I just posted my monthly blog post to Planetizen. Here’s part: After the dramatic collapse of the Minneapolis freeway bridge last week, the collective hand-wringing began. The bridge was known to be faulty, but had not been replaced. Our entire public transit system is underfunded, we were told. In addition to transportation infrastructure, those concerned […]
Attrition, Not Displacement
I took a look at some of the research on revitalizing neighborhoods for a recent post on the Urban Land Institute blog The Ground Floor: Is Gentrification a Good Thing?
The Bridges of Rock Creek Park
The unfortunate collapse of the I-35W bridge in Minneapolis, Minnesota last week has put attention on the country’s bridges. Many of the Washington, D.C. bridges are quite old, and well documented in the Library of Congress’ Historic American Engineering Record, available online through the American Memory website. The images here and more are all available […]
Light Rail’s American Moment
Which U.S. city has spent over $400 million to begin construction of an approved transit system of over 50 miles of rail lines? What other city recently kicked off a $6 billion project to build over 100 miles of new commuter and light rail, nearly quadrupling the size of the existing system? Charlotte, North Carolina […]
Understanding the 1960s ‘Civil Disorders’
In the summer of 1967, violence broke out in African American neighborhoods in 164 American cities, including major events in Buffalo, Cincinnati, Detroit, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Newark, Plainfield (N.J.), and Tampa. In April 1968, after the assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., violence was recorded in over 100 cities, including major events in Washington, D.C., […]
The Street Tree Considered
Years before creating his award-winning designs for urban plazas and parks, legendary landscape architect Lawrence Halprin studied trees. Street trees, to be precise. In a meticulously detailed article for an architectural magazine, he sketched the patterns, colors, and shape of their canopies, leaves, and seeds, noting nuisances or special features in loving detail. In a […]
Slums in Cape Town and Beyond
Part 5 of my South Africa series. To begin this week’s final post on South Africa, let’s consider this satellite image of most of metropolitan Cape Town, population roughly 2.9 million. This map depicts an area some 40 miles across. Next, this map of the economic geography of the city from a city planning document […]