If you go walking in New York City...

If you go walking in New York City early enough in the morning, who knows, you might witness a scene like this one, which became the cover of The Times Magazine's Walking New York issue.

Posted by The New York Times on Thursday, April 23, 2015

From Montreal Gazette — Montreal unveils plans for urban boulevard

At the centre of the massive project, which was subject to public consultation in 2009, are 42-metre wide public-park spaces, totalling more than 20,000 square metres, that will separate the north and southbound roadways. The northbound direction, heading downtown from the South Shore between the Lachine Canal and Notre Dame St., will be four lanes wide, while the southbound section will count five lanes.

East-west cycling lanes are planned along William St. and Ottawa St., and wide pedestrian walkways will be lined with dozens of newly planted trees. Art installations are being commissioned and are expected to be placed at each end of the new corridor, which will be re-baptized Robert-Bourassa Blvd. in honour of Quebec’s former premier. Read more: Montreal unveils new plans for urban boulevard to replace Bonaventure Expressway | Montreal Gazette

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From Car Free Baltimore — 6 Small Ways To Make Baltimore More Livable Right Now

Bellingham, WA. Small changes, big impact.

While Baltimore waits for a new arena, and a handful of other big projects, here are a few smaller things that can be done right now to make people say, “Hey, this place is alright”.

1. Low Cost Transit Improvements

Eric Hatch’s ideas are gold, so I don’t need to repeat them here. I especially liked his points about extending transit operating hours to 3am, adding light rail infill stations, and inter-neighborhood shuttle bugs. Having lived in Hampden for a few months now, I can say the neighborhood is a transit desert and needs better connections to Johns Hopkins and downtown. Baltimore has been car-focused for so long that we have to make transit twice as good to attract more choice riders. Small improvements which show MTA cares about quality are a first step. Also, may it’s time to rethink the entire bus network like Portland did in 1982. Read more: Ways We Can Make Baltimore More Livable Right Now | Car Free Baltimore

A Flâneur Around False Creek

At last, this week, an opportunity to wander False Creek and in particular the new neigbourhood  on its south shore, the Athlete's Village. As a Vancouver expat it's quite an experience to descend from the Canada Line station in Yaletown and travel under False Creek (!) and connect with the new Village neighbourhood that has had such well documented birthing pains. 

Both North (where I have had opportunity to explore over the last couple of years) and South False Creek neighbourhoods are distinguished by terrific attention to public space. Especially a delight it seems to me in the now established NEFC is the attention to the smaller public spaces that link the street grid with the sea wall and parks and playing fields. Evidently these were successfully negotiated with the developer, mainly Concord Pacific and where a condo tower blocks access to the seawall with "private property" notices, you really appreciate these charming squares and small parks. In contrast to the Village, these spaces have an old-world formality which contributes a groomed and ordered neighbourhood atmosphere.

The public space in the new Village neighbourhood by comparison is wild and wooly — and wet, featuring a swampy wetland area quite popular with ducks. As you enter from the west you pass a community garden — "No picking. Please respect our food" — and a wonderfully chaotic enclosed dog run — from a Great Dane to a silly little thing that would fit in a purse and every size and variety in between and owners visting and trying to maintain some sort of order.  The peaceful formality of the north shore is welcome, but the public space and landscaping in the Village creates a distinctive, earthy ambience.

The main square is now enlivened by an upscale food store, brew pub, drug store and cafe, anchored by the Salt building restoration.

From CBC Radio Ideas — Cornelia Hahn OberlanderThe Grande Dame of Green Design

Cornelia Hahn Oberlander is this country's pre-eminent landscape architect. Her love of nature and respect for the environment has guided and inspired her work from the grounds of the National Gallery in Ottawa to the Museum of Anthropology in Vancouver. IDEAS producer Yvonne Gall profiles the 91-year-old icon, whose career spans six decades and is still going strong.

More at The Grande Dame of Green Design - Ideas - CBC Player

podcast.cbc.ca/mp3/podcasts/ideas_20121108_44056.mp3

From RDG Planning & Design — High Trestle Trail Bridge Artistic Elements

The High Trestle Bridge, located along the High Trestle Trail between Woodward and Madrid, Iowa... spans the Des Moines River Valley and serves as a link in the 25 miles of paved High Trestle Trail. Read more: From Here to There: High Trestle Trail Bridge Artistic Elements :: RDG Planning & Design

MoMA Symposium — The Child in the City of Play

The Child in the City of Play, Session 1

The Child in the City of Play, Session 2

Symposium details at: MoMA | The Child in the City of Play
MoMA exhibition: MoMA | Century of the Child: Growing by Design, 1900–2000

Ken Lum on his East Van Cross

Robson Street Pop-Ups and Pop Rocks

Pop-Ups and Pop Rocks from Brian Gould and Kathleen Corey on Vimeo.

From http://yuriartibise.com/ Yuri's post can be found here.

From The Pop-Up City — Recycled Shadows In Madrid

It is estimated that about 938,000 copies of free newspapers are distributed daily in Madrid, out of which a large ends up in the trash. Under the name ‘Recycled Shadow’, the Spanish architecture collective Meva transforms wasted newspapers into precious shades for the madrileños. For this project, wasted newspapers are folded into paper windmills and attached to a nylon string holding them all together. Once numerous pieces are attached, the structure finds its new purpose.

Read more: http://popupcity.net/2012/08/recycled-shadows-in-madrid/#ixzz24PPmUOguRecycled Shadows In Madrid — The Pop-Up City

From Yatzer ― Seville's Metropol Parasol

Metropol Parasol // The World’s Largest Wooden Structure | Yatzer Buenisimo! Inspired! Located at Plaza de la Encarnacion, the stunning sequence of undulating parasols comprises the world's largest wooden structure.

Vivid Sydney 3D Mapping Time Lapse

Museum of Modern Art ‒ A Tour of New York City with Diego Rivera

Diego Rivera. Production and Manufacture of Engine and Transmission from the mural cycle Detroit Industry. 1932–33. Fresco, approx. 17' 8 5/8" x 45' 1/4" (5.4 x 13.72 m). The Detroit Institute of Arts. © 2012 Banco de México Diego Rivera & Frida Kahlo Museums Trust, México, D.F./Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

Diego Rivera was enthralled with New York City from the moment he arrived here in November 1931, six weeks before the opening of his retrospective exhibition at The Museum of Modern Art. Fascinated by modern technology, he felt an immediate connection to the city, which at the time was in the throes of one of the largest construction booms in U.S. history, known as the skyscraper race. Rivera funneled his fascination into the creation of three New York–themed portable murals, which were included in his 1931–32 MoMA show. Two of these fresco panels, as well as an 8-foot drawing for the third, are currently on view in the exhibition Diego Rivera: Murals for The Museum of Modern Art. We have identified most of the sites referenced in these works, and with this information plotted the various places Rivera visited while here. You can compare present-day views of these sites with photos taken around the time of the artist’s visit on the exhibition’s website.

MoMA | A Tour of New York City with Diego Rivera

How to Build a Better Block

From TEDxTALKS Opposite to the 'top down' concept of urban design is BETTER BLOCK, founded in Dallas' Oak Cliff by Jason Roberts and Andrew Howard. The Better Block project is a demonstration tool that temporarily re-visions an area to show the potential to create a walkable, vibrant, neighborhood center. The idea and the charrettes to realize it have quickly spread to cities like Memphis, St. Louis, New York, and Boston. National media coverage includes NPR, the Washington Post, and the New York Times.

Highlights: "Rendering fatigue" and "Give it a name..."

Winter Sun Over Trafalgar Square

In 2012, Blue Monday (the most depressing day of the year) occurred on the 23rd January.  To lift the city’s spirits, Greyworld (commissioned by Tropicana) created a special sun that spread its dawn light over Trafalgar Square for one day only. 

Weighing 2.5 tons, and using 210,000 watts of power, it’s a great sight to behold on what would’ve been a gloomy morning. It finally set at 7.30pm, an hour after the real sun. Check out the time-lapse video below. Reposted from Pop-Up City

Full screen hi-res is nice also The Making of...

From Project For Public Spaces.org —

Placemaking for Communities

Collaborative, Creative Placemaking:
Good Public Art Depends on 
Good Public Spaces

Santa Marta Favela, Rio de Janeiro. (Haas&Hahn for favelapainting.com)

“It is difficult to design a space that will not attract people; what is remarkable is how often this has been accomplished.” —William H. (Holly) Whyte

During the past two or more decades, communities around the country have fallen victim to the relentless machinations of a group of people with an overdeveloped, overspecialized “creative function,” who see themselves as experts rather than collaborators or service providers. In the face of these experts and their implicit authority, communities have been intimidated and made to feel impotent. The public has been convinced to leave the creative function solely in the hands of the specially trained—namely architects, artists, and designers—and to abdicate its role in nurturing the creative life of the city. As a result, the communal psyche has atrophied and the public realm has suffered. Projects—whether public art, public parks, or public transportation—designed without the community in mind have provoked fierce criticism by host communities. That criticism is based on, among other things, a lack of trust in the motives of the professionals involved, who often serve something other than the public good and whose priorities are often different from those of the community.


Read more at PPS.org

Chris Burden's Metropolis II

Chris Burden’s kinetic, large-scale sculpture Metropolis II will be coming to LACMA on long-term loan in the near future.... the mesmerizing and incredibly noisy video of the work, featuring 1,200 toy cars on their roller-coaster ride through the “city.”

A look at Chris Burden's kinetic sculpture, filmed in 2011 at the artist's studio in Topanga, CA.