cities + maps + data + information + design
But then once I saw this I thought ‘hey, that kind of fits the mood, doesn’t it?’ So I just kept stripping it down, taking everything off. The ferries weren’t going, why should they be there? The parks were closed, remember? So why should the parks be there? So I just took out everything that wasn’t actually happening and ended up with this.
— Chuck Gordanier on stripping back the subway map post-Sandy (via thisbigcity)
TrafficCom ! Get involved in transport planning and data gathering for your city!
Andrés Duany makes a good case for considering density at the scale of the neighborhood rather than the individual building. He states that the types listed above, in the context of a neighborhood reflecting the average United States market for need and choice results in roughly thirds: or one acre of apartments per two acres of townhouses per four acres of single family houses. This delivers a net density of 10 units per acre for a complete neighborhood. Next time you’re faced with a frightened crowd of density opponents, try turning the conversation to types of buildings, and allow that discussion to evolve into addressing the neighborhood as a whole, rather than simply a sum of its individual parcels.
— –Susan Henderson
Planning cannot eliminate slums. As long as there is large-scale deprivation, as long as our rulers, our media and our urban middle class believe that proletarianization is better than being a farmer, artisan or a tribal, there will be sizeable number of people who will be made available for blue-collar work in our cities. Such people will like to stay close to their places of work.
— Ashis Nandy, http://www.sacw.net/article1389.html
El socialismo* puede llegar solo en bicicleta,
— José Antonio Viera-Gallo
In some ways, cities need to ‘make the road by walking’ by involving people and understanding how they interact with the city, instead of building the roads to be walked on. Planners and policymakers must also involve citizens as stakeholders and design for urban usability, particularly groups that have not had a strong voice - artists, immigrants, youth and the elderly.
The secrets of the letters are in the numbers, and the epiphanies of
the numbers are in the letters. The numbers are the realities of above,
belonging to the spiritual entities. The letters belong to the circle of
the material realities and to the becoming.
— Aḥmad al-Būnī (d. 1225)
The inferno of the living is not something that will be; if there is one, it is what is already here, the inferno where we live every day, that we form by being together. There are two ways to escape suffering it. The first is easy for many: accept the inferno and become such a part of it that you can no longer see it. The second is risky and demands constant vigilance and apprehension: seek and learn to recognize who and what, in the midst of inferno, are not inferno, then make them endure, give them space.
— ― Italo Calvino, Invisible Cities
What did I want to / enjoy doing at each st(age) of my life:
Age 4: drawing, coloring and sewing in school (with one non sharp needle).
Age 6: drawing and painting
Age 8: drawing and painting + recording songs off the radio + TV onto a tape
Age 10: making mix tapes and covers and collecting / reading books
Age 13: making mix tapes, covers and collage / posters
Age 15: making mix cds, collecting CDs, painting on walls
Age 17: drawing / painting / making recycled jewellery
Age 21: drawing / painting on canvas
Age 24: designing / drawing / video / photo
Age 27: drawing / sewing / taping
Apparently time is cyclic.
and this goes for the occupations and protests in New York and Moscow. Performed / enactment of what could and should be but really isn’t. But is temporarily.
