December 2009
40 posts
Farms Growing in Detroit
With many of Detroit’s homes and factories shuttered and deteriorating, acres and acres of the city are slowly returning to a more natural state. According to this article in the LA Times, a large farm company is buying up parcels in the city to run a large-scale farming operation. The company will farm up to 5,000 acres within city limits, and will start small next season with a 30 acre...
Vancouver's Canada Line Exceeding Ridership...
The Canada Line has reached ridership goals three years ahead of schedule; the line has seen several days of 100,000+ riders. I’m not surprised by this news — downtown-to-airport rail service has been popular all over the US already. Minnesota’s Hiawatha line (Downtown - Mall of America - Airport) also beat ridership estimates, and Portland’s MAX line to the airport has...
Car Showrooms, Reborn →
There are lots of cool car dealership buildings out there that could really be something great in a second life. They all certainly have ample parking.
Mad Men and the City →
Nice article in the New York Times about how cities are crucial to ideas-based industries like advertising.
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Park and Ride Lots -- A Business Opportunity?
I just read this article (Via The Overhead Wire) about how a grocery delivery company in Minnesota has started parking its delivery truck in Park and Ride lots so commuters can pick up their groceries on the way home from work. The transit agency is letting them do this for free because it’s such a great service to riders. The article also mentions that other businesses have begun to see the...
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Bye Bye, Bookstore →
Laredo, TX loses its only bookstore and the nearest one (chain or independent) will be 150 miles away. Newark, NJ has only one independent bookstore for 288,000 residents. While I think a lot of people are buying books online or at Wal-Mart, I’m still sort of surprised by this. As the article mentions, bookstores have the potential to be a cultural center of the community. Without...
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Planners and Designers Mull Implications of... →
I’m definitely in favor of more regulation in this area. While the idea of gigantic advertisements does not please me, the issue of light really concerns me. These digital towers would be like the smokestacks of light pollution. I think e-ink or other digital façade technology that wasn’t as bright could have some promise. Technological advancement is fine, but I’d prefer it if...
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The Return of the Two-Way Street →
Vancouver, WA changed it’s Main Street from one-way to two-way and saw an immediate revitalization. Other cities have tried the same thing, with mixed results. I tend to favor two-way streets in downtowns because one-way streets make you feel like you’re just passing through.
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When the City Became a Stage →
A great summation of architecture and urban space in New York City. While you’re there, read When TV Became Art, too.
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Anatomy of the Smallest Towns →
A quick piece at my other blog about what it takes to be considered a town instead of a random group of buildings.
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Bicycle Highways →
davereed:
“The bicycle highway — no red lights, no cars — is every cyclist’s fantasy. There are now signs that infrastructure is catching up with the dream. In October 2008, an association of U.S. state-highway officials approved the concept of a national Bicycle Routes Corridor Plan — the first step in potential American bike Interstates. But this amounts to little more than a go-ahead for...
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A Longer Mass Transit Commute Is Not Always a Bad... →
My conclusion: when it comes to transportation, time is an elastic, subjective, almost mystical thing. One minute spent traveling one way is not the same as another. But the “intangibles” are hard to introduce into official transportation debates.
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Watchdowntowncreator:
Los Angeles’ Metro is doing something that no transit agency in the country has ever done: it’s marketing its products and services as if it were a private company bent on turning a profit. But for Metro marketing isn’t about increasing the bottom line. It’s about reducing traffic, cleaning the air and making people’s commutes in this auto-clogged city a bit less stressful. (via...
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Seasteading - Cities as Startups
Seasteading is concept that combines the dream of running your own country with the legal reality that you can only do that in international waters. The Seasteading Institute is an organization dedicated to facilitating the creation of these man-made islands/platforms/large ships, with the hope that these micronations will be the future of cities and governance.
Here’s the...
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No Inter-City Rail Without Intra-City Rail
This editorial in the Columbus Government Examiner discusses what I think is one of the biggest predictors of success/failure for high-speed rail in the US. The piece rightly points out that without transit to get people around once they arrive at their destination, people won’t take the train.
The success of the Acela is due in part to the subway systems of Boston, New York, Philadelphia,...
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2000-Watt City →
Zurich, Switzerland’s largest city, has a radical goal: to reduce the amount of energy residents use by two-thirds and become a 2,000-watt society.
Two thousand watts is the world average for energy used per second. An average American uses 12,000/second, Europeans use 6,000/second, and Africans use around 700.
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McMurdo, Antarctica
(Photo credit The Dry Valleys)
McMurdo Station is the largest research center on Antarctica, and one of three US centers on the content (the others being Palmer and South Pole). McMurdo is south of New Zealand and has a summer population of 1100 scientists and support staff. While it’s technically a research center, it has many of the same facilities any town would. According to a...
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Dubai's Improbable Tale →
A collection of photos documenting Dubai’s growth and decline. The disparity between the people the city was built for (the very rich) and the people who built it (the very poor) is staggering.