Back at last
Posted 27 March, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Sorry for the long downtime the site experienced last week. It seems that my claim to the urbanphoto.org domain ran out and I had to fork over my annual subscription. Three cheers for prompt payment, eh? I've got a few sites and news items to share with you but first some site information. This week's 500 Words editorial is up. The Fargo exhibit is almost finished, and the New York galleries just have Midtown and some touching up to go before they're done. / The New York Daily News has been running some stories recently on New York's overcrowded subway system. A ridership that has grown by leaps and bounds over the past year, coupled with an aging infrastructure has left the world's second-largest system a choked mess. The paper's online CityBeat section has a few stories, including "Rerouting will leave Chinatown at the station," which reports on the "temporary" (three year) closing of a busy downtown station for construction. Here are some sites for more information on New York subway and transit: New York Transit Scenes has old maps, photos and history on the city's historic transit system; New York City Transit is an unofficial website maintained by a city employee, dedicated to all the behind-the-scenes issues. The New York Public Transit Association is a transit advocacy group that offers everything you'd expect from a transit advocacy group. For all the NYC transit information your heart desires (and then some), check out nycsubway.org, and the official MTA site has some nice maps and other info. / Vancouver's Downtown Eastside neighbourhood is reputed to be the poorest in Canada, with a huge drug and prostitution problem. However, it is also a multi-faceted community with lots of interesting people and some great architecture. The Eastside contains Chinatown, one of North America's largest, Gastown, a tourist-and-yuppie-oriented historic district, as well as the charming Strathcona community (a sort of residential Chinatown), the lively East Hastings Street, and the northeast section of the area which is indeed troubled. Check out the Vancouver Sun's Searching for Solutions feature, which contains some absolutely interesting articles on the Eastside, its past and future and similar world neighbourhoods that have coped with a drug problem. Also, "Facing the Eastside" is an article from the Simon Fraser University student paper that offers a nice commentary on the neighbourhood. / Speaking of Vancouver, check out some photos of the Commercial Drive neighbourhood here, as well as here. / "Reinventing Sinful Sydney" is an article that appeared last month in the Sydney Morning Herald on how Sydney needs good architectural designs that reflect its true past and spirit. / Architecture and railfans might appreciate the Paris Train Stations page, which offers photos and history of all of Paris' functioning train stations.

Sampa photos
Posted 15 March, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
A few days ago I was told about Sampa Online, a site contains photos, information and news on six neighbourhoods in São Paulo, Brasil. Although the sites are in Portugese, it's pretty easy to find your way to the photos (look for "fotos"), but most of you will need a translator to read the sites. Among the neighbourhoods included are Moema, Campo Belo and Santo Amaro, among a few others. Check them out to see what one of the world's largest and most modern cities looks like. / While writing the current 500 Words editorial on urban parks, I stumbled upon Urban Parks Online, a site dedicated to urban parks. It contains lots of articles and history on city parks around the United States, including its list of Great Parks. The parks site is a subsidary of the Project for Public Spaces, an organisation devoted to the advocacy and implementation of good public spaces. Check out that site for all sorts of information on well-designed public spaces and how they can help urban areas be successful. / Various photos can be found at the Tokyo City Photo Report, including some nice riverside views of Tokyo and some good night shots. I found that site at the links page of the always-excellent Kuri's Panorama Page; also on Kuri's link page is Roger and Marilyn's Photo Tour of Tokyo, which is a very comprehensive travelogue of an American couple's trip to Tokyo. It contains photos, all sorts of travel information, and some neighbourhood overviews. Also on his links page is Denton Taylor's collection of photographs, which lots of photos of New York City, notably Brooklyn. / Lastly, here are a couple articles from the Boston Globe: "Sizing up the Ritz", which looks at the city's new Ritz Carlton hotel, on the other side of the Common and Public Garden from Boston's original, fabled Ritz. According to "All mapped out", it seems Bostonians are still disputing the boundaries of their "neighbourhoods", which are in reality large districts containing many distinct neighbourhoods. Check it out to see the bickering and dispute that is oh-so Boston.

Urbanphoto Boston
Posted 10 March, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
After four months under construction, our revamped Boston photo gallery is open. Urbanphoto Boston, which can be reached at boston.urbanphoto.org, contains hundreds of new photos, lots of history and interesting neighbourhood facts, plus tons more information. It's completely different from the old Boston gallery and I heartily suggest you check it out. UP Boston is managed, designed and maintained by assistant webmaster Chris Szabla, so any comments should be sent to him. / I've been obsessing over Montréal lately, and a good place to keep your finger on the pulse of the city (sorry for the cliché) is the Montréal Mirror, the city's biggest anglo weekly. It has the usual stuff you'll find in a free alternative newspaper, so take a look. Speaking of the Mirror, here's a brief article on an issue of campaign legality, just one more controversy in the whole Montréal suburbs-and-city merger debacle (remember Toronto?). / In the Kensington neighbourhood of Calgary (some photos here), residents are opposed to the construction of a big box drug store on the fringe of their community. Local businesses are complaining that the drug store will increase auto traffic and detract from the pedestrian scaled aspect of the neighbourhood. For more information, check out this article from FFWD Weekly. / Some of you may have heard about the MBTA's plans for a Boston Silver Line, a rapid transit busway that will run along the city's former elevated Orange Line, which was torn down and moved several blocks northwest in the 1970s. More information on this (surprise, surprise) controversial plan can be found at allaboutsilverline.com. / Another Boston site is SurfaceCity, a collection of Boston-related and various other items by Jeff Thacker, 25-year old copyeditor/writer for the Boston Weekly Dig. It's a cool site, and the Boston section is great fun. / While doing the aforementioned obsessing about Montréal, I looked at my map and noticed there was a whole portion of industrial Southwest Montréal I had no idea was actually in Montréal the city. It even has a website. So check out ville-emard.com, Ville-Émard's neighbourhood website, for my sake. / Two items from Canada's lovely west coast bastion of unaffordable real estate and high-quality marijuana: first off, Vancouver Magazine's very basic guide to Vancouver-area neighbourhoods, and the great See the West End. Photos, history, more photos and some good information on the urban West End of Vancouver. If all goes well you'll be seeing an interview with Maurice Jassak, the webmaster, sometime soon. Also check out Vancouver in the Snow (yes, even if this is Canada it rarely snows in Vancouver), and some great image manipulations of Maurice's images by Dennis Bourassa. / Finally, thanks to Mike Binetti for pointing me towards an old USNews article called "Cities that work", looking at families in American and international cities. Have a great weekend and hopefully the New York galleries will be online Sunday or Monday.

Mixed streets
Posted 5 March, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Robert Campbell has written a column in the Boston Globe called, "A social alternative to gridlock". In it, Campbell explores the concept of shared streets - that is, sidewalkless streets used by cars, pedestrians, bicyclists and café-dwellers alike - and their actual use in some European countries. Generally speaking, the streets are simply what we North Americans know as pedestrian streets, only with cars, too. They simply wind their way around trees and pedestrians at greatly reduced speed; in turn, that reduced speed means these mixed-use streets are statistically safer than our normal segregated streets. Although the basic design of a shared street is what is advocated by car-free groups like Carfree Cities, the fact that motor vehicles are allowed makes them fundamentally different. You can find more information on these streets at Woonerf to Winkelerf. / If any of you are serious amateur or even professional photographers, check out The Workshops, a site covering photography workshops around the world. One of the more interesting groups of workshops is the Assignment Cuba, which allows you to accompany a professional photographer through Cuba and the streets of Havana, learning how to be at ease capturing foreign life on film. / Recently a new site had its debut: BeyondDC.com is a growing exploration of Washington, DC's suburbs and their highrises and urban cores. Although it focuses on skyscrapers there are some interesting glimpses of new urban cores for first-ring suburbs. / I've uploaded this week's 500 Words, entitled "Political Gridlock: Purblind politicians strangle Toronto transport". Be sure to check it out. Also, it looks as if the New York galleries might actually be done this week, since all I have to do is make the walking route maps and write some neighbourhood history. Stay tuned for that.

Passenger bill of rights
Posted 28 February, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Today I recieved an email from Maggie Adams of Northeastern University's Center for Urban and Regional Policy, offering news about Boston's transit provider, the MBTA's new transit passenger's "Bill of Rights". The bill includes such guarantees as free vouchers if your train, bus or ferry is delayed more than 30 minutes; a "right to be heard", which means open access to top-level transit managers; and more. To read CURP's spotlight article on the bill of rights, check it out here. You can also read the actual bill. Speaking of the CURP, it is an organisation that offers community involvement in urban issues, urban research and grassroots project. For more about the Center, see their About Us page. / I've moved all news items from January 13th back to the News Archives page; I thought three months of updates was a tad excessive. / "Just a minute," said Chris Szabla to me yesterday. "I just found the two best London websites ever." What he was talking about were BuzzLondon and digiStreets, two websites that offer tons of photos and information on all aspects of London. Among the links offered by BuzzLondon I found were Virtual Norwood, which has info and some small photos of this South London 'suburb', Brixton Online, website for the lively South London neighbourhood (remember how the Clash got its name?), Notting Hill Online, Soho Online, and plenty more at the Community Links page. However, the best part of BL are not just the modest photos of many London suburbs, but also the huge collection of aerial views - just type in a street or neighbourhood and you're there.

SF urban issues
Posted 27 February, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Steve Boland, whom some of you may recall as the guy who took the Cole Valley photos, has premiered his online magazine, San Francisco Cityscape. The 'zine, which combines San Francisco urban issues news with featured commentary and articles, is a great addition to the online world of city issues. / I've decided to start a weekly editor's note here at urbanphoto.org. 500 Words, as it is called, will be a weekly column written by myself on various urban issues and city-related news. This week I opine on urban development in Calgary. Also, in other site news I'm in the process of uploading a new navigational bar for site pages. It is Flash-based, which means it looks better than the current text navbar and is way easier to update. If you don't have the Flash 5 Viewer, download it here. / How's this for sad? Here are some photos of post-war Grozny, the capital of beleagured Chechnya. Imagine, this used to be a city of two hundred thousand people and now it is nothing more than a pile of rubble. For shame! / While browsing through the wonderful Forgotten New York I came across a link to the neighbourhood website of Greenpoint, Brooklyn. Greenpoint is a working class neighbourhood on the northwest side of Brooklyn, just south of Queens. So far it doesn't look like priced-out Manhattan yuppies have invaded, so catch it while it's still authentic! / Just in case you were wondering, yes Virginia the capital of Greenland does have a downtown. Check out Downtown Nuuk complete with photos, history and information on one of the world's northerly (or at least, coldest) capitals. / The Sprawl Watch Clearinghouse has issued a rebuttal to the USA Today sprawl index (see my last post): "Equating sprawl with population density ignores a vast body of research that characterizes sprawling areas as lacking five major attributes: strong downtowns, thriving suburban centers, compact walkable neighborhoods, suburban jobs/housing balance, and employment centers with diverse services." To read the whole statement, check this out.

Back from the sun
Posted 23 February, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Well, I'm back from the sun! I had a relaxing vacation and soon you'll be able to expect some photos of Nassau, bustling little capital of the Bahamas. Now that I'm back in the cold another sobering reality has hit me: Calgary Transit workers went on strike yesterday. Official strike information can be found here, and the Calgary Herald covers the story here. / While I was in an American airport yesterday, I noticed that the USA Today newspaper had a special on sprawl in the US. The newspaper has ranked and rated each American metropolitan area on sprawl, focusing primarily on density (a mistake, in my opinion, since sprawl is far more complex than that). The index also came with a host of insightful articles; for those who didn't pick up a copy of that paper yesterday, USAToday.com has a large feature  section with videos, photos, articles and the rankings of sprawl. / Some various news items and links from Chris Szabla: a huge article from the NY Times on 129th Street in Harlem, detailing that street's rehabilitation by developers and proud local Harlemites. Also included is a walking map of 129th Street, and archived articles from 1994 when the street was at its worst. The street, which lies at the heart of Central Harlem and has long been a symbol for the ills of Harlem, is now working its way to prosperity, a good sign for the larger neighbourhood which has seen a tremendous revival over the past few years. / Another site Szabla told me about is Detroit Pictures, a classily designed photo gallery of black and white (plus some colour) photos of downtown Detroit. Check this site out, it's worth it. / Yet another article Chris sent me was this Boston Globe one on Haverhill, Massachusetts' "identity crisis": is the historic town becoming nothing more than a suburb of Boston? A photo tour of Haverhill can be found here. / Apparently rumour has it that VIA Rail Canada is going to expand its interurban service. Check out this discussion forum thread; thanks to Brian Schmidt for that link. / You might have noticed that the Photo of the Week is of Melbourne, Australia. That's right, Tony Peric has finally gotten around to organising his photos of Melbourne and you'll be seeing some over the next few weeks.

Melbourne
Posted 20 February, 2001 by Tony Peric - Back to the top
With Chris DeWolf in exile and high time for an Urban Photo Page update, your UPP Sydney correspondant has come to the rescue. In late January I went on a whirlwind trip to Melbourne and took a slew of photos. Rialto Towers is the tallest building in Australia and no matter where you are in Melbourne it's hard not to see them sticking out above other buildings. Better still, the view from the top of the tower towards the bay, as well as the rest of the CBD is definately something you don't want to miss when you're in the Rainy City. With Rialto dominating the westen CBD, the eastern CBD region is certainly no less inspiring. Melbourne has no shortage of bustling street life, whether it during the early morning peak hour rush or the lazy weekend stroll. It is not just the CBD that bustles with street life either. Inner city neighborhoods usually have a main promenade that are lined with restaurants, cafes and interesting shops. Busy Brunswick Street in Brunswick is packed with people at all times, not surprising as it is home to Melbournes alternative crowd. Carlton, just a few blocks away from Brunswick is home to Melbournes Italian population, and the food here is brilliant. Great alfresco bars, cafes and restaurants are located extensively throughout Lygon Street, its main spine. Lastly, lively Ackland Street in bayside St Kilda, only a short tram ride from the CBD is home to the hip youth and yuppies, and once again, it continues to prove that Melbourne is the alfresco dining and shopping capital of Australia.

Calgary Transit strike?
Posted 12 February, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Calgary Transit union workers are set to vote on whether or not to strike tonight. As the Calgary Herald reports, strike support is strong but not all workers are united in their grievances. As this site notes, shuttle bus operators, who are seperate from regular bus and train operators, are the bottom of the CT hierarchy and often recieve the worst end of the deal. We'll be watching with interest to see whether or not transit will vote to strike and leave nearly 1/3 of all Calgarians stranded. Speaking of transit in Calgary, the city's trains will soon be blowing in the wind. Although the train system runs on electricity it is not exactly clean power considering most of that power is generated by burning coal. Now electricity powering the rail vehicles will come from wind turbines; read more about it here. / After only eight years, New York City mayor Rudy Giuliani is a legend. Love him or hate him he has reigned over America's largest city while the crime rate plummeted and the economy prospered; as the New York Times writes, how much has Giuliani changed New York and how will the city change when he's gone? Read it here. / Roadies should check out this column from the Minneapolis Star-Tribune, which discourages the closure of one of that city's freeways. Thanks to our Twin Cities transit correspondant Nick Steffel for sending it our way. / I'll be out of town for the next week so don't expect any updates. By the way, I've finally gotten around to opening the first phase of the new links page. It'll grow as I scour the news archives and discover new sites, but there's already a healthy collection of links already.

Critical Mass
Posted 4 February, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Critical Mass is an unorganised event that takes place in many world cities, generally on the last Friday of each month. A move by cyclists and pedestrians to take back the street and raise awareness about alternative transportation, it involves swarming rush-hour downtown streets effectively holding up traffic. Critical Mass began in San Francisco in the early '90s and has since spread around the world. For more information check out the Critical Mass Times, Carbusters and Adbusters' Reclaiming Urban Space campaign. / Anthony Jones is a self-taught photographer from the UK whose black-and-white photographs have been acclaimed across Britain and beyond. His urban photos of London, as well as other series, can be found at ajphoto.com. More information on Jones and his photos is at Artissage, a German arts site. For those of you in the London area interested in seeing his photos can find them this May at the Paperleaf Art Fair and in July at the Friends Room of the Victoria and Albert Museum. / Scotiabank has released a report on the economic health and potential of Canada's major cities; you can read it here (PDF document). / The City of Houston has annouced plans to transform a seven mile long corridor into a pedestrian-friendly urban boulevard. Official planning info can be seen here, and you can discuss the plans on the Skyscraper Forum. / Chris Szabla has sent me some information on proposals for Boston's MBTA transit system. Firstly is a promotional video for the Silver Line, which will be a busway connecting Roxbury to the downtown core and Logan Airport. Lastly is a site advocating the establishment of the "Indigo Line", which would essentially be the transformation of the existing Fairmount Line commuter railway to rapid transit. / I have added a few new photos to the Downtown exhibit, be sure to check them out.

Boston's south side
Posted 30 January, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
The south side of Boston city is a swath of unique neighbourhoods, fiercly independent and distinct from "Boston proper". Roxbury and Dorchester are two of the most well-known areas, typically poor and working-class but experiencing a wave of gentrification much like the rest of town. Although each have their own community identities they are more like towns or boroughs than individual neighbourhoods; instead, they contain many micro-communities. In Roxbury there is Dudley Square and Blue Hill Avenue, among others, and in Dorchester there is Ashmont Hill, Upham's Corner, Melville Park and Savin Hill, among others. Neighbouring Roxbury to the west is Jamaica Plain (some history here and an architecture parge here), which is fully in the throes of gentrification. Roslindale lies to the south of JP, proud of its urban "Rozzie Square" downtown. Hyde Park sits at the southernmost end of Boston city, right below Mattapan and its trolley line. Suburban West Roxbury lies west of this all. / Speaking of Boston, South Boston Online reports that a committee has been formed to determine the impact of redevelopment in South Boston's portlands. Meanwhile, the Boston Globe has reported on that city's parking crisis. Also, Chris Szabla is currently in the process of revamping the Boston galleries with a snazzier layout, more history and lots of new photos. / A few photos of Brisbane, Queensland can be found here. Some many thousand of miles away, check out Richmond City Watch for lots of great photos of that city, its downtown and some of its historic urban neighbourhoods. / A bit of miscellany: check out Places for People and Streetwise Magazine, the latter offering lots of urban issues articles for a small fee. Similarily the Sustainable Communities Network has information on sustainable urban communities. Lastly, and somewhat unrelated, take a look at Beirut City Plan for an urban design and anthropological look at Lebanon's major city.

Chinese New Year
Posted 27 January, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
Happy Chinese New Year to all of you! This is the perfect excuse to go down to your local Chinatown(s) and check out the festivities, learning more about Chinese culture while you're at it (don't forget to gain an intimate knowledge of Chinese desserts, too). If you don't know what the New Year is, check out this site for more information. The New Year started on January 24th, but celebrations will continue until tomorrow night. This is a photo I took yesterday of preparations for the annual New Year trade show in the Calgary Chinese Cultural Centre, and this is a plaque in the centre that details various Chinese beliefs. / I was browsing through a bookstore today when I found Douglas Coupland's City of Glass, a new book on Vancouver. It is a collection of the author's reflections on his favourite city, usually talking about local quirks or landmarks with the wit that makes Coupland such a great writer. Check it out at a bookshop near you or better yet, buy it through chapters.ca and earn this site some money while you're at it. / As the Boston Globe reported this past Thursday, a Boston-area public radio show will focus on Worcester, MA's skid row. The series, called "Neighbourhood in Transition", will debut Friday, February 2nd at 6:30pm ET on WICN 90.5 FM in the Boston area. The majority of you outside New England can listen to the program live on the internet at wicn.org. / Browsing the web the other night I found a series the Toronto-based Globe and Mail has run called Family Matters. Despite the cheesy name, the series is quite interesting, focusing on Canadian families in three locations across the country: the urban Plateau in Montréal, the urban Danforth in Toronto and the suburban Chinook Park in Calgary. I found it interesting that two of the neighbourhoods were very lively and urban places, a good sign that families are increasingly finding homes in high-density neighbourhoods. Speaking of families in urban areas, I implore you to head down to a bookstore and hunt for Mordecai Richler's The Street. A short account of his childhood in Montreal's Jewish Mile-End in the 1940s, it gives a vivid portrayal of urban life in the mid-century in a mere night's read.

Sydney
Posted 25 January, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
As most of you probably saw during last September's Olympic games, Sydney is enjoying a period of prosperity and a spotlight on the world stage. Needless to say there's lots happening around town. To start off, some old news about an historic district being created in Parramatta, one of Sydney's largest and most self-contained suburbs. Read the story here. Some aerial photos of Sydney's north shore can be found here at the Skyscraper Forum, and the forum's City Issues section contains many Sydney threads. The City of Sydney has an official website, but here's an interesting fact: just around 30,000 people live in Sydney city (up from 7,500 in 1991) because the city is actually only the CBD or downtown area. All the other neighbourhoods in Sydney are independent municipalities. King's Cross, one of the more famous suburbs, has its own website. More Sydney info can be found at Lonely Planet's guide to the city. / Some Toronto information now: check out the official website of the Corktown neighbourhood, an historic part of the city's east side. More Toronto neighbourhood descriptions and info can be found at Toronto Neighbourhoods. Also, check out pictures of the destruction of the east end of the city's Gardiner Expressway, which was destroyed to help revive the portlands. Thanks to Mike Binetti for that link. / Martin O'Malley, the mayor of Baltimore, took a trip to New York City on Tuesday to promote his city's urban rebirth. For a Maryland perspective on the visit, check out the Baltimore Sun's coverage and for a New York perspective, look at the NY Daily News' coverage.

Edmonton LRT extension
Posted 19 January, 2001 by Chris DeWolf - Back to the top
An extension of the southern leg of Edmonton's train system is set to begin construction. Currently the light rail network extends from the city's residential and industrial northeast, underground through downtown and across the river to the University of Alberta. More information on this extension can be found at the unofficial Edmonton South LRT site. Also be sure to look at the official Edmonton Transit System site. Underway in Edmonton's southern neighbour, Calgary, is a similar extension of the city's three train lines. More information on that as well as other proposed developments can be seen in the Calgary Transportation Plan. / Camden, New Jersey is known to most people as the decaying city across from Philadelphia. However, like any city it has its advantages and own private beauty. Learn more about Camden at BJ Swartz's Camden Page. / Some information on Seoul, South Korea can be found at the city's Seoul Focus page; also be sure to check out their small photo gallery. More Seoul photos and information can be found in this thread at the Skyscraper Forum. / The so-called "founder" of New Urbanism, Peter Katz, has compiled a list of America's ten most underrated cities for the Utne Reader; see it here. Also available through that article are other entries in the magazine's "Soul in the City" series. / Yesterday I recieved a message on the Canadian Transit News email discussion list mentioning the Paris bus No. 38's website. The site is authored by some of the drivers of the number 38 bus line in the city of Paris, complete with tips on how to enjoy your transit ride and profiles of the line's bus drivers. Check out the official RATP page for a blander but broader view of Paris transit; railfans and transit affictionados should take a look at nycsubway.org's guide to the Paris Metro.

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