Archive for Tourism
November 2, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, Beauty, Campus Planning, Creative Cities, Economics, Landscape, Parks, Place making, Shopping Malls, Tourism
Disney has always been an easy target for urban designers and architects. Main Street USA, the main drag of its parks, can be read as a cruel joke. Its simulated urbanism and festival atmosphere may seem like a sinister, conservative knock-off of actual small-town main streets of yore, lodged deep in the American collective memory, that corporate titans like Disney helped kill with their economics of scale and squeaky-clean spectacle. Now, instead of a public realm, we have cities that are “luxury products,” meant not for the stuff of life but for endless, mindless consumer fantasy. Thanks (in part) to the influence of Disney.
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Popularity: 47% [?]
October 20, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, Landscape, Multi-Level Urbanism, Recreation, Tourism
So Chicago lost its bid to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games. Rather than brood about what might have been or haggle over alternatives to the massive dose of money the city would have been given to stimulate its limping finances, it should immediately develop a bid for the 2018 Winter Olympics. Since the deadline is less than two weeks away and the bid committee may still be suffering from their Copenhagen hangovers, we’ll help them out.
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Popularity: 23% [?]
July 2, 2009 · Filed under Happiness, Health, Retail, Tourism
After a visit to the bustling Pike Place Market in Seattle, a financial adviser for philanthropist Betty Noyce (the late, ex-wife of the Intel microchip founder) suggested that she fund a new public market in Portland, Maine, in order to revitalize the downtown. Noyce went on to finance the $9.4 million Portland Public Market, which opened in 1999 with 23 food vendors. Over the next seven years, farmers lodged complaints about poor access, the market struggled with a high vendor turnover rate, and two high-end restaurants there failed. In 2006, the market closed, after Noyce’s foundation reported annual losses of about $1 million.
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Popularity: 14% [?]
February 10, 2009 · Filed under Advertising, Graffiti, Great Streets, Media, Pedestrians, Place branding, Play, Public Life, Public Space, Social Networks, Tourism, Traffic, Visualization
The way the street feels may soon be defined by what cannot be seen with the naked eye.
Imagine film of a normal street right now, a relatively busy crossroads at 9AM taken from a vantage point high above the street, looking down at an angle as if from a CCTV camera. We can see several buildings, a dozen cars, and quite a few people, pavements dotted with street furniture.
Freeze the frame, and scrub the film backwards and forwards a little, observing the physical activity on the street. But what can’t we see?
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Popularity: 58% [?]
February 4, 2009 · Filed under Pollution, Tourism, Urbanization
A noxious tide of toilet paper, raw sewage and chemical waste has transformed Dubai’s most prestigious stretch of shoreline into a foul-smelling health hazard.
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Popularity: 15% [?]
January 12, 2009 · Filed under Health, Recreation, Tourism
Work with what you got, they say. And in Winnipeg, they “got” ice. Acres of it.
That’s why, for the second year in a row, Winnipeg is breaking Guinness records and jabbing its mittened thumb in Ottawa’s eye by scraping out the world’s longest skating trail.
Just call it Ice War II.
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Popularity: 14% [?]
