November 2010
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Access
“Spatial cities, of course, are not only condensations of activity to maximize accessibility and promote face- to-face interaction, but are also elaborate sturctures for organizing and controlling access.” (1)
Access is one of the key indicators of mobility for cities. It should be no surprise that two of the MTA largest infrastructure projects
in recent years are called East Side Access and...
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The Case for Mobility
For centuries the critical link between mobility and the economic prosperity of a region has been well documented. The uninhibited flow of people, goods, and information is vitaly important to the economic and cultural well-being of cities; the historic analogy between physical circualtion and the metabolism or life blood of a of a city remains apt.
One of the challenges facing regional planners...
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parasitic real estate
Yacht interior design technology and crumbling 60s and 70s tower blocks may yet become the unlikely saviours of those falling off the greasy rungs of the property ladder.
The concept is thus; pre-assembled pods that are complete compact apartments, (similar in concept to bathroom and kitchen pods slotted into hotels and flats) being then slid into empty tower blocks. A little like Alien but...
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Ecological Urbanism
The return of regional thinking in planning can be attributed to several factors in the design professions: The environmental movement of the 1970s encoured a new public consciousness regarding resource consumption that engendered “environmentally friendly” technological developments in the building trades over the next several decades. Yet there seems to be a consensus in recent years that such...
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Abandoned Railways, Trains, Stations, Tunnels &... →
puddingcan:
fascinating! i really like the idea of converting abandoned infrastructure into a new use like new york’s high line.
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Alameda Corridor
Perhaps nowhere exemplifies the consolidation of the flows of freight better than the Alameda Corridor running through the heart of Los Angeles. A 20-mile rail freight expressway, the $2.4 billion triple-track project was completed in 2002 to separate more than 200 grade crossings in the increasingly urbanized Los Angeles region. Designed to facilitate the movement of containers off the docks of...
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“…nobody is clear about what sort of country America is going to be in 2030...”
– The Crossroads Nation - NYTimes.com
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“And yet, New York remains a world city. It is not the great American city — that...”
– My Endless New York - NYTimes.com
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“[New York City] has become a playground for the wealthy even as manufacturing...”
– Infrastructural City, New Jersey Style | varnelis.net
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High-Speed Pork
We are prisoners of economic geography. Suburbanization after World War II made most rail travel impractical. From 1950 to 2000, the share of the metropolitan population living in central cities fell from 56 percent to 32 percent, report UCLA economists Leah Platt Boustan and Allison Shertzer. Jobs moved too. Trip origins and destinations are too dispersed to support most rail service. Only in...
