Downtown in greys
Posted 13 January, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
I've put together a simple exhibit of a small, ongoing series called "Downtown". It'll be ongoing with a new photo added every Monday until April 2nd. There have also been some other changes at the site, mostly to streamline it and reduce the amount of daily and weekly maintenance needed. The New York Photo of the Day has become weekly, since the galleries are taking far longer than I anticipated. I've also eliminated the Feature of the Month and replaced it with a Traditional Development feature, which can be accessed under "Exhibits" on the left hand toolbar (called New Urbanism in the link because of space constraints). I'll be updating the navigational bars on every page over the next couple days. / Be sure to check out Historic Downtown Billings' website, which has walking tours and photos of the historic buildings in Montana's largest city. More Billings information can be found at the City of Billings website. / Baltimore: A Link to the City has a good tour of that city's Fells Point neighbourhood. To read about an interesting phenomenon where priced-out Washington, DC workers are moving to far-cheaper urban Baltimore, see this article from the Washington Post. / Archis, a Dutch online magazine on "architecture, city and visual culture", has many good articles about the urban environment. I found the Shenzhen one to be particularily fascinating. / Downtown Victoria, British Columbia has a website with some good links and great studies and articles. / Lastly, congratulations to Baltimore civil engineer and city/skyscraper fan Jeff Ratnow (see the Skyscraper Forum) for being printed in the Baltimore Sun.

Harlem
Posted 7 January, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Over the past few years, the Manhattan neighbourhood of Harlem has been experiencing renewed interest. Historically a thriving centre of African American culture and instrumental to the rise of jazz music in the mid 20th century, Harlem has been neglected for the past thirty years as crime, drugs and poverty left its mark on the district. Now, formerly abandoned rowhouses have been renovated and the neighbourhood is safer than ever (see "Abandonment down, refurbishment up" at NYToday). However, as always, gentrification has a dear price: while vacant and dilapidated blocks are being restored, many of Harlem's longtime residents face rising rents. Nevertheless, the City of New York recently announced a plan to fill 50 vacant lots with affordable housing, daycares and neighbourhood retail. More information on Harlem can be found in Africana.com's article on the neighbourhood, as well as at Home to Harlem. / I was browsing through the Toronto Star's online archives when I came across this particularily interesting article from this past Boxing Day. It seems that "evidence of Mayan suburbia" has been unearthed in Belize. Apparently Mayan cities also experienced an outward sprawl much like modern cities, with the poorest living on the edge of the city and the wealthiest living in the core. Although this trend can be seen in both historic and contemporary European and Asian cities, cities in the US reversed this phenomena with the suburban exodus we all know of. / In Boston, the MBTA transit agency has made an order for 124 low-emission natural gas buses. / A large public housing project in Cleveland will be transformed into a mixed-use development with over 600 units of residential, street retail and more. Check out this post on the Skyscraper Forum for more information, or the Downtown Cleveland Building Projects page. / Interested in seeing what Los Angeles looks like away from the freeways, Hollywood and beaches? Check out the LA Neighborhoods page at the Los Angeles Pictures site. / Lastly, the New York Times' NYToday site has a great article about a nonprofit organisation that renovates and then sells dilapidated city houses at prices affordable to those with low and middle-end incomes.

Mystic River development
Posted 4 January, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Happy New Year, everyone. Somerville, Massachusetts is a pleasant working-class suburb of Boston filled with traditionally urban neighbourhoods. Historically industrial, there is a fair bit of vacant land in the city's east end near the I-93 freeway. One of these parcels of land borders the Mystic River and was the site of a proposed high-density urban village; instead, the mayor and council of Somerville chose to allow several big-box sprawl stores such as Home Depot and IKEA to build on the land instead. A news article at National Development, sums up the controversy. The Mystic View Task Force is leading the way for mixed-use development on site, and they offer a self-guided walking tour of the site, known as Assembly Square. / Some beautiful photos (on a beautiful website) of San Francisco's Cole Valley neighbourhood can be found on Steve Boland's pages. More photos of other SF neighbourhoods can be seen at Alfredo's San Francisco Guide which offers neighbourhood information to locals and newcomers. Urban photos from around North American can be found at Kenzington Photos; I especially enjoyed the Winnipeg photos, since there aren't too many good ones available online. / An interesting Boston Herald article from three weeks ago looks at a photographer's chronicles of suburban life. Finally, the San Francisco Chronicle's columnist Carol Lloyd has written a good piece about the neglected West Oakland neighbourhood and how its revival by young professionals is bittersweet.

Holiday sluggishness
Posted 30 December, 2000 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
I've been enjoying the holidays and inadvertently, the site has suffered greatly. Sorry for the lack of updates! I have also been dreadfully lazy when it comes to working on various projects such as the New York galleries or a special Fargo page. Hopefully I'll be able to have the Fargo page done, at least, but the end of next week. In any case, I have a few meagre morsels of interest to share with you. First off is the article "Will we ride the rails from Springfield?" at the Ohio Association of Railroad Passengers. The article looks at a plan to connect the small city of Springfield with passenger rail service to the rest of Ohio's cities. More information on rail in Ohio can be found at the OARP site. Speaking of rail, what's happening with Acela, the US's first high-speed rail link? TrainWeb has an Acela page with news and information about the train. The official site has news, but it's not very comprehensive. / The American 2000 Census results are in and can be found at census.gov. If you're interested in seeing the latest metropolitan and city population statistics, head on over. / Chris Szabla forwarded me the address of this old feature from Suck Magazine that parodies criticism of the "yuppie invasion" in San Franscisco -- Yuppie Scum say, "Die Yuppie Scum!". / Lastly, Virtually Vancouver is a site that lets you explore 360° Quicktime VR files of almost every downtown Vancouver intersection. Since the photos appear to be taken in the early morning and the very nature of them doesn't let you experience the sheer bustle of people that makes Vancouver so interesting, they're a far cry from actually visiting the town. But nevertheless they give you a nice sense of what the city looks like. / Happy New Year to you all, and best of wishes in 2001!

"Personality of the year"
Posted 23 December, 2000 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
French speakers rejoice! The Québec current affairs magazine L'actualité has named Montréal "personality of the year" and has run a large feature on the city. For those of you who aren't lucky enough to know French, and don't mind a translation that's a little rough around the edges, Babelfish does the trick. / For some information on what's happening this winter in downtown Calgary, check out the Calgary Herald's Your Downtown section. Of special interest is the reopening of the downtown Eaton's, which closed when the chain - a longtime Canadian icon - went under last year. Sears has reopened several downtown Eaton's across Canada and is marketing them to appeal to a more "urban" crowd. Check it out at Eaton's website, or their locations page. / I wish all urbanphoto.org visitors a happy holiday season and encourage you all to explore the city for that special Christmastime charm.

National Film Board
Posted 18 December, 2000 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
It has been almost a week since I last updated the site, and for that I apologise. I have some good stuff for you, though. Canadians and quite possibly some international visitors will know the National Film Board of Canada quite well, through their amazing collection of short films, educational films and brilliant animated shorts. The film board also has a collection of films on Urbanism, from "After Fifty Years" from 1937 to A Crack in the Pavement made this year. Some interesting titles include Remember Africville, looking back to Halifax's proud black neighbourhood that was replaced by a dull park in the middle of this century; Return to Regent Park about Toronto's largest housing project; Cities Are for People, which looks at pro-pedestrian movements in many cities; and The Neighbourhood Revived, about Montréal's 1970s attempts to restore historic living space. Most of these films and other NFB classics can be seen at the Cinérobothèque in Montréal, at the corner of rue St-Denis and boul. Maisonneuve. / A week ago there was another article in the Boston Globe on the 12th about Boston's Fan Pier development. / A couple good articles appeared in Maryland's Gazette newspapers, the first one being "Redefining retail", which looks at the revitalisation of historic town centres in various Maryland suburban towns. Also reported are efforts by the government in the Gaitheringsburg-Silver Spring area of suburban Washington, DC to improve pedestrian safety. / Think Los Angeles County is a freeway wasteland with horrible public transit? Think again. The Southern California Association of Governments' "Creating Livable Places" website has compiled a list of LA transit myths and what is the real case. Included are such misconceptions as "LA was built up around the automobile," and "Expanding highways is the best way to relieve gridlock." / Lastly, two bits of New Englandia: "Saving general stores" reports on attempts to save historic small-town general stores, and the Boston Fire Department has compiled a page of fire hall photos, some of which are quite elegant buildings.

Acela roars off
Posted 11 December, 2000 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
It's an historic day for rail travel in North America, as the continent's first high-speed rail line, the Acela, took off on its maiden voyage from Boston to Washington - read the AP story here. Running at about 135 miles per hour, the Acela is on the lowest end of the high-speed train scale (by comparison, the TGV in France runs at 300 miles per hour), but it is a step forward for transportation in the United States. The Boston Globe sent two reports on a race to determine which method of getting between Boston and New York was faster (see "Train vs. Plane"); the two were due to meet at Post Office Square in downtown Boston. The planebound reporter beat the trainbound by a mere two minutes. Although the actual trip between New York and Boston was speedier on a plane, traffic to the airports in the respective cities as well as air traffic slowed the air journey considerably. The Acela, by comparison, drops off its passengers in the heart of each city. The Acela is vital to Amtrak's hopes of turning a profit before 2003, and the company is buoyed by the overwhelming success of highspeed rail in Europe and Japan. For more information on high speed rail, check out the High Speed Ground Transportational Association, California High Speed Rail, and Senator Frank Lautenburg's High Speed Rail page. / Check out the official Milton Parc neighbourhood site for history, photos and links on that Montréal neighbourhood's history (see photos of it here at UPP). Also be sure to check out Art Crimes, which looks at that unique form of urban are, graffiti. The Frederick Law Olmstead page has plans and history of the landscape designer's parks and towns; Olmstead designed the beautiful Emerald Necklace in Boston, Mount Royal Park in Montréal and Central Park in Manhattan, among others.

Montréal in the news
Posted 9 December, 2000 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
I've been scouring the Toronto Star and Montréal Gazette websites the past couple days, and with the help of Chris Szabla and his keen eye for good stories in the Boston Globe, I've found some interesting articles about Montréal. First off is the controversy of the Toronto-style amalgamation occuring on Montréal Island. "Montreal expansion ripped as power grab" focuses on Westmount but also delves into the feelings of other suburban communities. Back in September the Gazette ran an editorial denouncing the plan for amalgamation. ; An interesting article about Westmount being a national historic site caught my eye. Apparently it has been recommended that the city of Westmount be designated an historic site since it contains a vast amount of very well-preserved late Victorian buildings. Check out our photos of Westmount here. Just west of Westmount is the Montréal neighbourhood of Notre-Dame-de-Grace, aka NDG, which is almost evenly bilingual and quickly turning into a very desirable place for families to live. As this article explains, housing in NDG is so desirable that prices are shooting up to those in Montréal's traditionally expensive enclaves. Of course, housing costs have yet to reach the nearly-unaffordable levels of Boston, Vancouver, Toronto and New York. / Some miscellaneous links to show you: first off there's this interesting article from Minnesotans for LRT about the development spree encountered along light-rail lines in San Jose, CA. Then there's this PhotoPoint album of photos taken in Binghamton, New York. Classic small-city urbanism; Binghamton is just north of Scranton, Pennsylvania and its coal mining region. / The Toronto Star always has some good urban issues articles and columns. "Who's protecting the moraine now?" was run on Thursday and the author opines about a moraine threatened by sprawl north of Toronto. The paper's in-house urban affairs columnist, Christopher Hume, has his own section of articles, all of which are worth a read. / Two more links of worth: an article in the Boston Globe about Beacon Hill's historic Charles Street (see photos of it here) and a great site containing some very nice urban photos. The photographer seems to like the deserted and ponderous aspects of the city. Thanks to Tony Peric for that one.

Fan Pier to be approved?
Posted 7 December, 2000 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Some interesting reports are coming in from Boston. It seems that the developer, city and an environmental group have come to an agreement (read an AP story). As this article from today's Boston Globe reports, mayor Thomas Menino helped resolve the two-year old battle between planner Nicholas Pritzker and Conservation Law Foundation head Douglas Foy. Pritzker wanted the development to be a truly urban space while Foy insisted there wasn't enough parkland in the development; last night the two men agreed to 800 residential units, 1000 hotel rooms and 150,000 square feet of cultural space. The development covers a mere 33 acres, but is vital to redevelopment of Boston's Seaport District waterfront, the majority of which is covered by car parks. A special feature on the waterfront development can be seen here. Adjacent to the site is the historic Fort Point Channel District, which is gaining new life as a loft and artist's community, and the blue-collar Irish neighbourhood of South Boston. Read an article about the Ft. Pt. Ch. District here. / Another article from the Boston Globe, "Native charm", looks at a pub in the heart of the yet-to-be-gentrified district of Dorchester. Like most of Boston's south side, Dorchester is more of an independent town than a part of Boston, composed of many different and unique neighbourhoods. / An interesting website from McGill University explores Montréal's history as the industrial centre of Canada. Head to the search page to find all sorts of history and photos of old industrial buildings found in the working-class southwest neighbourhoods of St-Charles, St-Henri and Petite Bourgogne. / Lastly, an extremely interesting website from Toronto's York University on the Culture of Cities. A project that explores the differences and similarities between Toronto, Montréal, Dublin and Berlin, it is a real treat for any cityphile.

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