Take that asphalt!

Very Clever, I like the use of the white paver for delineating the bike lane. Who says you can't place unit pavers quickly.



Take that asphalt!

Landscape Inspires Architecture

Some Great Architecture on Fogo Island, NF. The landscape never looked so awesome.

Long Studio, http://architecturelab.net/11/fogo-island-studios-by-saunders-architecture/

Fwd: Trains go electric

In Europe, train infrastructure is being adapted to high speed train traffic. Meanwhile here in North America we are still plodding along with an outdated and much slower diesel counterpart. Our tracks are an outdated, a vestage of a bygone era of slow freight traffic. Our rail needs to update or we risk being left behind. I think we know this, but lobby groups (auto/truck/other) have too much power directing our transportation decisions.

Shared Space: mixed-use transportation?

I really like the concept of shared space. Maybe we've dumbed down our streets too much. Delineation creates less organic movement of people, bikes, and cars. I think it's strange that the more we separate uses, the more stagnant we make spaces and interactions. Look at the segregate planning examples. The example below is an intersection in Drachten Germany.

Dundas St.: Toronto to Mississauga

I don't understand why we seek to redefine urban or residential space. We should plan spaces that have succeeded in the past, where people want to live. We can simply look at where the highest property values and community vibrancy? This does not happen at Eglington and East Mall. So why do we still seem to cling to these outdated design principles. Unfortunately planning (and developers) have an antiquated design standard for the past 50 years. These two images show the comparison of older planning as compared to post war planning. Is modern planning beneficial to urban development?

I'm not convinced.

Road traffic in the new Transit City?

Why widen traffic corridors to allow for the proposed 7m LRT ROW? Just adapt the existing road condition.

It seems that Transit City seems to confuse transit construction with the accommodation (or increase) for road capacity. This seems to defeat the purpose of the whole process. Creating a ROW that is 36m wide to accommodate traffic flow with transit does not create a liveable community centre public realm. However, it does follow the suburban model of smooth traffic flow, wide corridors, large turning radius, and bleak spaces.

Unfortunately the new concepts and approaches seem to doom suburban models of built form - to be just that, a relic of a traffic engineered route. If we want to condone the use of transit we should at least think outside our North American concern for car accommodation and create innovative approaches to transit use and construction.

Widening roads is not the answer.

Urban Imprints

Diverse and interesting urban Imprints are derived from combined land forms of prior generations. Post suburban developments will build upon their bland underpinnings.

Bis ans Ende der Welt

I was thinking of a scene from the movie "Until the End of the World". It was a scene in a bar where the leading actress was localizing. The Scene took place in 1999, and the song playing was 'Until the End of the World' by U2. When I first saw the movie (which was in 1991) I thought, funny that song is old in the move, since the song was released in 1991. At that time I wondered how far in the future 1999 was. What mysteries lay ahead. Now that we have flew by the year 1999, I realized how little really the world has change, when we always think it should. I thought that things don't move as fast as we think, yet when looking back the big changes largely go unnoticed at the time. Change is so glacial. I need to view that movie again.