Having recently relocated myself to the wonderful and overwhelmingly abundant new york city, I conceived this as a fun project to familiarize myself with this perpetually foreign land (in particular those issues revolving around my current professional and personal areas of interest, namely: urban planning, energy planning, cartography, and architecture)
05 Jun 09

Green Everything

Either I’ve woken up in a parallel universe where corporate social responsibility and an environmental ethos have been wholeheartedly and authentically embraced by monolithic corporate entities of every ilk OR this whole green thing has gotten out of control. Considering how often I seem to wake up in parallel universes, I’m not discounting the first possibility, but seriously, a LEED certified McDonalds? Really? According to the initial coverage when this was announced in 2007 “the restaurant also boasts bike racks, preferred parking for hybrid vehicles, porous pavement and a white roof.” I don’t know too many Prius driving cyclists who frequent their local McDonalds franchises, but again, I’m new to this universe, so I’m a little unfamiliar with its customs. Perhaps this is the same customer who sips lates at the McCafes they’ve been opening?

McDonalds isn’t the only frequently vilified corporate entity to venture a foray into green architecture: Walmart is opening green stores (McKinney) and doing green retrofits (Chicago). Is this a useful political expedient in order to win council approvals? They tried this in Vancouver (to no avail). Are there multiple, conflicting corporate cultures within these entities with different priorities and ideas? How else to explain the fact that while building green walmarts, walmart has fought city councils on green zoning regulations?

Perhaps in this reality, this april fools article ‘Walmart, McCain forge new alliance to fight sprawl’ could actually be true?
http://sustainablecitiescollective.com/Home/15455

20 May 09
A nation must ravish itself before foreigners can ravish it.
— Japanese Proverb
23 Apr 09
NYC Suggestion Box.  A rather cute attempt to solicit the view of New Yorkers, found dangling from a railing at Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope.  Supposedly there a few of these hidden around the city, prompting the wittier (or more cynical) of us to slide in pieces of paper with “More of Everything” written on them. I’ll be curious to see what those who conceived this project do with the responses.  Hopefully something equally whimsical.

NYC Suggestion Box.  A rather cute attempt to solicit the view of New Yorkers, found dangling from a railing at Gorilla Coffee in Park Slope.  Supposedly there a few of these hidden around the city, prompting the wittier (or more cynical) of us to slide in pieces of paper with “More of Everything” written on them.

I’ll be curious to see what those who conceived this project do with the responses.  Hopefully something equally whimsical.


20 Apr 09
Assume discontinuity in our affairs,… and you threaten the authority of the holders of knowledge, of those in charge, of those in power.
— Charles Handy, The Age of Unreason
20 Apr 09
If ever there were reason to doubt the tired metaphors charging that our tallest buildings are but symbolic phalluses (phalli?), renderings of the latest green and desperately modern skyscrapers should be ample enough testament to the truth of the adage. Moreover, I can’t help the observation that the proposals seem to be mirroring ‘innovations’ in the sexual aid industry. Exhibit A: OMA’s proposed residential tower, ostensibly a parasitic inversion of the typical stepped skyscraper design (jutting out from an existing plinth), resembles nothing so much as this (NSFW). Evoking these pleasure devices is not unique to the often avant guard OMA. Dubai’s gimmicky twister tower even rotates for our pleasure. Bemoaning the ‘gherkin’ as penile is too obvious perhaps. Regardless, there seems to be something afoot. This calls for some serious pop-psychologizing on the latent homosexuality of environmental architecture. Or not.

If ever there were reason to doubt the tired metaphors charging that our tallest buildings are but symbolic phalluses (phalli?), renderings of the latest green and desperately modern skyscrapers should be ample enough testament to the truth of the adage. Moreover, I can’t help the observation that the proposals seem to be mirroring ‘innovations’ in the sexual aid industry. Exhibit A: OMA’s proposed residential tower, ostensibly a parasitic inversion of the typical stepped skyscraper design (jutting out from an existing plinth), resembles nothing so much as this (NSFW).
Evoking these pleasure devices is not unique to the often avant guard OMA. Dubai’s gimmicky twister tower even rotates for our pleasure. Bemoaning the ‘gherkin’ as penile is too obvious perhaps. Regardless, there seems to be something afoot. This calls for some serious pop-psychologizing on the latent homosexuality of environmental architecture. Or not.


02 Apr 09

Modalities of the New Middle Class

I came across an article of David Ley’s, an urban geographer at the University of British Columbia, where he tests the assumption that newly gentrified neighborhoods should experience a shift in transporation modes. The idea is that gentrifiers (educated lefties that they are) should theoretically be more likely to travel by bicycle. He finds that this is definitely the case in Vancouver, Toronto and Montreal, the three cities he looks at in his analysis (though, interestingly, the use of public transportation is lower in these gentrifying districts).
I find his results particularly interested in light of recent conversations I’ve been having on neighborhood transition, gentrification, and ‘hipsters’. Wanting to examine the role of hipsters in urban spaces in more detail, I was thinking about variables that could be used to approximate where hipsters live and have lived. Bicycle ridership may be the closest thing there’s good data on. Ticket sales data and hair salon locations were other suggestions.

28 Mar 09

Montreal: a city of logic?

“This is a city of bikes, a city of the arts, a city of history, a city of festivals. But most of all, it’s a city of logic.”

Montreal is as logical as it is beautiful

Maybe any Canadian city looks sensible compared with Atlanta, Georgia, where urban planning has maybe taken a back seat to the wishes of automobile commuters and strong private property rights, but any Atlantian travel writer arguing Montreal is a city of ‘logic’ because of its poutine, drum circles and arts culture, has clearly missed the mark. Any of a million other adjectives could more accurately describe this place.