A Century Later, the Expensive Lesson of Reversing the Chicago River
https://www.citylab.com/equity/2014/01/century-later-expensive-lesson-reversing-chicago-river/8069/ [www.citylab.com]
2020-07-12 06:41
tags:
history
transport
urban
Way back in 1673, the French Canadian explorer Louis Jolliet noticed that the land around present-day Chicago had “a very great and important advantage, which perhaps will hardly be believed.” The area, he foresaw, could become the great node of a huge continent, with the Great Lakes on one side and, just a few miles to the southwest, the Illinois River and the entire Mississippi Basin. Jolliet envisioned, rather hopefully, that connecting the two — and creating a water route from Lake Erie all the way to the Gulf of Mexico – would be as simple as building a canal through just “half a league of prairie.”
The Commuting Principle That Shaped Urban History
https://www.citylab.com/transportation/2019/08/commute-time-city-size-transportation-urban-planning-history/597055/ [www.citylab.com]
2019-09-05 21:07
tags:
article
history
maps
transport
urban
In 1994, Cesare Marchetti, an Italian physicist, described an idea that has come to be known as the Marchetti Constant. In general, he declared, people have always been willing to commute for about a half-hour, one way, from their homes each day. This principle has profound implications for urban life. The value of land is governed by its accessibility—which is to say, by the reasonable speed of transport to reach it.
But the endurance of the Marchetti Constant has profound implications for urban life. It means that the average speed of our transportation technologies does more than anything to shape the physical structure of our cities. To see how, let’s travel back in time by more than 2,000 years, and move towards the present.
source: K
What Internet Memes Get Wrong About Breezewood, Pennsylvania
https://www.citylab.com/design/2019/07/breezewood-meme-pennsylvania-turnpike-i-70-rest-stop-photos/594559/ [www.citylab.com]
2019-07-25 19:29
tags:
cars
factcheck
hoipolloi
social
urban
However, the idea that the photo is placeless is, to be blunt, nonsense. As others have pointed out before me, the setting is instantly recognizable as Breezewood and only Breezewood. Far from being “Every Town, U.S.A.,” Breezewood is a weird, improbable blip of a place. It’s what an architect might call a unique urban condition—a churning mini-city where the population nearly turns over every hour. (For this reason, and for the place’s sheer, unembarrassed honky-tonk, I’m a Breezewood fan.)
source: HN
Visit a Crumbling, Soviet-Era Floating 'Oil City'
https://www.citylab.com/design/2014/02/visit-soviet-era-oil-city-floating-caspian-sea/8512/ [www.citylab.com]
2019-07-05 18:28
tags:
energy
urban
Sail out into the western Caspian Sea and you’ll soon encounter an incredible sight: spires of steel rising from the waves, connected with miles of decrepit pipes and wooden bridges. This is Neft Dashlari, an inhabited, Soviet-era structure that’s said to be the “largest and oldest offshore oil city in the world.” It remains a productive source of petroleum to this day, as well as a token of interest to esoteric-architecture fans or parents wanting to punish bad children with the worst theme-park vacation ever.
San Francisco Is So Expensive Even Renters Can Be NIMBYs
http://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/02/renters-in-expensive-cities-are-all-about-nimbyism/516021/ [www.citylab.com]
2017-02-13 19:41
tags:
finance
hoipolloi
paper
policy
urban
Conventional wisdom might suggest that renters are immune to the temptations of NIMBYism, simply because they stand to gain from lower housing prices and an increase in affordable units. But that doesn’t stop them from joining the obstructionist bandwagon in expensive cities
source: MR