LOL
“Ask them if they’ve heard of New Urbanism or urban infilling, the wonkier, established versions of what they’re trying to do, and they shrug. Hsieh says there’s a benefit to their outsider perspective. “We don’t have some top-down idea of how this should be done,” he says. Ware adds that there’s a benefit to coming into something with no preexisting knowledge. “We ask the dumb questions.”
— Tony Hsieh, from Zappos, is building a downtown Las Vegas. Hopefully they succeed. Their guiding philosophy that a vibrant downtown is important to cultural and creative life is a good start.
US road accident casualties: every one mapped across America
This is informative journalism.
Have you seen what Joplin looks like on Google Maps?
Incredible, and sad.
Who is public space for? Streets and squares were designed for people, historically for gathering, for walking, for access, for assembly. Yes, they were meant for passage, but what societies proudly use them to demonstrate state control?
Has the world changed so much that authorities now believe the passage of vehicles is their only legitimate purpose?
To whom do the streets belong? Scores of drivers or thousands of protesters? Public citizens, or the public corporations that own surrounding buildings?
photo by Eduardo Munoz/Reuters via aberjona
“I listened during the last election cycle to the rhetoric about small town values and where the real Americans live. I thought to myself, “I’ve never heard such bullshit in my life.” Rural America’s not coming back. That idea was lost with the Industrial Revolution. And yet with more than 80 percent of Americans living in metropolitan areas, there are still demagogues who want to run down the idea of multiculturalism, of urbanity, being the only future we have. We either live or die based on how we live in cities, and our society is either going to be great or not based on how we perform as creatures of the city.”
— David Simon, creator of The Wire and Treme, in an interview with AlterNet (via lifeonfoot)
