Friday Favorites: Point Richmond, California.

Walk Eagle Rock (photos, blog) sends in this lovely little path that also happens to be a two-way street. Yes, drivers, taking turns is a perfectly reasonable way of traveling!

friday favorites: "the angels" by givot

Happy Friday, everyone. Have a magical weekend.

julie kim's hammock coffee table in the city

Local furniture-maker and space designer Julie Kim put her newly-designed hammock coffee table at a bus stop on the corner of 6th + Vermont in K-Town, just to see what would happen.

Okay, not a whole lot happens, but the concept is a really good one: let's make bus stops, I don't know...nicer? So more people will actually want to ride the bus, and all that good critical mass stuff? I would love to see more experiments of urban guerrilla beautification like this!

Las Vegas Strip (II)

Another view of the Vegas Strip, including Treasure Island, the Palazzo, the Wynn & Encore, and the Stratosphere off in the distance, with the street squeezed down to just one lane. See it narrowed!

friday favorites: asheville, north carolina

A discussion about skewed intersections on Streetsblog's Google Group led to alternate intersection designs, which led me to this very postiive FAQ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety about roundabouts: those momentary shifts from cartesian to polar (and back) that people seem to be so afraid of, but actually are safer for everyone—and all at a drastically reduced maintenance cost, too! My favorite is this before-and-after conversion in Asheville. I took a Segway tour that crossed this lovely part of downtown. See it rotarized!

friday favorites: washington street, norwalk, connecticut

Finally, finally getting around to sharing this great post by Charlie Gardner at Old Urbanist with some nicely articulated thoughts (as well as resource links) about the value of narrow streets. He even squeezed down the street above to illustrate his point, drawing inspiration from Nieuwendijk in Amsterdam and...me!

Be sure to check out the lively debate that ensues in the comments (are cities just shopping malls?) as well as the rest of his blog. See it narrowed!

Las Vegas Strip (I)

I followed my wife to a work junket in Las Vegas recently (where randomly enough, Ben Mezrich spoke and later ate steak at my dinner table), and I took a break to wander up and down the city's famous Strip. Architects and brainy types love Vegas because of the purity of its simulacra, its uber-meta-ness. I kinda agree. Vegas is so proudly...artificial. No one goes to Las Vegas because of anything inherent to its geography, besides maybe the hot weather. Las Vegas might as well exist at the bottom of the sea next to Rapture—as long as you could still fly there from LA in less than an hour, I doubt anyone would care. People go to Vegas because it's Vegas, and there's no place else like it.

That's why I've always been confused by the mind-boggling width of the Strip itself, which at around ten lanes seems to be stubbornly preoccupied with almighty transport as its main function—on paper. It's as if the city planners are still in denial about what the Strip really is: a huge adult amusement park and pedestrian haven for tourists from all over the world, all strolling up and down nursing their yard-long margaritas dangling from souvenir lanyards. Amusement parks don't have freeways running through them. So why not make the Strip feel more like the Disneyland of Sin that it is? See it narrowed!

NS:LA in MAS Context architectural journal

Got a lovely package in the mail last week: the latest issue of MAS Context, the architectural & urban design journal created by Iker Gil and co. at MAS Studio architects in Chicago, Illinois! This issue is entitled "PUBLIC."



In addition to my NS:LA spreads, this issue is chock-full of really great, thought-provoking material about how public spaces can represent so many possibilities to local communities. Really awesome stuff. One of my favorites has to be this gorgeous photo essay on Shanghai's older, more multi-functional streets, where village activities spill out onto thoroughfares. I had the pleasure of witnessing scenes like this when I was traveling there back in college:



The issue available to read online, but do yourself a favor and order a printed copy of the real deal to get the full effect. It's a bundle of inspiration you'll want to keep nearby for spontaneous reference.

Order MAS Context: PUBLIC on Lulu

the geography of somewhere group exhibit in echo park: pix!

Those are my prints (on the left) from the Geography of Somewhere exhibit back in July 2010. More on my photostream.