Artes Perditae

Artes Perditae is Latin for lost arts. And now it is time for us to find, recall or unearth as many lost arts as we can. We are going to need them. Why? Because as Paul Gilding tells us in his book "The Great Disruption": "We've been borrowing from the future, and the debt has …

Word on the Street

Recently we got to talking about street scenes common when we were kids, and friend and neighbor Roger Brown told me about trucks like this: In my neighborhood just north of Chicago we never had a grocery truck, though I am sure it would have done well. Or would do well - more about that …

Rearranging the Grid

As I have endlessly noted here, our city of Rochester adopted the scorched earth policy for automobility at an early moment: streetcars removed in 1941, subway demolished in 1956, expressways as our emerald necklace in the 1950s, a mid-century Inner Loop that strangled our central city, demolition of everything possible downtown in favor of parking, …

Check your Wallet….

For a long time, I have found myself wondering about a simple question: how much do we spend every year on our roads and bridges? Is it a lot? Is it not very much? Essentially: are we putting our tax dollars to work in the best way we can when it comes to securing and …

Portland: Can there be a detour ahead?

We are all now well schooled in the notion that Portland, Oregon is the model of current 21st century urbanism in America. Portland, at sunrise. It is a city known for its excellent transportation infrastructure, its many walkable neighborhoods, its tree lined streets, great parks, lovely historic resources, and the liberal and open culture that …

Rat Running, City Streets and the Urban Grid

Here in our city, we live on a street that is a prime conduit for zooming rush-hour traffic attempting to avoid congestion. The phenomenon is called rat running, and we have some pretty fast rats. We yell at the drivers, we write letters to the City, we try to organize our neighbors, but the street …

In Delhi, but not in a car

  While it is true that Prime Minister Modi just dedicated two GIANT expressways in a city where the car is pretty much completely obsolete, it is also true that this last week the Magenta Line on Delhi's Metro Network was opened, with 25 stations. The system is new, clean, well designed, and very heavily …

If Only They Knew….

Indian Prime Minister Modi was busy on Sunday. He dedicated two expressways - the last portion of the Eastern Peripheral - a giant looping expressway that will, eventually, strangle Delhi, and a 14 lane (!!!) segment of the expressway northeast to Meerut. During the dedication he told us that these roads would curb pollution by …

Present City, Future City: India

In the Old City, Ahmedabad. In February and March we spent a month visiting seven cities across India, from south to north, from west to east. Our time there was completely exceptional: invaluable, surprising, educational, revealing, depressing, infuriating, eye-opening and more. I continue to reflect on those days, and it has taken me until now …

ROC the Riverway (really – that’s what they’re calling it)

Ugh. Somehow, we seem incapable of naming any important planning or design initiative anything other than ROC. ROC is the airport code for Rochester. Must we really persist in this ROC title for our restaurants, bars, carpet cleaners, dry cleaners, home inspectors, car repair shops, bagel shops, theaters, barber shops, moving companies?... And urban design …