Archive for Highways
February 12, 2010 · Filed under Beauty, Grassroots, Highways, Landscape, Nature, Parks, Public Space, Urban Actions
A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a number of urban farmers opened a gate in a chain-link fence at Laguna Street, between Oak and Fell Streets, and entered an overgrown lot that has been unused for nearly two decades. The farmers brought with them steaming piles of mulch, which they cast over the edge of the ramps formerly used by cars to enter and exit the elevated Central Freeway spur above Octavia Street, arranging the soil in rows for planting vegetables and filler crops.
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Popularity: 50% [?]
November 17, 2009 · Filed under Highways, Infrastructure, Public Art, Suburbs, Traffic, Urban Structure
New Yorkers maintain that Los Angeles is a city with no center. But Angelenos argue that the city of freeways has its core in the Stack, a tower of overpasses — the first four-level connector interchange, according to the California Transportation Department — where the Pasadena, Harbor, Hollywood and Santa Ana freeways intersect.
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Popularity: 55% [?]
April 7, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Highways, Infrastructure
Architects should stop worrying about the Obama administration’s scarce stimulus spending, and start wrapping their minds around new technologies that reinvent infrastructure.
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Popularity: 22% [?]
March 31, 2009 · Filed under Creative Cities, Highways, Industrial, Infrastructure, Investment, Real Estate, Revitalization
The country has fallen on hard times, but those of us who love cities know we have been living in the dark ages for a while now. We know that turning things around will take more than just pouring money into shovel-ready projects, regardless of how they might boost the economy. Windmills won’t do it either. We long for a bold urban vision.
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Popularity: 38% [?]
March 17, 2009 · Filed under Economics, Highways, Infrastructure, Investment, Transit
What kind of urbanism will President Obama’s stimulus billions buy? For an emerging generation of activist designers, the future of the American city lies not in top-down master plans, but in a fine-grained analysis of the existing fabric.
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Popularity: 24% [?]
February 9, 2009 · Filed under End of Cheap Oil, Highways, Infrastructure, Investment, Traffic, Transit
Urban transportation: What are we going to do about it? Fewer cars? More mass transit? More bikes? Fuel taxes?
It’s tempting to try solving transportation problems with more transportation. The sight of rush hour traffic jams in cities, or the experience of riding an overcrowded bus or train, suggest the need for increased transit capacity. As a short term solution, that may indeed be the best remedy. In the long run, however, it’s more like supplementing a junk food diet with a few healthy snacks.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
January 31, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Cities from Scratch, EcoCities, Families, Garden Cities, Highways, Traffic, Transit, Urban Design, Visualization, Water
I have always loved those great Cities of the Future from the thirties even to the present; they always present some bucolic vision that is never quite achieved. Canon set up a vision at the CES show to showcase their high def cameras; Unpluggd said “Think Playmobil meets TV studio diorama.”
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Popularity: 71% [?]
January 27, 2009 · Filed under Fiction, Highways, Suburbs
I was fascinated to discover that Ballard had hung around Notting Hill in the 70s with Moorcock and the New Wave SF writers, and Emma Tennant and the Bananas magazine crowd. He must have walked the same streets that years later I was to haunt with my own damaged crew. Living within sight of the Westway, which I felt must have helped form his motorway mythology, I was moved to do some geo-detective work on Concrete Island, that great updating of Crusoe, and was surprised by what I found.
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Popularity: 25% [?]
