It’s getting pretty rough out there…
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You may recall this image – a one mile walking circle around us here on Capitol Hill. I wrote about this last February – Valentine’s Day to be exact. I was thinking then that what most urbanists use to define a walkable neighborhood – a quarter mile radius – seemed kind of wimpy to me. [...]
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The arch in downtown Willits, California, from flickr.
Here is an article that is fairly astonishing, so I thought I would share. I found this at www.urbanism.org, a great site, and listed below on our blogroll. I apoloize for all the links, and for the resulting raggedy appearance of this post. But the data here are quite [...]
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Icemen, on the rocks.
Recently I have been working to try and understand food history and the development of various milestone food technologies in the last few centuries, with the aim of getting to know what has enabled a global food industry. This is a very complicated matter, and understood and written about by much wiser heads than my [...]
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And the walls come tumbling down. This afternoon I am trying to calm down, without much success. Let me explain – it’s kind of complicated.
Congress has just passed an energy bill, which among many things provides for opening U.S. coastal areas to offshore drilling. Only a moron could think of this act as anything except [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: urbanism, Vernacular urbanism, tagged access to excess, Alfama, micro-urbanism, Pomeioc, The next city, urbanism, Vernacular urbanism on September 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Algonquin town of Pomeioc. Watercolor by Captain John White, 1585.
“…comprising the dwellings and all other buildings of the people. Related to their environmental contexts and available resources they are customarily owner- or community-built, utilizing traditional technologies. All forms of vernacular architecture are built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of [...]
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Diego Rivera, 1927, Detroit Institute of Arts.
You probably have heard, as we did this morning via the Post, that the U.S. auto industry is proposing that the Federal government (that would be us, fellow taxpayers) bail them out to the tune of $50 billion. They would use the money to retool and become more competitive [...]
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From Tabtoons at telus.net.
Tom Friedman (“Hot, Flat and Crowded: Why We Need a Green Revolution – And How It Can renew America”) was on NPR on Monday – Terry Gross’ Fresh Air – and went on a rant about the folly of off-shore drilling, ending by exclaiming “What planet are these people on!!??!”
I think I found [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, Vernacular urbanism, tagged cars are obsolete, hutong, Koolhaas Dubai, Masdar, Shibam, streetcars and the Chicago block, The next city, urbanism, Vernacular urbanism on September 8, 2008 | 1 Comment »
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand.” Italo Calvino
Shibam, Yemen, photo by Jialiang Gao: an ancient pattern of dense, high-rise desert urbanism.
What should the next city look like, and how should we inhabit the future? I have been puzzling over these questions for quite a long time. For [...]
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