Archive for June, 2010
Monday, June 21st, 2010
I spent the past week in Boston and noticed that most streets – whether in Boston, Brookline, or Cambridge (the three municipalities I spent time in) – were either relatively tree-less or had undersized trees. While there are many streets that have some trees, and while there are some neighborhoods that approach leafy-ness, I’ll go […]
Filed under: cities, green, land_use. |
Tags: amenities, trees, urban_forest
| 10 Comments »
Sunday, June 20th, 2010
Is the Worst Already True, the BP Well Now Unstoppable? | Mother Jones Frightening post that quotes extensively from a forum where oil engineers and geologists post their analyses of the Gulf oil disaster. One forumer, dougr, posts an especially grim picture. Excerpt: QUOTE I am convinced the erosion and compromising of the entire system […]
Filed under: links. |
| 1 Comment »
Saturday, June 19th, 2010
Last day in Boston, spent most around Harvard Square in Cambridge. Came across some interesting street buskers – varied, different, fresh. (For each group, click on the image to go to Youtube clip I shot.) First up, two young guys (age 17), the drummer (unfortunately obscured in my little film clip) banging rather well on […]
Filed under: street_life. |
Tags: buskers, harvard_square, street_musicians
| Comments Off on Street music
Friday, June 18th, 2010
This afternoon I went to see Headgear: The Natural History of Horns and Antlers at the Harvard Museum of Natural History. Interesting exhibition – I was enjoying myself until I wandered into one of the other sections, a special exhibit called Climate Change: Our Global Experiment. I learned a couple of things – for example, […]
Filed under: green. |
Tags: china, climate_change, harvard, headgear
| Comments Off on Exceptional, or just top-heavy?
Thursday, June 17th, 2010
Tonight I saw a most impressive example of adaptive re-use in built form: the former Charles Street Jail, next to MGH (Massachusetts General Hospital) on the banks of the River Charles, turned into a stunning luxury hotel (the Liberty) that looks for all the world like a Jeunesse dorée hotspot. Here’s a link to the […]
Filed under: architecture, heritage, johnson street bridge. |
Tags: adaptive_reuse, boston
| 2 Comments »
Wednesday, June 16th, 2010
This is not a Christo-wrapped art work, it’s a botched development project: . ^ A photo I took today: the back of Vornado’s stalled project in Boston’s Downtown Crossing (wrote about it earlier, here). Stunningly ugly, isn’t it? Not like a wrapped Reichstag at all. Just goes to show that there’s art, and then there’s […]
Filed under: architecture, urbanism. |
Tags: boston, filenes, retail, vornado
| Comments Off on Not a wrap
Tuesday, June 15th, 2010
I’ve said it before – I don’t have “TV” at home, so I don’t “get” TV (and what I mean by that is this: I watch things of special interest on the internet; I get my news via the internet; and I scan several different local news sources to stay up-to-date on local issues: that’s […]
Filed under: just_so. |
Tags: boston, tv
| 7 Comments »
Monday, June 14th, 2010
An observation, yesterday: Every single taxi at the downtown Victoria BC ferry terminal to Seattle was a Prius. Practically new. But when you get to the US – say, Seattle – the state of your cab is a crap-shoot. It may be a beat-up old car, it may be newer, it may be (as mine […]
Filed under: just_so. |
Tags: taxis
| Comments Off on Taxi status
Sunday, June 13th, 2010
Putting the Livability Agenda Back in Place « Project for Public Spaces – Placemaking for Communities Density / livability doesn’t have a singular form. Think choices instead: QUOTE Livability is about choices, and if you want to pay four to five dollars a gallon to drive ten miles, you should have that right. But you […]
Filed under: links. |
| Comments Off on The Sunday Diigo Links Post (weekly)