30
Jan

2012

City Builder Book Club Starts Wednesday

We mentioned this earlier, and now it’s really happening.

Creative Urban Projects (CUP) and the Centre for City Ecology (CCE) have teamed up to bring you the City Builder Book Club, an online reading series of books that have shaped our cities. Starting Wednesday, we’ll be reading The Death and Life of Great American Cities by Jane Jacob.

This is how it works. Every week we’ll read 1-2 chapters from the book. Throughout the week the blog will feature posts from CUP and CCE, plus new guest bloggers all along the way. The idea is to experience the book through new perspectives and online discussions.

This first week will cover the Introduction and Chapter 1 of the book. A full schedule is available here.

You can also join the mailing list at citybuilderbookclub.org to receive a summary of posts at the end of each week.



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08
Feb

2012

A Cable Car for Chicago

A Chicago lakefront gondola would connect many of the city's lakefront attractions while giving riders a great view of the skyline, Lake Michigan, and the parks below.

The idea for the Chicago Lakefront Gondola came from an article in the Chicago Tribune about various design ideas for Navy Pier. (It was posted on the Gondola Project just last week, here).

**In case you missed it, the post discussed a gondola proposal for Navy Pier, which was an element of the Navy Pier Redesign project presented by Aedas Architecture / Davis Brody Bond / Martha Schwartz Partners. Here is an image of their pier rendering, gondola (the Pier Pod) included.

Of course, as a Chicago native and total gondola nerd, I took this news to heart and quickly started imagining what a Navy Pier gondola would entail. The article described a design that would run all the way to Michigan Avenue, presumably along the Chicago River, and I thought cool — a connection, along the water, to a super touristy spot in the city. Makes sense.

Read more



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09
Feb

2012

Where do you put the towers?

On this blog there’s a lot of talk about cable as a flexible and adaptable technology for urban transit. CPT can travel above roads and traffic, go through buildings, and cross rivers and gorges. But for all that to work there needs to be space for towers and stations, too.

So what happens when a city’s simply got no space?

They deal.

Take New York City, for example. The Roosevelt Island Tram’s been dealing with this problem for 35 years by building a tower right over a road. Of course they did, because the system has three towers, two of which are located in Manhattan, the most densely populated New York City borough and the country’s densest county.

The Roosevelt Tram tower sits right on top of 60th St. -- CC image by Flickr user David Berkowitz.

Then there’s a system in Romania, where the city of Piatra Neamt built a cable car system, of which an entire kilometer traverses the city — towers and all.

To do this they built a tower in a road median . . .

Image courtesy of Doppelmayr.

. . . one over a parking lot . . .

Image courtesy of Doppelmayr.

. . . and even one on top of a sidewalk, so as not to obstruct pedestrian traffic underneath.

Image courtesy of Doppelmayr.

Now, we’re not saying this is the best way to go about designing towers. Remember, there are practical designs and then there are pretty designs.

London and Portland have the aesthetics down pat. Both cities dedicated a lot of thought and effort (not to mention a few dollars) to create stunning architectural towers, and in return have (or will soon have) practical works of art, so to speak.

But the adaptability seen in New York and Piatra Neamt should not go unnoticed either. As drab and industrial as the tower designs are, they represent a collaboration that can exist between municipalities and transit planning when both parties add a bit of imagination and ingenuity to the mix.

The important question here is how to blend the practicality of New York and Piatra Neamt with the beauty of London and Portland. That’s the challenge and the opportunity.



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Design Considerations / Infrastructure / London Cable Car / Portland Aerial Tram / Roosevelt Island Tram
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20
Feb

2012

Classic Infographics

If you’re like me, you may sometimes feel that we all are drowning in a world of infogaphics  — they’re on the web, in the news, and even on the gondola project. We use them because they’re a great way to display a lot of information in a visual and fun way. It’s the new big thing, right?

Nope. Infographics have been around for decades. For example, this collection of pro-transit posters were created by Transport London during the 1920s and 30s.

London Transport Museum

The vintage graphics are both timely and offer an interesting comparison between then and now. While we might not compare horse-drawn vehicles with public transit speeds in 2012, the designs show how much of our thinking has not changed in nearly 100 years — still looking at speeds, comfort, and material used.

London Transport Museum

My favourite part about the poster above is that it is straight forward. The buggy goes this fast, the train goes this much faster. Today with so many technologies there are also so many options, and so many more arguments and statistics. Cities are full of congestion (which slows cars, but not subways) and opinions run rampant. We’ve already had the discussion over maximum vs operational speeds ensue, twice even. 1923 just seems like a simpler time.

London Transport Museum

Currently these posters, and many more are on display at the London Transport Museum. The show is on through most of March. It looks like also on display are renderings of the London Cable Car, which is now, maybe, set to open in time for the Olympics.



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21
Feb

2012

World’s Largest Rope Swing

What do you get when you combine a group of friends, a few ropes, some carabiners, a video camera …

and a giant rock arch?

Moab, Utah

 

Fun times in Utah!



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Just For Fun
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15
Mar

2012

This is your city …

on cars:

 

and this is your city on bikes and public transit:

Cars — driver-assisted or not — are constantly evolving. I suppose designers figure that if you’re going to be stuck in your car in traffic, you might as well be comfortable.

Still, in light of all of this technological innovation, many people are turning their attention away from the car and finding new ways to plan cities. The Complete Street movement is all about slowing down cars, increasing pedestrian and bike traffic, and building richer sidewalk culture. At the same time, car-free zones are gaining popularity in many urban areas.

Labels aside, it’s still amazing to see the comparison between car traffic and bicycle traffic — both from a commuting point of view and from a neighborhood perspective. Changing the way people get around doesn’t mean there won’t be “traffic” (the video above certainly demonstrates that) but it does mean that the traffic is different. Instead of interacting from inside of a machine, people interact with people. And this changes everything.

The city as experienced from inside a car is safe, isolated, and filtered. Honking the horn, shouting, and flipping the bird are almost anonymous actions because the car lets you feel removed from the situation. But on the outside these actions do have consequences. Biking and walking allow you to participate in your surroundings, and when you do so, you are invested in them, too.

While cars separate people, bikes and public transit are communal. For me the complete change in atmosphere surrounding these two scenarios is the defining difference — can it be that “your city on bikes and public transit” just feels better?



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26
Mar

2012

Sounds of the Subway

The video “Bending Sounds” by Tim Sessler wonderfully captures the sites and sounds of the NYC subway. As the camera slowly meanders through the stations, people rush by, jumping on and off train cars, in and out of turn styles, and along subterranean corridors. The sounds of chatter and footsteps, and the rumble of the subway fade in and out as the camera approaches a number of subway musicians, each with their own sound, style, and charisma.

While the camera moves smoothly through the crowds, slowly, it inevitably passes by each musician, just as everyone around them does, so that each sound fades out just as quickly as it began.

 

BENDING SOUNDS – NYC SUBWAY from Tim Sessler on Vimeo.



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Subway
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