Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, Urban design, tagged City block, infrastructure, Oregon, Salem, The next city, urbanism on June 16, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I have speculated here repeatedly about taking a single existing urban block off the grids. I have come to believe that the scale of a single city block may be the most affordable, and rational, way to retool existing urban neighborhood infrastructures: power, heat, water, gardens, all in the alley. And now it turns out that I am way, [...]
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We went for a stroll this morning, in lovely Capitol Hill. And to my complete delight, we discovered a wonderful surprise just blocks from our house. Take a look.
Yes, folks, those are rails for the DC streetcar. They are sitting quietly on a prepared bed, next to a slab that will extend the width of the sidewalk [...]
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In April (April 12th, to be exact) I wrote a piece that explored how to find a way to disconnect from all the infrastructure grids in a context of existing urban (and historic) rowhouses. I concluded that it would be very difficult, if not impossible, for a single rowhouse to wiggle free of all the connections: sewer, water, [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged district CHP, infrastructure, Off the grid, The next city, urbanism on April 12, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I want to talk about scale and size in our urban infrastructure, but it will take me a few minutes. Stick with me.
I started off last week continuing to think about the grid, or grids, that make cities work. Kind of.
Actually, our cities don’t really work very well at all, and their grids are pretty [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged billions, high speed rail, scale, urbanism on April 3, 2009 | 3 Comments »
We hear every day now about the staggering sums of money being thrown at this and that sinking sector of our nation’s economy. It’s hard to understand the scale of all of this. I am just now starting to figure out what a toxic asset is, and I am struggling to grasp what $700 billion dollars means. Or $50 [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: urbanism, tagged density, EcoDensity, Portland, The next city, Toronto, urbanism, Vancouver on March 2, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Let’s say that you live in an urban neighborhood that has less than 15 or 20 dwellings per acre. Let’s say that you live in an urban neighborhood of detached or semi-detached townhouses and single family homes. A neighborhood of bungalows, perhaps like this:
Chicago bungalow.
Knowing that the city must become more populous in order to serve [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: urbanism, tagged Keynes, Paradox of Thrift, regionalism, The next city, urbanism on December 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The North Sea. Photo by Captain Tim.
Spend? Save? It turns out that economist John Maynard Keynes came up with a name for the quandary I am in about saving, spending, and an economy we are watching slip beneath the waves faster than a melting glacier. He called it the Paradox of Thrift.
The Paradox goes like this: [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged energy, food policy, infrastructure, mobility, Obama infrastructure plan, plumber-in-chief, The next city, urbanism, water on December 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Announced just over a week ago, your new infrastructure fund is now gone, Mr. President. It’s all been spent already, several times over, by politicians, constructors, lobbyists, trade associations. Get your staff to try googling “Obama infrastructure plan,” and up pop hundreds of thousands of web sites, and nearly every newspaper, magazine, financial analyst, and [...]
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Americans will put up with anything provided it doesn’t block traffic. Dan Rather
In the last post here, we found ourselves wondering what it would be like if our city, Washington, D.C., were much more dense than it is today. We wondered if a greater density of people, and uses, would create a more walkable, sustainable, durable [...]
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Today I try to understand our cities in another way, using a comparative juxtaposition of images. When I went looking for these images, I knew in my head what they would look like, but the actual facts are, nonetheless, a bit of a shock.
Take a look, thanks to Google Earth. All of these images are at the [...]
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