The Times‘ Michael Kimmelman takes a walking tour of the Melrose section with Amanda Burden, director of New York City’s Department of City Planning, and a video of their interview highlights some striking examples of new development that is ongoing in the South Bronx. Some of these blocks are the same ones that were infamously devastated by arson, property abandonment, and street crime in the 1970s and ’80s. Among my earliest memories of New York City, I remember riding through parts of the city that looked like scenes from a war zone: shells of buildings, flame-scorched, hollow, scattered among vacant lots, and defaced with neon-colored graffiti. And, of course, people on the streets reflected a human version of the same desolation. Fortunately, most of that Dante-esque nightmare is now gone, but the vacant parcels have persisted for a long time. Notably, the Bloomberg administration’s strategic focus, according to Ms. Burden, is centered on the construction of high-density affordable housing, and on rebuilding the area’s traditional fabric of standard blocks and mid-rise, mixed-use buildings.
Roman Shipyard Unearthed at Portus
Archaeologists from Southampton’s Portus Project discovered a massive shipyard last month.
After-Market Towns in the Suburbs
The Times has a story in its Real Estate section about the self-conscious construction of a town center in the Long Island hamlet of Coram. It sounds conceptually similar to a development that is now mostly completed in my own vicinity. It’s a trend. My main gripe about such after-market urbanism, if you will, is its tendency to produce results that are very aesthetically monolithic when compared to town centers that develop, organically, from the smaller contributions of diverse landowners working on the varied canvases of multiple land parcels. Also, like ambitious redevelopment projects, the insularity of these after-market towns may or may not cause them to spawn similar development in the surrounding blocks; they may become, simply, islands amid a sea of sprawl. But, at the end of the day, these projects are moving the building vocabulary of suburbia in a good direction: one that includes consciously planned streetscapes, smaller housing units, walkable blocks, and a vibrant commercial-residential mix. To that, it’s hard to object. And so, the conversation goes on.
A Few Good Links
The New Yorker ran a piece, earlier this week, about the resurrection of Massimo Vignelli’s 1972 New York City subway map as a new, interactive, online feature by the Metropolitan Transit Authority. Emily Moser’s Metro-North blog, I Ride the Harlem Line, was discovered, and covered, by the Times. And NPR reported on Ken Jennings’s new book, Maphead.
A Subway Map of French Wines
c. Dr. David Gissen
A clever idea. I think that the use of maps to depict the spatial relationships by which we organize complex, non-spatial concepts is still vastly under-explored. This is especially true in light of the tedious nature of linear narratives that seek to explain complex relationships among multiple subjects. A lot of legal concepts, for example, could probably be better explained with maps than by treatises, but the tyranny of the printing press goes on.
This map, showing French wine regions and their signature grape varietals as stops along a series of fictitious subway routes, bridges an attempt to map what are primarily nominal relationships with the more traditional subject matter of cartography. Typically, the sample JPEG from the publisher is very reduced: You would have to purchase the full-sized print to enjoy most of its details.
Atlantic Interview with Fred Kent
The Atlantic has an interview with Fred Kent, president of the NYC-based Project for Public Spaces.
The White City of Tel Aviv
Bauhaus architecture, Tel Aviv.
The world’s largest collection of Bauhaus architecture makes up the White City of Tel Aviv. Planning students will remember that Sir Patrick Geddes, the eccentric godfather of 20th century regional planning, was retained by a forerunner to the Jewish Agency to plan the new city’s physical layout during its first period of rapid growth, in the mid-1920s. Between that time and Israeli independence in 1948, Bauhaus became the architectural style that filled out much of Geddes’s plan. Recently, I came across an Israeli website, Artlog, that catalogs some of the city’s most significant structures with photographs, architectural drawings, and descriptions. There really is a striking aesthetic to the clean geometry and smooth curves of these buildings, set against the bright skies and sun-starched land of the Middle East. Artlog seems to be a work in progress, but its work on Tel Aviv is already quite thorough, and worth a look.
Tel Aviv and the Mediterranean. The ancient seaport of Jaffa is on the horizon.
I found versions of both these photos on multiple websites, without apparent attributions or copyrights. But if they’re really yours, just let me know, and I’ll either provide appropriate credit, or take them down.
Meanwhile, here’s a schematic map, reproduced in Dwelling on the Dunes: Tel Aviv, by the architect Nitza Metzger-Szmuk (2004), from the cover of Geddes’s 1925 report; and a Google satellite pinpoint map, for comparison:
New Star Chart
Not exactly land use law (in any earthly sense), but I really like this.
Part of “Compass to the Northern Sky,” Municipal Prints Co.
And stargazing isn’t completely unrelated to the art of town planning: Vitruvius advocated reference to celestial bodies when orienting the layout of new Roman towns.
Quick Read on Local Building Regs
I recently came across a short book, Administration of Building Regulations: Methods and Procedures for Enforcement, that presents a concise overview of US building codes. If you’re at all interested in the scope of American municipal building regulations, it’s worth the two hours or so that it takes to read. Published in 1973, it is a clear, well-written presentation, with a minimal number of unnecessary tangents. Building codes are direct heirs to the building bye-laws that Unwin discussed in Town Planning in Practice. They controlled, among other things, the geometry of development in the years before that aspect of land use regulation was subsumed by comprehensive zoning. Today’s building codes deal almost exclusively with technical specifications, including electrical, plumbing, and structural requirements. As its title suggests, this book also covers the broad legal frameworks and enforcement mechanisms of municipal building regulations.
It may not be the easiest title to find. They have a copy of the 1973 edition at the Rutgers law library in Newark.
Sourcing Note
In light of recent developments, I have stopped posting links to articles at the WSJ, or at any other News Corporation media outlet. This change is being made for obvious reasons, and until further notice.
I strongly encourage other writers to make the same decision.