Conversations About Where We Live
At the end of February I wrote that we should live in city neighborhoods where we could walk to everything important in our lives in just a few minutes. I noted that this new and very old way of thinking about city living, most recently articulated by Prof. Carlos Moreno, who teaches at the Sorbonne … Continue reading Tempus Fugit
"The Next Thursday, just after dawn, seeing a Packard parked sideways at the far edge of our oldest mall's huge lot, Sheriff Wilks found Bobby Grafton in the backseat, dead. My grandfather was wearing - my parents explained later by phone - his best gray suit, one they'd forced him into for Ruth's funeral. He'd … Continue reading Next Thursday
Why did we decide to sacrifice our cities for the sake of cars?
These last twelve months, as all the world has struggled with the pandemic, more people everywhere are – at last – starting to realize that our health, our environment, our climate, and our lives in cities are all in need of reevaluating, rethinking, and transformation. And it’s an urgent matter of time. Time is emerging … Continue reading City Punches Time Clock
It is easy to imagine that the streets of our neighborhoods, the sidewalks, the parkways (optimistically called tree lawns here), and our front porches could and should become more active and more suitable for sitting, standing to discuss the news of the day with neighbors, walking and strolling and biking. We have talked here often … Continue reading City in Front, City in Back
"Maybe the future is bad. But there's a future beyond that, right?" Yuno Gasa. First there is the city that we have constructed. Next is the city of the present, a quiet city, a city of stillness, anxiety and waiting. As we are confining ourselves indoors, we ask ourselves about life in our present cities. … Continue reading The Quiet City, The Future City
Recently I discovered the existence of a new kind of streetcar - the Autonomous Rail Rapid Transit tram, which has been dubbed ART. The system was developed in China and is trackless - it operates on existing streets (!!). The system has a cost of about one tenth (!!!) of railbound streetcars and it can … Continue reading Slowly I turned, step by step, inch by inch
An ancient definition of architecture suggests that three terms best pertain: Commodity (convenient, functional, useful), Firmness (lasting, robust, sturdy, resilient) and Delight (attractive, beautiful, harmonious, graceful). Though this characterization of the art of building has been with us since the 1st century BCE, it has proven to be extraordinarily durable. Its author, Marcus Vitruvius Pollio … Continue reading “That’s not writing, that’s just typing.”
Peshwar, Pakistan. Baltimore. Shibam, Yemen. Iftar in Yogyakarta, Indonesia. Image by Ulet Ifansasti for the NYT. Hutong in Beijing. Image for the NYT. NYC. Image by Niko Kallianiotis. Manila Slums. Rochester, NY. Photo for the D&C. Lagos, Nigeria, image by Edward Burtynsky. Kabul, image by Jim Huylebroek for the NYT. Image by Niko Kallianiotis. Cape … Continue reading Which “We” Are Really All In This Together?
Rochester's public realm: reclaimed during a pandemic. Image by Maria Furgiuele And Chicago's, in Ravenswood. Image by Jim Peters In the end, my years-long campaign to alter the presence of the automobile in our cities has always had two underlying and perhaps not very well hidden objectives. First has been a desire to reclaim and … Continue reading The Public Realm Reclaimed – At Last
A Town Square 