Infrastructure
01.23.12:
Austin Troy
Thirsty City
On Places, Austin Troy assesses the massive infrastructure required to bring water to the arid American West — and the huge amount of energy that makes it possible to take a shower in Los Angeles.
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09.22.11:
Laura Tepper
Road Ecology: Wildlife Habitat and Highway Design
On Places, Laura Tepper looks at the emerging field of road ecology and its influence on a new generation of highway landscape design.
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06.27.11:
Deborah Gans
Below the Sill Plate: New Orleans East Struggles to Recover
On Places, architect Deborah Gans describes a multi-year effort to rebuild neighborhoods in post-Katrina New Orleans — and the limited results to date.
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04.07.11:
Ray Gastil
In Motion: The Experience of Travel
On Places, Ray Gastil reviews
In Motion: The Experience of Travel, the latest book by Tony Hiss.
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01.24.11:
Karen Piper
Dreams, Dust and Birds: The Trashing of Owens Lake
On Places, Karen Piper narrates the latest chapter in one California's longest water wars: Los Angeles' efforts to undo the environmental damage done to Owens Lake, decades after its waters were diverted to supply the thirsty metropolis.
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10.25.10:
Hillary Brown
Infrastructural Ecologies: Principles for Post-Industrial Public Works
On Places, architect Hillary Brown, founder of New York City's Office of Sustainable Design, proposes principles to guide construction of a next generation of green infrastructure.
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05.20.10:
Center for Urban Pedagogy
The Water Underground
On Places, watch
The Water Underground, a video from the Center for Urban Pedagogy that tracks the complex — and contested — systems of water supply, treatment and waste that serve New York City.
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04.22.10: Paho Mann & Nancy Levinson
The Art of Solid Waste
On Places, a slideshow of photographer Paho Mann's images of post-consumer detritus — a.k.a. trash — part of a new public art project at a solid waste facility in Phoenix, Arizona.
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01.25.10:
Ian Baldwin
Architect, Park Thyself
The auto-urban relationship, writes Ian Baldwin, is "fumbling, overheated, unsatisfying for both parties." Baldwin reviews
House of Cars: Innovation and the Parking Garage, currently on exhibit at the National Building Museum, and
The Architecture of Parking, by Simon Henley.
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01.20.10:
Christine Macy
Dams Across America
A gallery of images showing the construction of some great U.S. hydroelectric dams of the 1930s and '40s, including Hoover and Grand Coulee — something to contemplate as the current administration struggles to stimulate the economy and smarten the power grid.
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01.18.10:
Nancy Levinson
The Public Works
Why isn't the Great Recession inspiring a new New Deal? The essential dilemma, argues Places editor Nancy Levinson, is that we no longer believe in public sector solutions — or even in the public itself.
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01.10.10:
Linda Samuels
Working Public Architecture
Can we envision a contemporary counterpart to the New Deal of the 1930s? Architect Linda Samuels reports on WPA 2.0, the ambitious competition and symposium created by cityLab at UCLA.
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10.20.09:
Thomas Fisher
Fracture Critical
Much U.S. infrastructure is "fracture critical" — vulnerable to catastrophic and systemic failure; Thomas Fisher argues that our finance, housing and energy systems are fracture-critical as well.
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09.24.09:
Barbara Penner
Niagara: It Has It All
Architectural historian Barbara Penner reviews
Inventing Niagara, by Ginger Strand, drawing out the contradictory mix of reverence and exploitation inspired by the famous falls.
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09.18.09:
Ian Baldwin
The Past Is Promenade
Architect Ian Baldwin contemplates the High Line and sees in New York's newest park a rare and valuable form of urban place: a slow corridor.
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09.12.09:
Chris Reed
The Infrastructural City
Los Angeles depends upon vast infrastructural systems that are breathtakingly powerful, yet vulnerable to disruption, even disaster. Landscape architect Chris Reed reviews
The Infrastructural City.
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05.19.09:
Linda Samuels
Infrastructural Optimism
Learning from New Orleans, or why we really need a new New Deal.
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05.19.09: Daniel Solomon
ReTooling
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