A daily miasma of frivolity by two wanna-be cultural critics. Or: just, like, some good links, dude.

Tag Archives: urban planning

Mar 20 2012
Mark Twain, probably

“That’s one of the things about freeways: They tend to fail when you need them the most”

“That’s one of the things about freeways: They tend to fail when you need them the most”

Fantastic interview with John Norquist in Next American City about how freeways hurt cities and what can be done to improve the situation. I’ve been saying this same stuff for years. Probably my favorite bit, naturally about San Francisco:

A robust street grid, with lots of connections, will distribute traffic much better than a few large freeways. […] For example, when the Embarcadero Freeway, a double-deck freeway, was torn down, a majority of the trips—according to a study by the city of San Francisco—got shorter and faster because of the increased connectivity. With the freeway, there were a lot of trips where you overshot your destination and had to come back. It also attracted trips that didn’t add any value to the neighborhood: People going from Oakland to Marin County were cutting through San Francisco. When the freeway was torn down and replaced by a boulevard, it suddenly didn’t look so attractive to go that way, and [drivers] found a different way to get to Marin Country or, in some cases, didn’t make the trip.

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Apr 02 2011
Mark Twain, probably

200th Birthday for the Map That Made New York

200th Birthday for the Map That Made New York

Sam Roberts of The New York Times, writing about the grid plan of Manhattan’s streets on the 200th anniversary of its publication:

The grid was the great leveler. By shifting millions of cubic yards of earth and rock, it carved out modest but equal flat lots (mostly 25 by 100 feet) available for purchase. And if it fostered what de Tocqueville viewed as relentless monotony, its coordinates also enabled drivers and pedestrians to figure out where they stood, physically and metaphorically.

It’s a fascinating story of how a rectangular grid was imposed on the island: houses and property were seized and destroyed when they didn’t fit neatly in the master plan, and the topography of the island itself was leveled by flattening hills and filling in swamps.

Dr. Rose-Redwood calculated that in 1811, of the 1,865 buildings north of Houston Street, 721 stood on newly mapped streets and had to be either razed or moved. As executed, natural topography was ignored (stranding some houses on bluffs). Driving streets through private property sparked not-in-my-backyard revolts. Owners were compensated, though tax assessments also rose on properties bordering the new streets. Clement Clarke Moore, before making a fortune parceling out his Chelsea property and claiming authorship of “A Visit From St. Nicholas,” characterized the commissioners as “men who would have cut down the seven hills of Rome.”

I love that quote at the end.

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