyn went from a place that you had to live to a place that you wanted to live. If you want to see this phenomenon before your eyes check out 125th street or to see the finished project hop down to the Village and look at apartments that used to serve the poor and have become pent house for Britney Spears and the Olsen twins.

Technically, the word is gentrification, referring to the “gentry” entering places that are usually downtrodden, meaning cheap real estate and low economic risk. More often than not the “gentrifiers” will move in as a group, seeing a certain crop of what used to be tenements as “classic” and “charming”. In New York most of the money that gentrified the areas of Brooklyn, Harlem, and the Village came from people who had lived there before. Harlem went from a white area, to a Jewish area, and is currently known as a black and Hispanic area, with white areas on the outer edges. Brooklyn was mostly white and Italian until the suburban movement post-WWII (NB: Brooklyn, before it was incorporated into New York City, was the U.S. third largest city next to Manhattan and Chicago at 3 million people.)

The next time I ran into Atlantic Yards I was in a core curriculum writing course entitled “The City in American Culture” taught by a supremely self-conscious archaeological Ph.D who was more grammarian than author. I signed up for the class after having spent a year abroad and was ready to jump back into the urban studies thing. Suffice to say I was supremely disappointed, we read Jacobs and Mike Davis, some excerpts from larger texts, a couple New Yorker articles, but our assignments ranged from the banal to the frustrating. One of our last texts was the view of the Atlantic Yards Project from either side of the argument, and after 10 minutes of discussion we returned to basic college grammar prerequisites (who the fuck cares if my works cited wasn’t in alphabetical order?!). Needless to say this frustrated me, I came to the class expecting engaged urban studies students but found a trifle too many glossy eyed freshmen and upper classmen waiting for a class they can get an A in. I begged my professor to let me do my term paper on the social impacts of new housing projects with its cynosure being the Atlantic Yards, Frank Gehry, and Bruce Ratner. DENIED! With authority I was told that my paper would focus too much on content rather than technical skill. Um, what? Apparently the college writing program had decided to emphasize capitals and periods rather than what comes between them. Anyways, I decided to give my teacher a big “fuck you” and do the research and more or less write the paper, while doing my more “technically” sound one at the same time. So here’s what I found:

•    Frank Gehry, everyone’s all-American architect, designer of those crawling titanium buildings, MIT’s “leaking” research center, among other masterpieces (or monstrosities), is kind of a jerk. To paraphrase, Gehry says he knows what’s best for Brooklynites and that they don’t appreciate art enough to see that the Atlantic Yards project is beautiful (if you want what he really said it’s in an article aptly called “Mr. Ratner’s Neighborhood”). Now I had always thought of Gehry as kind of an overrated architect in the first place, Bilbao is breathtaking but if you read the “making of” story Gehry becomes a prima donna before he’s know as a master, the new Disney Opera House in Los Angeles blinds people in surrounding apartment buildings because of the ultra-reflective titanium that has become his signature, and MIT sued the architect because their building, actually, well, leaked. He does a bang up job designing jewelry for Tiffany’s though.
•    The new Brooklyn Nets stadium will be the centerpiece of the project and I mean, yeah, Brooklyn needs a basketball team. But does anyone else see a similarity between new stadiums and the areas that surround them? Places like Fenway, Wrigley, Ebbets (R.I.P), and even Pac Bell Park in S.F., they all did excellent jobs by integrating themselves into the neighborhoods they inhabit. Given for all of those examples except Pac Bell, that happened over a hundred years ago. Stadiums nowadays are built on land that is more or less unwanted, the Meadowlands in N.J., my beloved Dodger Stadium (though it was actually built on top of what used to be a Mexican suburb and displaced thousands, but that’s a story for another day), and the Oakland sports arenas are all located within or around low-income areas. Now the question is, do they, the sports arenas, create them or does the low cost of the real estate attract them? It’s a question I’m posing to you, but it’s something that I’ll definitely be writing about in the future.
•    Bruce Ratner, the manager, stands to make, well, billions. The Atlantic Yards would house thousands of Brooklyn residents displaced by the project, and would of course be a gathering point for “artists” and “writers” that desire the Manhattan lifestyle with Brooklyn moodiness. Usually when a project manager stands to make anything with 10 digits (or 8 or 9 for that matter) the true nature of the project goes to shit.
•    The people who are most adamant about Brooklyn staying the same are the people who’ve most recently moved there. The brooding authors, the terribly untalented but trendy musicians, and the “the stars are just like us!” section of US Weekly usuals are all dedicated to the cause of keeping Brooklyn in its current form: brownstones, coffee shops, and “dive chic” bars. The residents who have lived there for generations however, tend to fall into two camps. The first being those who look towards Co-op City and Marcy as glimpses into the future of Brooklyn and are supremely pissed off about it. The second group being those who have been paid off not to see it like that. And honestly the second group isn’t as ridiculous as it sounds, a lot of Brooklyn is still poor and the influx of rich college kids has artificially raised prices in their area, the creation of an “income controlled” neighborhood isn’t a completely ridiculous idea in their minds. Two great projects that have a lot of interesting things to say about Brooklyn are ACORN and DevelopDon’tDestroyBrooklyn. Another blog named NoLandGrab is a great source too.

So that’s my simple take on this very, very complicated situation. If you’re even remotely interested in housing policies, urban studies, Brooklyn, the projects, or shit just people in general than read up. It’s one of the most interesting housing endeavors taken up by a US city in a while. This barely scratches the surface of the project. As always, please comment, I want to hear what you all have to say.

Homework: let’s see. Hmmmmm. Go punch a hipster in the face. It’ll make your day, my day, and everyone around you will appreciate it.

The New York Times published an editorial yesterday that argued against a $1 surcharge on taxi fares due to the spike in gas prices. They note that there are a few hundred hybrid vehicles in the 13,000 taxi fleet, and that the entire fleet will be hybrid by 2012. The question is, why aren't all yellow cabs hybrid now, and why won't we have a fleet of electric taxis by 2012. The answer undoubtedly has to do with politics and the T&LC. Cultural Capitol will look into the matter and report more later!

Much ado has been made over Eliasson's Waterfalls, and after seeing them at night I can confirm that at least some of the hype is justified. A leisurely stroll to the Eastern-most end of Grand Street at dusk, and you are treated to these lovely views of falling water along the promenade, mystically lit. One waterfall south of the pier is close up and clearly visible, and another peeks into view under the bridge in the distance. It just might be the biggest temporary piece of public art in New York City since Christo's Gates.

Summertime at the Union Square GreenMarket is high season for both produce and people watching, as evidenced by my two photos from a prior Saturday. I do have a thing for radishes and there are lovely pink and white french breakfast varieties to be found there. Its also a bit cute to see city-born babies ogle their first fields of green, even if it is a plant shop atop pavement.

I make a really simple salad of chilled and thinly sliced radishes, dressed with salt/pepper/olive oil/balsamic vinegar/lemon.

There has been a spate of weird weather in New York City lately. Its kinda messing with my sleep. When I saw this heavy fog blanket over the skyline early one morning I thought it was a unique chance to test drive a new camera. It captured the white out conditions pretty well. This is the view from my balcony where I normally can see the Empire State Building and Chrysler Building.

The row of tenements along East Broadway looked nice and eerie too. After a few snaps I headed back to bed.

[Joel Kotkin]

Joel Kotkin published an article in Sunday's LA Times entitled "Suburbia's Not Dead Yet" in which he argues that folks (like me) who think the suburbs are doomed in the 21st century are premature if not just plain wrong. As I noted in a previous post, the allure of suburbia is still strong, but unlike Mr. Kotkin, I am firmly convinced this is because of the enduring mythology of the West (where Kotkin lives and teaches), and not because of fundamental economic realities. In my opinion, the myth of the Wide Open West will fade when it becomes too expensive to maintain population sprawl.

Kotkin acknowledges that automobile based transportation that boomed in the 20th century will cause problems for current ex- and suburban residents in the 21st century, but he is certain people will stay in the suburbs. His solution is part free market faith in innovation and part concession to urban density: "Rather than cramming more people and families into cities, they may instead foster a more dispersed, diverse archipelago of self-sufficient communities." Though Kotkin does not say so, this archipelago would involve the new trend in urban planning that seeks to create planned (i.e. inorganic) "downtowns" in or near current exurbs, highly fuel efficient cars rather than public transportation, and the hope that telecommuting will obviate the necessity of driving from exurb to office park. He derides the urbanists as "neo-Malthusians", and ends his piece with a flat valorization of the Wide Open West (WOW) thesis: "From here, [the preservation of the exurban lifestyle] looks like a far more pleasant scenario not only for suburban and exurbanites but for urban dwellers who don't want to live under dense conditions reminiscent of 19th century industrial cities or the teeming metropolises of the contemporary Third World."

This final statement is an example of emotion, disguised as polemic, masquerading as economics, and it's not hard to see why. Kotkin teaches at Chapman University in Orange, California. It's fair to say he lives as far West as you can live in the US both physically and culturally. (Southern California is so hostile to pedestrians Steve Martin parodied it in L. A. Story. Full disclosure: I live in New York City and haven't owned a car for twelve years.) The numbers -- what passes for economic analysis -- are window dressing, but the conviction lies in the "pleasant scenario" of living in the pseudo-rural American dream of lawns and white picket fences.

It's not the reality of higher energy costs making people drive less that Mr. Kotkin disagrees with, it's the idea that cities might be a more pleasant place to live than suburbia. He says "By the early part of the next decade, the large millennial generation born since the early 1980s will begin to form families, and they will, as have previous generations, probably seek open space and good schools for their children -- and that means they will settle in the suburbs." Obviously he hasn't hung out recently at Choice Market on the corner of Lafayette Avenue and Grand in Clinton Hill, Brooklyn. On any given morning you will see plenty of yuppie mothers with their children in strollers -- more than you can shake a stick at (if you're into that kind of thing). And more to the implied point in Kotkin's argument, many -- though not most -- of them are white.

Here we get to the meat of the matter. The growth of suburbia after World War II was the counterpart of white flight from the cities and their ghettoization. Kotkin cites Christopher B. Leinberger, who in The Atlantic argues that this trend was made possible by the automobile, and it was pushed by car manufacturers in world fairs, by architects like Le Corbusier, and by anti-urban urban planners like Robert Moses. It lasted for fifty years with the help of low gas prices, plentifully cheap land, public policy on the national and state level that promoted owning a stand-alone home in the 'burbs, and the great, Jeffersonian myth of small town USA immortalized in twentieth century mythology by Norman Rockwell.

Those left in the cities after whites (and wealth) flew to the wide open spaces of the 'burbs were African-Americans, Latinos, and Asians, Most of whom were recent immigrants and almost all of them poor. Cities became the focus of white America's fear, and the suburbs were their refuge. The self-segregation of whites to the suburbs also de-facto segregated schools (despite court ordered busing we were in 2000 as segregated as in 1900), which meant the most impoverished areas of the US also had the worst schools. But globalization as much as high gas prices will put an end to the white fantasy of superior suburban schools, and it may turn white American, suburban enclaves into the global ghettos of the 21st century -- if white America insists on staying its parochial, evangelical, intelligent design course.

Kotkin argues that jobs have moved to the suburbs and out of the cities. This may be true, but those jobs moved to the suburbs because they were closer to the well-educated white residents of the suburbs; people did not move to the 'burbs for good jobs. If the people move back to the cities, the jobs will move back too -- and they might be moving there already.

But more important to Kotkin's argument and mine is the development over the last forty years of "urban" culture. It is undeniable that if you turn on the radio you either hear country music or urban music. Pop, Rap, Alternative, Rock and Roll, Oldies, Classic Rock, Jazz, Easy Listening, Adult Contemporary -- they all have their roots in African-American music of the cities. Will Smith is this week's box office sensation. Tyler Perry's movies are competative with Hollywood blockbusters. The first black man may become President of the United States in January. And the ladies with their strollers at Choice market are black and middle class, rich enough in money but more than rich in culture.

Culture is why city dwellers put up with high rents and cramped spaces. Cities may not have lawns and backyards, but they have ample space for arts and sciences, music, food, dance, talk, and physical proximity to other human beings. That intangible wealth, which is completely lacking in the 'burbs, is what attracts the children of white fliers back to town. No longer do young whites fear the city. Now they idolize it. Kotkin cites numbers that show a growth in the suburbs during the 90s, but he doesn't show demographic shifts to the cities that brought young, white gentrifiers. He says that the housing market in cities shows weakness, but he doesn't say that that weakness is systemic in the entire market, is due to fifty years of bad Federal policies to grow the suburbs, and consequently has hit the suburbs much harder than the cities. Most importantly, he doesn't acknowledge that the young people who returned to the cities after their parents left might want to stay there and raise their children there. And that will improve the schools, clean up the neighborhoods, and make the cities a better option than the suburbs for the coming century.

"In the city you breath free air." That was the motto of the ancients, and it's still true today.

Gentrification. At increasing speed, towards infinity, towards zero, Redfern erases itself. Velocity is terminal. Objective progress. Annihilation costs more than dollars. Can we keep up?

Status Quo says no.

Forget your architecture, my precedent, our history. Only then can we be equal and whole. This is erasure. This is progress. This is the future.

Perhaps not.

‘All Generic Cities issue from the tabula rasa; if there was nothing, now they are there; if there was something, they have replaced it’ [Koolhaas, 1995:1253].

Oppression through homogenisation. People are not milk and cream. In the public mixing bowl, a mixture of solids creates a problem for planners. In the case of Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design (CPTED), policy bakes packaged produce. The fear of contamination is so great that human affect is shunned and the taste is cardboard. This is not Grandma’s famed pavlova, this is Sara Lee, Nannas, Pampas or Streets. An issue of packaging. A choice of cardboard.
We should see through the presentation. We should understand the manipulation. Our failure is a result of our malleability, our acceptance, our assumption.

Safety is important, human life is paramount.
Obviously.
But what of identity? Meaning? Existence? Reality?

Segue: A common thread.
The self-help section is expanding. Philosophy is accessible to all takers in the city. The search for meaning has become universal to those willing to ponder independence.
We work harder. We repeat tasks ad infinitum. We specialise. We mechanise our lives in the name of efficiency. Our reliance upon one another has never been stronger, yet the gap between grows massive.
This fissure is tangible. A clearly defined iron curtain between neighbours, the fear of the unknown.

The origin of CPTED is in crime prevention through sociality. Neighbours scouting for strangers, for suspicious characters, for the definition of a youth. Wholesome small town behaviour in the wake of urban reform.
Relevance?
Paranoia ensues in the fear of the unknown as it expands exponentially. Citizens isolate. Antisociality. Anticommunity. Strangers beget strangers.

CPTED fails through its assumption of equality, of universality. Integration of unlike parts cannot occur through simple surveillance or space management. Recognise the whole as fragmented parts not singular unit. Understand the complexities of the social fabric, assist its growth. The growth of meaning. The growth of identity.

CPTED is passive. Resistance is in action. Only by understanding CPTED and asserting that knowledge aggressively can the individual thrive. Transparency becomes opacity. Defined becomes blurred. As spaces blend, merge, join, fuse, social potential grows [Watson 2006:171].

◦

The City of Sydney Council (CSC) continues to follow archaic urban policy in Redfern. Twenty million dollars spent to upgrade the main East-West link. The project has expanded to adjacent streets. CPTED strengthens its grasp on hearts and minds. The resultant landscape feels safe. It feels the same as other precincts. Beautification is an unnecessary work in progress. Clean, new, generic. The erasure of Redfern.

The other main pedestrian pathway runs North-South, a funnel for commuters from the central business district and residential areas past Redfern. This pathway becomes an opportunity for pragmatic use of laneways and derelict tracts bounded by Cleveland, Pitt, Phillip and George Streets.

‘Marginal or liminal sites can often be more innovative and significant to people’s lives’ [Watson 2006:170].

It is in the occupation of these marginal spaces that their function is defined. This function is temporal, contingent upon continued occupation. Once the transient user moves along, the space can be redefined, reused and reconfigured. While the plan for homogeneous space neat and self contained, it is not the desired outcome. Ultimately it is the mixing of multiple programs at a single time that the we need to privilege. The busker and the runner. The commuter and the student. The addict and the children. It is important to reserve judgement. What potentials exist? How can the collective urban experience be enriched?

‘It will no longer be concerned with the arrangement of more or less permanent objects but with the irrigation of territories with potential’ [Koolhaas, 1995:968].
Potential. People. Interchangeable words.

Ownership is temporary. The space cannot exist with a dictator of program. Each occupant owns the space, defines their role, defines the space. When an infringement occurs upon that owned space, it is not cause for aggression, but a celebration of the public realm. This is sociality, chance encounter, growth, development. The space is shared, ownership is shared, responsibility is shared. This is not planning. This is entropy. This is not the Generic City. This is potentiality.

This is a historic day for Second Life, and for virtual worlds in general. IBM and Linden Lab have announced that research teams from the two companies successfully teleported avatars from the Second Life Preview Grid into a virtual world running on an OpenSim server, marking the first time an avatar has moved from one virtual world to another. It’s an important first step toward enabling avatars to pass freely between virtual worlds, something we’ve been working toward publicly since the formation of the Architecture Working Group in September 2007. These are still early days, however, so amid all the excitement, we thought it would be helpful to clarify exactly what we’ve done — and what still lies ahead.

IBM and Linden Lab Interoperability Announcement « Official Second Life Blog

It's not called "coffee cream" or "half-and-half" here, but "cereal cream". (If they really use real cream with cereal every breakfast, I wonder what their child obesity rates must be...)

City trails have random snowbanks along the way - in the middle of sunny, 30-degree July!

Which is great to cool down passing tourists (like me)

and passing wildlife (like this guy).

Having a town in Thailand as your sister city means you get neat Asian-style sun shelters. (I wonder what they got from Fredericton?)

There's historic buildings from almost every architectural period since European colonisation

but also lots of high-tech too: free Internet all over Downtown!

Like most good Downtowns, there's great window shopping

and patios

and live music

but stuff you won't find anywhere else: croquet!

and big band concerts!

and if you happen to be around, you get to inspect the Guard!

Ever wonder where they keep the flags after they take them down?

You just stuff it down your tunic... "Does this flag make me look fat?"

Police cars look like proper police cars - no cheesy racing stripes, and no need for "POLICE" in 2-foot-high letters on the doors (cough, cough), it's obvious what they are

though buses are a bit harder to figure out - no actual marked bus stops or shelters or stations with transit logos or branding, just poles with numbers on them

but if you stick around long enough (every hour?) there they are

Still not much in the way of branding - take your pick of "Fredericton Transit" in a serifed font (is that Souvenir? And is it even laid on straight?)

Or sans-serif, mIxEd cApS - now that's l33t

Or if you can't decide - both!

(Yes, they switched it up mid-word - that is a Souvenir "T" and a sans-serif "RANSiT" - guess they really couldn't decide!)

I like picking up on random details in a new town like this. It means I can avoid facing the reality of leaving academia and entering "real life" and "real responsibility" just a little while longer.

On Dining with Strangers

By J.D. Oxblood

I live on a small island off the coast of the United States of America. That may be technically untrue, but it’s more true than the truth. I live on the Island of Long, in a small corner that is vastly different from the rest of the island and—like the neighboring island of Manhattan—the rest of America.

This is a story, like all New York stories, about what makes us different, if not exactly special. We live in tiny, tiny apartments and pay anywhere between a third to half of our income on rent. This is alarmingly obvious to New Yorkers, but if anyone’s reading this out in flyover country (that’s right, I said it) read that sentence again. It’s insane if you really chew it over, and yet we do it, year after year. And as I was recently reminded whilst dining with out of town guests, it’s always all about the rent. As my visitors were wondering why we were paying $15 for a cocktail, I noted the address: we’re half a block from Rockefeller Center. Guess what—while the cocktails are weak, the service is crap, the décor is overdone and like something some rube from the suburbs would call “so New Yorky”—these people have to pay the RENT.

I’d like to introduce a new factor in Quality of Life assessment—let’s call it the Personal Space Index, or PSI, for short. Take the total square footage of your dwelling, and divide it by the number of people who reside there. Then figure the approximate square footage of any and all common spaces (bathrooms, living room, kitchen), divide by the number of people, and subtract this from the first figure. Because, let’s face it, you have to fight these people for elbow room on a daily basis, from waiting in line to brush your teeth to a little make-out time on the couch. Using my living situation as an example: (500 total sq. feet ÷ 2 = 250) – ([common areas: 40% of 500’ = 200] ÷ 2 = 100) = 150. So my PSI is 150 square feet. Not a whole lot bigger than your average jail cell. So, yeah, we need to get out.

And yet, it doesn’t get us any more personal space. Take going out to eat. When was the last time you went to a steak house in, Pennsylvania, maybe, or upstate? As close as the Hudson Valley you can walk into a restaurant that is as spacious as the mall in “Clueless” and order a meal that automatically comes with soup AND salad, not to mention some overcooked vegetable and a potato-derivative dish. (New Yorkers instinctively understand that when you order a piece of meat at a restaurant, what you get is exactly that—a piece of meat. And maybe some cute drizzly Kandinsky line of mystery sauce across the plate.) In New York, you will inevitably be led to a row of two-top tables that are approximately two inches apart from one another. While the big-sky part of your mind is imagining that it’s set up for a party of 25, your hostess (under 25, tight black dress, reeking of conditioner) will pull a table away from the wall so that your date can sit. (Men: this is old-school gentleman 101. The woman should always face out so that she can see and be seen. If you’re worried about being assassinated, dine with another man.) Two total strangers will be seated on your left, and two total strangers on your right. You can literally bump elbows with them if you shift in your seat far enough to fart. And yet, according to the Convention of New Yorkistan, you will not speak to these people. You will not look at these people. And you will not betray, through voice or facial expression, the fact that you can quite clearly hear every fucking word they are saying.

It all makes for a veritable cornucopia of hilarity and awkwardness. We hear couples breaking up from six inches away. We hear profane sexual talk, family secrets, office gossip. It’s occasionally fun. Recently, at a favorite Thai restaurant (First Street East of First Avenue -- best damn Pad Kee Mao in town) one of the two girls next to us dropped her fork. I said, babyishly, “Boo.” The girl next to me snapped—“Are you booing my friend?” I explained that, no, I was booing the situation -- now she had to ask for a clean fork. The girl loosened up and I began to like her; she actually defended her girlfriend, a quality not often found amongst female culture. Later, when the girl complained about her fat fingers, I said to my date, loudly, “Look at how fat her fingers are.” Fourth wall, broken, for comedic effect.

But usually the proximity is just annoying. Most people suck. Most people have no fucking concept of personal space, or consideration of others, or even the concept of basic human decency. Recently, at Poquito’s on First Ave. and 9th (great backyard patio; quality Mexican food) the guy next to me was pontificating unbearably. His voice so clearly cut the air around us that I was unable to think about the menu, or hear anything my date was saying. All I could think about was some asshole at work named Dave. Torn between being passive-aggressive or aggressive-aggressive I went off on a giggle-inspiring rant that culminated with my shouting -- “YOU HAVE TO PROJECT, MAN, WE CAN’T HEAR YOU IN THE CHEAP SEATS!" Miraculously, that got the guy to shut up. For about 5 seconds. We moved to another table on the other side of the patio and I was shocked to realize that, from a distance, he looked like a classic bull-dyke lesbian. Maybe if he plays it off he’ll do well with the lipsticks… “Do you mind if I kill the lights? Just give me a second to adjust my strap-on … it’s very realistic.” I digress.

(The face O'Reilly makes when pretending to be a bull-dyke.)

It’s bigger than dining out. I was recently dragged to motherfucking Bayside— technically Queens, but beyond the reach of the Subway and accessible only by the Long Island Rail Road—for some asshole’s birthday. When I arrived, late, I made some a defensive comment about why the host had decided to move to the middle of nowhere. He spread his arms in a broad gesture, showing off the great and fantastic beauty of the surroundings, and said, “I can’t see WHY.” I grew up in suburbs like this, I thought, and they were fucking ugly then. This is beautiful? Houses separated from each other just enough to be called houses. Tiny green lawns cut by concrete. A few trees, but no more, and no more wildlife than my little corner of Brooklyn. All I saw was wasted space, a design deliberately intended to waste fossil fuels, and a lifestyle revolving around the idea of living in the middle: not rural, not urban. You don’t live in the country, the big dream of the Great American West, and you’re not citified. You’re bludgeoning the environment and spending half your life commuting. You live in purgatory. And PS, your apartment is smaller than mine. We went to dinner -- basically a Friday’s -- we easily landed an 8-top and the closest table to us was five feet away. And I thought, wow, they could get half dozen more tables into this space. Why so wasteful?

It’s possible that I’m brainwashed by the City, but if you think New York is packed, you should spend some time in Asia, where the concept of personal space has yet to be invented. Shit, if you’ve ever been to Chinatown—ANY Chinatown -- you’ve been shoved out of the way by an 80 year-old lady. It’s not rude -- you’re just in the way. And, let’s face it, round-eye, you’re too big. I recently had an epiphany on Khao San road in Bangkok after noticing that the piece of asphalt in front of the 7-11 is, after dark, a bar. Plastic seats are plunked down, the farang are encouraged to sit, and the girl brings you ice cold beers. Since the whole street is one big party, why not use every available space? In front of the 7-11, not unlike a ghetto Texas sit-N-sip, no tables, nothing to do, just jammed together with people and drinking. And no more crowded than the average Manhattan shithole on a weekend night. And with better service. That’s when it hit me:

The dream of the American West must die.

While it may seem prepossessing to draw a parallel between the social and psychological need of personal space and the impending environmental crisis … I’m doing it anyway. Come on over to Brooklyn and ride the L train into Manhattan at 9 am on a weekday. Them Asians got nothing on us, bro, and seriously, we need those high school students like they got in Japan shoving people onto the train. Coz some people still don’t want to snuggle up. Every rabid environmentalist I’ve read in the last five years has insisted that the culture must change first -- and so I offer up New York City as an example of another way to live.

Wide open spaces, big sky country, a place where a man can stake his claim, space for a man to breathe, the wild west, the great expense -- all this is completely antithetical to the survival of the species. The entire world is going urban and it’s not for nothing. Hey, if you want wide open spaces, please, move the fuck out to Montana and Kaczynski it up. But if you work in an office and know more about Powerpoint than you do about rutabagas, what the fuck? Do you really love mowing the lawn so much on weekends that it’s worth the extra hour-long commute? Have you read ANYTHING by Elizabeth Kolbert? And tell me, why, six years into the Iraq war, two out of every three commercials on TV are still urging you to buy a new car? Buy a fucking vowel, people -- you don’t need a new car, you need to burn the one you have. The suburbs are over. Either move to fucking Wyoming or get over yourself and join the crowd.

I’d like to say more on the subject, but really, the walls are closing in on me. I’m going to walk down to the park and dig the hot girls in bikinis catching rays. And the next time I’m in a restaurant and the guy next to me refuses to cooperate and PRETEND that we have space that, like our American forefathers, we still want, but don’t actually need, I’m going to pick up my burrito, move to another table, order another beer, and do what all red-blooded Americans do with their angst: blog about it.

Kiss kiss,
J.D. X

Castigand proiectul "Statia de tramvai in Alicante", echipa SUBARQUITECTURA (Silanes, Fernando Valderrama, Carlos Bañon) a avut ocazia de a gandi o solutie ce da inapoi orasului un spatiu ce-i fusese luat; transformarea unui sens giratoriu intr-o piata publica.

Arhitecti: SUBARQUITECTURA, Andrés Silanes, Fernando Valderrama, Carlos Bañon

Amplasament: Rotonda de Sergio Cardell, Alicante, Spain (38.364°N, 0.432°W)

Structura: SUBARQUITECTURA

Client: FGV - Ferrocarrils de la Generalitat Valenciana

Contractor: UTE ECISA + COMSA

Suprafata: 5.090 mp

Buget: 654.638 EURO (US $1.01 mil.)

Data inceperii: September 2005

Data finalizarii: October 2006

Inaugurare: inceputul 2007

Platforma este accesibila din 32 de puncte printr-un sistem fractionat de carari/poteci ce inconjoara vegetatia existenta. Peste aceasta, 2 cutii perforate, avand o lungime de 36 metri, o latime de 3 metri si o inaltime de 2.5 metri, creeaza doua volume plutitoare goale, putin deasupra capului calatorilor, la o scara mai apropiata de ce-a a tramvaiului decat de ce-a a mobilierului urban.

Lumina si aerul trec prin porii cutiilor (traforuri circulare), creand o umbra placuta, calma. Porii cutiilor antreneaza circulatia aerului, si in acelasi timp ofera o opozitie scazuta, a cutiilor, asupra actiunii vantului.

In timpul nopti, cele doua cutii, devin 2 lampi puternice ce lumineaza direct intraga platforma. Bancile intra in compozitia cararilor, dand ocazia pasagerilor sa astepte tramvaiul in contact direct cu vegetatia, si luminand cararile cu o lumina catifelata.

]]> http://penumbrae.wordpress.com/?p=133 Thu, 03 Jul 2008 12:38:59 +0000 gbem1 http://penumbrae.wordpress.com/?p=133

Today's CNN headlines include a link to this fascinating Time article that concerns you, me, and everybody we don't know.  Among the clandestine topics covered, or should I say drenched, in gasoline: globalization and outsourcing, pollution, work weeks, sprawl, waste and conservation, traffic deaths, the prices of insurance, police pedestrians, and obesity.

Waktu: 31 Agustus 2008
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