Since many of you enjoyed the tilt-shift photo a couple days ago of city hall, I thought I would pass along this tilt-shift video of New York. This stuff is really pretty amazing. If the video up top doesn’t work, click here. Hat tip Gothamist.
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Archive for the Urbanism Category
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Category Archives: Urbanism
Below are listed the articles filed under Urbanism
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Metropolis: Imagining Urban Growth In A Paper Thin World
Here’s another intriguing video titled Metropolis tracing the real and imagined development of Charlotte, NC by Rob Carter currently showing at a museum in New York. Here’s a little background from the author:
“Made entirely from images printed on paper, the animation literally represents this sped up urban planners dream, but suggests the frailty of that dream, however concrete it may feel on the ground today. Ultimately the video continues the city development into an imagined hubristic future, of more and more skyscrapers and sports arenas and into a bleak environmental future… this is less a warning, as much as a statement of our paper thin significance no matter how many monuments of steel, glass and concrete we build.”
If the video up top doesn’t work, click here. Hat tip It’s Nice That.
Posted in: Urbanism
Looking at Rooftops: Paris & Tokyo
Two very cool videos of two very different cities. Above is a video of Paris rooftops (click here if video doesn’t load) and after the click is a time lapse aerial view of Tokyo. Hat tip to Digital Urban.
Just How Aware Are You?
I like to think I am pretty observant when I am out walking through the city, but I totally failed the “Awareness Test” video up above. How did you do? Transport for London recently put these video advertisements out to draw attention to the “invisible cyclist” and experiments such as this show how easy it is to miss small details – like a cyclist. More Awareness Tests available here. (Hat tip to Open Culture)
My interest in this idea of awareness was piqued last year when I saw an article & video at Boing Boing (video after the click) describing a Harvard study on “Change Blindness” that demonstrated a shocking 75% of respondents didn’t notice a major change right in front of them. You’ll just have to watch the video.
Both examples demonstrate how little of our visual environment our brain actually processes. In the words of artist James Gurney, “Here’s proof that most of the time we look but don’t see.”
Another Amazing City Video
Here’s a Friday afternoon video for you. Don’t know anything about it, but it’s beautiful and showcases the city. Hat tip to Digital Urban for finding it.
Posted in: Urbanism
Retrofitting The Suburbs Of Bardstown Road
Bardstown Road at the Gene Snyder (via Lojic)
Suburban Louisville is headed back to the drawing boards. Metro Louisville is trying to figure out how to retrofit the suburban fringe of Jefferson County along the Gene Snyder Beltway to “create a more vibrant center where walking, bicycling and public transportation are real options for residents.”
Louisville has been selected as one of four communities from a pool of over 100 applicants to receive technical assistance on growth and development-related issues from the Federal Interagency Partnership for Sustainable Communities which represents the first-ever joint effort between the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), the Department of Transportation (DOT), and Housing & Urban Development (HUD).
“For years EPA has provided technical assistance to communities working to become both environmentally and economically sustainable,” says EPA Administrator Lisa P. Jackson. ”This year, for the first time ever, HUD and DOT will join EPA to coordinate transportation and housing issues with our environmental work. Local governments and developers will have more of the support they need to build communities with affordable housing, low-cost transportation options, maximum environmental benefits and minimum environmental impacts.”
Click through to learn about Louisville’s suburban retrofitting project.
Disney’s Epcot And The City Of The Future
Take a look at Walt Disney’s vision for the city of the future, the Experimental Prototype Community Of Tomorrow or Epcot. ”No city of today will serve as the guide for the city of tomorrow,” serves as a guiding principle as varied ideas from shopping mall living, to freeways, to pedestrian safety, to high speed transit are considered. Disney himself says the city of tomorrow must abandon the old cities and their problems and be built on virgin land from scratch.
From its “cosmopolitan convention center” to its theme-park shopping districts, Disney envisioned his 50-acre city core, completely enclosed and climate controlled like a shopping mall, hermetically sealed from the natural world. Outside of this air-conditioned environment of shops and offices, apartments, then parks and schools, then suburban houses radiate in a fantasy of controlled zoning where every use is separated from every other use.
Despite being conceived as a modern utopia based around the automobile, Epcot envisions a future of mass transit for the daily commute. ”Freeways will not be EPCOT’s major way of entering and leaving the city,” declares a confident narrator. Instead, an electrified monorail and people mover will connect the city and suburb, radiating in all directions from the core. It was envisioned that the primary use of the car would be for “weekend pleasure trips.”
Repeatedly, the dangers of automobile traffic for pedestrians are cited. The pedestrian is, in fact, declared “king” as transportation uses, like Epcot’s zoning, are completely separated. The pedestrian is “free to walk and browse without fear of motorized vehicles.” Children and bikes have separate paths in the suburbs for walking or riding to school. Electric vehicles travel on elevated roadway’s through Epcot’s downtown while underground transit carries workers in and out of the city. Separate facilities for cars and trucks are provided further underground.
Disney did eventually build a prototype city, but the end result was far from what was envisioned for Epcot. The town of Celebration, Florida chose not to abandon the cities of the past but to embrace the patterns that make them so interesting to experience. New Urbanism has been brought in to create a mixed-use town center and compact living. Celebration was just as carefully planned as the Epcot of old, but the end result is quite different. Whatever happened to abandoning the car for transit, leaving it in the garage for pleasure trips, though?
You can watch Walt Disney describe the vision in this video over here.
Celebration, Florida (Image via Wikimedia Commons)
Ideas For The Innovative Future Of Cities
Here’s a well put together video from GOOD Magazine about pushing innovation in our cities. Plenty of good ideas from around the world covering Bus Rapid Transit (BRT), to biking, to the environmental benefits of removing urban freeways (8664 anyone?). Well worth a watch. Hat tip to @urbanophile.
