Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged GDP, Growth, The next city, urbanism on June 26, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I’ll make this short. I am very cranky this afternoon, and I admit it. The lead from the AP wire, a few minutes ago: “Consumers are saving more than they’re spending, and that has investors worried.” What?!?!
Okay, so what, really, is the point of our economy? A rising GDP is the whole game? After a long [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged cities, energy, food, mobility, scale, urbanism, water on June 9, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The largest city on earth – Tokyo. Image by Altus.
I have often found myself reflecting here on matters of scale – of blocks and streets, of cities and neighborhoods. Recently I have found myself thinking about the relationship between the really, really big, and the fairly tiny. Let me explain.
We lead our daily lives in familiar, [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, tagged Edison, Ford, lighting, Menlo Park, mobility, Sprague, urbanism, Westinghouse, White City on April 20, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Edison’s first lamp, by Robert Farrow.
I am not a luddite, but I do have a very healthy skepticism about technology representing our salvation. In the past 10 generations, we have succeeded in making an enormous mess, thanks to technology, a mess of such proportions that we are only now beginning to understand what we have done, and [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, Vernacular urbanism, tagged American urbanism, Microurbanism, Office of Urban Policy, shovel-ready, urbanism, Vernacular urbanism on January 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image from flickr.
“Once we accept that our cities will not be like the cities of the past, it will become possible to see what they might become.” Witold Rybczynski, City Life.
When he wrote those words in 1995, Rybczynski was actually “glimpsing the urban future,” and seeing it as a low-density and low-rise city, amorphous and sprawling, completely [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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 [...]
Read Full Post »
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, tagged American urbanism, food policy, oil, The next city, urbanism 101, water on October 18, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
I have been reading my usual array of favored websites, and have run into an interesting string of comments in the last couple of days. It seems that Michael Pollan’s piece in the NYT Magazine, which I recommended in the last post, has ignited a furor in some quarters. Pollan is being accused of ”eco-armageddonizing.”
Notwithstanding the [...]
Read Full Post »
