urbanism

/urbanism254

A place to talk about urban design, transit, and all things cities

Free design resource created from public infrastructure :)

https://www.dayroselane.com/hydrants
Good urbanism is freedom
“Upload an aerial or satellite photo from your city - an intersection or neighbourhood - and start mapping how much space is allocated to cars, pedestrians and bikes.”

https://cyklokoalicia.sk/arrogance/
New York forced restaurants to remove outdoor dining structures to allow for more parking – so L’Industrie added a bus for patrons to eat pizza in 😎

https://www.reddit.com/r/MicromobilityNYC/s/qYCyzwWaRN
“Buildings, infrastructures and other urban technologies may be enablers of cities, but they are not the point of cities. The ‘smart city’ movement has repeatedly misunderstood this, by focusing on simplistic instruments rather than emergent complexity, operational efficiency rather than thriving cultures, control rather than conviviality.

As Brian Eno wrote, a truly smart city would be built around the intelligence, creativity and resourcefulness of its inhabitants, human and otherwise. This city is expressed via its culture, its interactions, its relationships. And adaptive urban technologies can powerfully tune systems to produce such diverse, open, and adaptable cultures—or they can inhibit them, producing the opposite.”

https://dialogue.city/futureurbanism/
“An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.”
All I can think about while traveling around Bangkok is how much happier America would be with affordable massage, massive investment in public transit (not just for city centers), and fewer corporate owned third spaces.
“Park power is like mutual aid in the following ways:

Park power is a collective effort.
Park power is an unconditional gift.
Park power is informal.
Park power creates channels for people to share resources.
Park power is open to everyone.
Park power builds solidarity.
Park power assumes that everyone has something to offer and everyone has needs that others might be able to meet.”

Thanks @jamesmac.eth for showing this to me🫶🏼

https://leaflet.pub/74734477-0aa2-4f53-b9ff-7eb7787673c4
Emergent urbanism / informality
Love you Maggie but you’re upsetting the urbanist girlies with this metaphor
The only parking minimums I support are for bike parking
“In 2002, a diverse group of over 80 individuals … came together to form the ‘Tokyo Picnic Club’ with the goal of reclaiming city space for people instead of cars… they left a resounding message for communities everywhere to gather spontaneously in city spaces that rightfully belong to us.

Streets are much more than spaces for cars— streets are civic commons. Where there is absence, we can bring presence; where curbs are dull and void of meaningful interaction, we can bring our livliness and intentionality.”

Sharing my piece“Right to Picnic,” originally published in print for Harapeko Magazine last year.

https://paragraph.xyz/@miawintam.eth/right-to-picnic
Last night, the city paved over the wonderful bedstuy aquarium and I’m devastated. This was such a wonderful, grassroots source of community joy.

https://x.com/maxrivlinnadler/status/1849808799047000365?s=46
Urban hacking—the intentional misuse of urban space—seems to be a likely source of such “fragmentary versions of the future”, but also of adaptation strategies for inhabiting spaces unfit for the coming era, especially since the state and large companies are reluctant to introduce contrarian usage patterns, because these would go against both their interests, and the happy fairytale spectacle that keeps the future in their hands.

This nexus—existent in the practice of effective urban hacking—between the exciting creation of fragments of the future and more pragmatic adaptation strategies may be the key to prototyping today, under the cover of leisure and excitement, generalizable strategies that make future inhabitation of retrograde urbanism possible.

http://ericwycoffrogers.com/writings/2015/9/16/a-theory-of-urban-hacking
Dug up this photo I took two winters ago

It’s the best way to show how much road space we actually need!
Future bike lane??? Btw it’s notoriously hard to find parking in this neighbourhood. Developers raze down single family houses, build 4 story apartments without it garage. Beach nearby. Restaurants & bars. It’s a mess Friday and Saturday.
More thoughts from a rare car trip in the city:

- blocking the box needs to be enforced
- parked cars are an egregious waste of street space (especially when it’s free!)
- most cars are way too big, we’d be better off if 90% were just golf carts
After scrapping congestion pricing and bringing the national guard into the subway stations 🤡

https://nysfocus.com/2024/09/24/route17-highway-expansion-hochul