Sidewalk Media

Sidewalk media. In places like NY where most people walk, the form of media changes from the now typical American format of billboards to newspapers stands and phone booth structures. The traffic is on the sidewalks as well as the streets. Any attempt at locating media for attention is grabbed. The antiquated phone booth has evolved into simply a profitable sidewalk billboard.

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/17/nyregion/17phones.html
The above article describes how the phone booths are profitable not in their use as a public phone but as a billboard for advertising. In a world of cellphones, the need for phone booths are small.

The location of such advertising is restricted to free standing units, not those next to a building. But what is the sidewalks use for advertising? What is the history of street scape as a commercial act and how does this evolve in the age of personal digital communications?

What is the future of media and the street? Who will have access and who won't. Is it a matter of public agency?

When All Roads Lead to...

China. The ever expanding empire, makes quiet news as it completes its latest expansion by completing a multi-national highway that will take trucks, buses, drivers and development from China to Bangkok, via Laos....pretty much connecting SE Asia.

As economics are sure to be expanded, there are countless other factors as stake. Culture and Tourism, of course, but what of immigration and smuggling? Environmental issues as well, new roads = new access. And what models does this new route follow? What regional, economical, environmental issues does the infrastructure take into account? or what can it take into account, form, shape, materials? access, blockage?

Sources:
(photos) NY Times, March 3, 2008
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/31/world/asia/31laos.html?scp=3&sq=new+road+laos+china&st=nyt
Harald Tribune:
http://www.iht.com/articles/2008/03/30/asia/road.php
Phronesisaical Blog
http://phronesisaical.blogspot.com/2008/03/route-3-through-cambodia-china-laos.html
Voa Com
http://www.voanews.com/lao/archive/2008-03/2008-03-09-voa3.cfm
Taipei Times
http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2008/04/01/2003407908
Xinhua News
http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2008-03/31/content_7892681.htm

Station Infrastructure

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, as of 2002, there were 117,100 gas service stations in the U.S., of which 84,700 had convenience stores. That is just a bit lower than the number of grocery stores in the US (169,414 - http://www.manta.com/mb_34_B619B_000/grocery_stores).

As we enter peak oil, and the already decreasing use of automobiles (In March, Americans drove 11 billion fewer miles on public roads than in the same month the previous year, a 4.3 percent decrease — the sharpest one-month drop since the Federal Highway Administration began keeping records in 1942. from NYC see April 24th blog post below). What will become of our gas stations? Or what is the new infrastructure of energy going to look like, or how could it utilized the existing grid of our antiquated service stations? Hydrogen, solar....electric?

Outside of depots for transportation, how can this matrix of "energy centers" provide human energy? Growing stations? Water stations? fruit and vegetables? greenhouses?

Convenience stores for calories and not CO2!

What if?

What if bridges worked water instead of just only spanning over it?

Olafur Eliasson’s Waterfall installation, NYC
image from New York Times (25 June 2008): http://www.nytimes.com/slideshow/2008/06/24/arts/0625-WATERFALL_5.html

End of Suburbia or We Need More Real Towns

In a NY Times article recently they explain the recent decrease in suburban house prices and the increase in energy as indicators for a new urban renaissance and the demise of suburbia. While some see this only as a blip on the energy and real estate bubbles, its an exciting time to rethink not only where we live but what suburbia can do for us.

The article, Rethinking Country Life as Energy Cost Rise, includes interviews from both sides of the fence: the rural forever's and the urban interested. They all remark about the loss of privacy, safety and the ideal of their children able to "run outside barefoot".

But if we are to really "rethink" suburbia it doesn't mean we have to all move to the urban centers. A new vision of what suburbia can be is necessary. One that rethinks density, proximity to commercial conveniences, public transportation and the access to local employment. Why can't suburbia become the new enclaves of community?

Photo and article from NY Times article: Rethinking Country Life as Energy Cost Rise (June 25, 2008 by Peter S. Goodman.

Additional readings:
Volume 9: Suburbia After the Crash by R. Koolhaas, O. Bouman, M. Wigley
Suburban Transformations by Paul Lukez

Tierra Firma

This caught my attention while walking in New York. There is something about seeing earth in the city that catches your attention (with or without the orange cones). Its almost like one assumes that while living upon the concrete surface of the urban grid, that its just one solid island of concrete. That there is no earth, except in strategic "park" spaces, where its formed, worked...manicured.

But what would the urban grid become if "earth" were to be exposed? What infrastructures of the city could be reinvigorated, reintroduced? Its properties: absorb water runoff, sound absorption, sustaining plant life...human life...

Unparking

Car parked on side of street. Such a common scene that its hard to image any other scenario. Programmatically, the car is waiting, sitting - perhaps even idling. On one hand it provides a buffer for the traffic along with street with the pedestrians along the sidewalk. But how can the temporarily abandoned vehicle participate within the urban condition? Power gathering? Information? Public offerings?

Scales of car to sidewalk, street to person have become sadly distorted due to the automobile. What does the scale of the occupant bring back to the city? What does it take away from the automobile? What aspect of urban living is enhanced when the automoble is considered a public asset?

Below is a "speed table." Or should it be a "pedestrian table"

With the Water

In the lately is the flooding of the Mississippi in Iowa, now Missouri. These 500 or 100 year floods come more frequently now and begs the question, not "is our infrastructure big, strong and good enough?"....but is our infrastructure not resilient enough? When dealing with mother nature the only person we have to blame is ourselves. Pushing back the waters, preventing the waters from entering and steering the waters at our own whim, is outdated and as shown as recently in 1993 and now in 2008, a failure.

How can our cities and towns along major water bodies (especially inland rivers) reflect urbanistically that they are actually on a river? Current typologies (urban, planning, architecture) of river towns are just like any Midwestern town. How can topography of town allow the influx of water? How can the architecture of river towns accept the water (floating, stilts, anchored)? How can bridges serve more than just transport infrastructure?

(Image from www.boston.com/news/nation/articles/2008/06/1...)

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/20/us/20flood.html?hp

Papal Protection

If you look closely down the street, you will see the two dump trucks lined up strategically to block vehicular access down Lexington (or was it Madison?). Its pope visit day, and the city, police, state and some of those federal dudes have come together to weave a line of security thru mid-town Manhattan. The width of streets, lined with stone, steel and brick buildings are fenced off by large white dump trucks. Any attempted car bomb heading toward the pope-mobile's path would be prevented. How does the width of our urban corridors signify security? How can the urban form breach security? We are familiar with technological gadgets (cameras, heat, radio-active sensors) placed within the city for "security". But how can the initial planning phases of a city implement, reinforce or even detract from overt security? How does this enforce or detract from public-ness, free speech or demonstration? Same-same but different from the overt use of the use of space to express power/security (Mao/Tienanmen Square, Hitler/Nuremberg, Haussmann+Nepoleon III/Paris).

Scaffolds

Ever the remodeling city, a NYC block is not complete with at least one building sheathed in scaffolding. The need arises due to aging brick buildings. They could serve multiple purposes. What if they weren't temporary? Especially at the sidewalk, the scaffolding covering protects pedestrians from falling construction debris, but also fend off the summer sun and rain outbursts. It reminds me of European covered walkways, Spanish portals, the gallery. What is the modern equivalent? How does it serve the pedestrian, as well as the building inhabitant, the motorists, the bus rider? Environmentally, how can scaffolds address water, plantings, energy? and socially? with protected space, second tier sidewalks?

in memory of fresh breath

Why do people discard their gum near the front door?
While living in NYC it's hard not to notice the constellations of darken gum blots on sidewalks. By looking closely one can begin to understand that the concentration of gum patches occurs near the edges of buildings and the door entrances.

Do people find the edge of buildings more comfortable to throw their gum at? Or are the standing there and drop it? What about at the front doors, do bad breath weary folks discard old gum in coming or going? Is this a new age of urban gum trays since the demise of the ashtray?

city unscaled

We are humans moving in a world less and less designed for the individual and even less so for the community. City Unscaled will first and foremost be used as an urban lens, to see the urban condition and to question it.

It is as simple as that.

Graduating out of the Architecture and Urban Design Master's program at Columbia University, the risk of loosing the momentum has sparked me to enlist the duty of a daily/weekly blog. No topic is avoided, no scale ignored. People, culture, community, economics, art, lifestyle, transportation, infrastructure, energy, public and private space. ALL THINGS URBAN