12.31.2007

Best of the Urblogosphere: 2007 Round-Up

I went back through all of the Weekend Reading posts from the past year and pulled what I thought were the very best of the best. I've divided things up into two categories: General Urbanism and Place-Specific posts. Descriptions of the selections are followed by their date on which they originally appeared in WR.

GENERAL URBANISM
ITEM ONE: BLDGBLOG on "terrestrial reorganization" during WWII. (April 20)

ITEM TWO: Celsias on why designing cities around cars is such a terrible idea. (May 18)

ITEM THREE: Harvey Feldspar's city-hopping geoblog of the future, from Wired's examination of the future of our mobile society. (June 29)

ITEM FOUR: London architecture criticHugh Pearman on the Tate's megacities exhibit -- a stunning critique of contemporary starchitecture. (July 14)

ITEM FIVE: This Airoots post explores a fascinating artist's village in Mumbai. Organic urbanism at its best. (August 24)

ITEM SIX: NY Mag sets the record straight on Jane Jacobs' legacy. (September 28)

ITEM SEVEN: The Next American City features an article about how violent foreign policy creates more violence at home. (October 12)

ITEM EIGHT: City of Sound reexamines cities as destructive systems. (November 2)

ITEM NINE: Fabulous imagery of re-imagined slums via Subtopia. (December 7)

ITEM TEN: Spacing Wire features this beautiful and concise argument for humanism in the environmental movement. (December 14)


PLACE-SPECIFIC
ITEM ONE: A New York Times feature on the evolution of Curitiba into a poster child for good urbanism. (May 25)

ITEM TWO: Built Environment Blog takes a bike ride through ever-fascinating Brooklyn. (June 1)

ITEM THREE: The Economist goes back to Beijing. (August 24)

ITEM FOUR: Fabulous article from Frieze on the Brazilian megacity of São Paulo. (August 31)

ITEM FIVE: The Lincoln Institute explores post-apartheid Johannesburg. (October 5)

ITEM SIX: BLDGBLOG's rather infamous paean to the wonders of Los Angeles. (October 19)

ITEM SEVEN: More great stuff from Spacing: an Angelino's take on Toronto's messy urbanism. (October 19)

ITEM EIGHT: And finally, an Airoots post on the architectural wonderland of Tokyo's retail scene. (December 7)


If there are any of these that you missed the first time around, I urge you to take a look...they're great reading, start to finish. Have a wonderful, safe, and happy new year! See you in 2008.

(Photo from Non-Photography.com. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

Urbanffffinds 011










12.28.2007

WEEKEND READING: December 21-28, 2007

Check back on Monday for a round-up of the past year's most interesting Weekend Reading Items. But for now, check out the current crop:

ITEM ONE: WorldChanging on the importance of voluntary simplicity. The article is not directly about cities, but the ideas that it presents are certainly integral to the reimagining of cities as sustainable places.

ITEM TWO: AHI's blog examines a decidedly different vision for the city of the future.

ITEM THREE: Jay Walljasper's new blog, The Ecopolitan, kicks off at National Geographic's site.

ITEM FOUR: TNAC on The Independent's recent list that names London as the current World Capital.

ITEM FIVE: GPS message-in-a-bottle locative art. Pretty cool stuff.

ITEM SIX: The City Room on Hollywood's fascination with the destruction of New York, which Ed Koch cheekily refers to as "edifice envy."

ITEM SEVEN: Lots of dreamy, really wonderful images of the UK over at BLDGBLOG - like the one pictured above.

Have a wonderful weekend, everyone!

12.26.2007

The Suburbanization of Walt Disney World

"It was really nice. I loved being able to walk around to everything and not have to worry about traffic or parking. We could just leave the hotel and catch a bus and ride it right to the parks, and then if we wanted to go somewhere else we could take the monorail. Everything was just really easy to get to."

That is an (imperfectly reproduced) comment from my mom during a conversation we had about y family's recent trip to Walt Disney World in Orlando, Florida. I've been home for the holidays, and it was the first chance I'd had to really hear about their trip. It's certainly not the first time they've been to WDW -- in fact, it was their fourth (I was along for the first two trips, for the record). But this time -- and I have a feeling that blogging over this past year had something to do with this -- I found renewed interest in hearing about the same parks I'd visited and heard described so many times before.

What struck me, as you may have already guessed, was how very...urban WDW sounded in her description. For those who aren't familiar with the resort, the Disney corporation's largest theme park is located on a sprawling megalot southwest of Orlando. Four theme parks, three water parks, a huge shopping center, golf courses, a sports complex, and an obscene number of hotels are sprinkled around this huge land reserve, with everything of interest to tourists being conveniently connected to public transit. Well, "public" for paying resort guests.

WDW is often considered a poster child for the kind of dull, controlled, paternalistic environments that urbanists rail against. The word "Disneyfication" refers to a renovation which scrubs up and de-authenticates an existing place. Disney is soulless, and its theme parks are the most blatant manifestation of this. There is a megalomaniacal insistence -- nearly palpable when you're visiting the parks -- that your every move is being anticipated and manipulated.

Still, there are some interesting parallels between these theme parks and the urban environment. The walkability and transit connectivity certainly mimic the benefits of urban areas. There is also a diversity of experience that is often lacking in suburban places. As mentioned above, Disney is extremely careful to make sure that you only see and hear what they want you to see and hear in their parks, but that is not to say that there aren't variables in what you decide to do and see. In a way, this is true of all cities. Cities offer a wider range of experiences than a theme park, but there is always a limit on what you can see and do, whether they are legal, physical or otherwise. You can't climb a mountain in Chicago; the city is as flat as paper.

It was interesting, then, to hear that Disney had implemented yet another constraint on guests' experiential variety and the experience of some very loyal guests -- the 'rents, again -- had been less satisfied with their overall experience. While they still had a great time, the resort's new pre-paid meal plan system was apparently taking some of the excitement out of this already super-controlled environment. Mom again:

"With the meal plan, you have to reserve your spot in a lot of restaurants, especially for dinner. We saw a lot of people getting turned away from restaurants because they were booked up months in advance. It used to be fun, when we'd go, to be able to just walk around and enjoy the park and, if we found a place that looked interesting, just eat there. Now, you have to book your meals 180 days in advance, which isn't as exciting."

In an effort to make things easier for guests, Disney has actually made their parks a little less pleasant. Especially with a theme park, controlling a guest's experience of a place -- through as many of the five senses as possible -- is important to creating a memorable themed experience. But if there is too much effort on the part of the party controlling that experience, it can actually be detrimental to the guest's overall impression. It's a delicate balance that urban designers and planners could likely learn from. For certainly, the same thing must apply to cities. So how much of a city should be controlled (through zoning, height restrictions, traffic controls, and other legislation) and how much should be left up to residents to shape? Cities are a much more participatory place than theme parks; this only makes this question of balance more important.

12.23.2007

Urbanffffinds 010

I had to venture out into a small blizzard to find a wi-fi spot for this week's Urbanffffinds. Now that's dedication!









Have a happy holidays, everyone. Where will be back on December 26th.

12.21.2007

WEEKEND READING: December 15-21, 2007


Welcome back to another Weekend Reading session, everybody! We have another good batch this week, but if you've only got a little time, make sure to check out Items One and Two.

ITEM ONE: A spectacular piece in The Walrus' Cities Special Issue on suburbia, commute times, and the economics of happiness. Don't miss this one!

ITEM TWO: Simmons Buntin, founder of Terrain, blogs at TNAC on the role of beer in creating the urban-rural society.

ITEM THREE: Some interesting musings on gentrification from a recent transplant to Brooklyn.

ITEM FOUR: Airoots on high-rise squatting in Mumbai.

ITEM FIVE: Megacities all over the world are starting their own climate change initiatives, including one Cuban city that's using horse-drawn carriages for mass transit!

ITEM SIX: The Economist on the Bali climate talks.

ITEM SEVEN: Planning a trip to Rotterdam this February? Make sure to check out The Mobile City conferrence on the 27-28th.

While I have your attention, I want to mention that I've just started blogging over at The Next American City's blog, The Street. I'll be covering all things related to leisure and public life in American cities. If you're interested, you can check out my first post here.

(Photo from Flickr user sarako. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

12.20.2007

Welcome to Lagos...



I'm cheating tonight and throwing up a video. It's a good one, though. Enjoy!

12.19.2007

Chicago vs. Pittsburgh: Conclusion

Tonight's post is the last of three in a blogging debate, in which Jim Russell of The Burgh Diaspora, who guest posted at Where last month, and I will discuss the relationship between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and which city relies more heavily on the other.

After Monday and Tuesday's conversation between Where and The Burgh Diaspora, Richard Florida became an impromptu (but welcome) third party to the debate; responding to my conjecture from yesterday and Dr. Florida's musings on Chicago's inherent geographical disadvantages in the globalized marketplace, Jim Russell came up with the following nugget of vocabularial wonder:

"Pittsburgh's bet on Chicago might be a bad one. The network economy springing from the migration of human capital could result in a cul-de-sac for global connectivity...both cities should seek to diversify their connectivity portfolios. No city is a standalone cash cow. Chicago is not a world onto Pittsburgh, nor should it be." (Emphasis added)

Tonight, we wrap up the "blog duel" with some conclusions; what have we learned from this exchange?

The concept of the "cul-de-sac for global connectivity" strikes me as a key takeaway here. The world has always, to some extent, operated regionally. The size of the regions that we are expected to follow and respond to has changed dramatically over the course of human history; where mankind's regional interests were once tied directly to the changing seasons and animal migration patterns, we now take in news at all times from across the globe. We belong to multiple tribes that move in different directions, at different speeds. We follow our neighborhood, our state or territory, our country, and our specialized circles of interest around the world.

But as cities become more closely woven through globalization, it is regionalism that becomes a threat to places like Chicago. I found Dr. Florida's suggestion that Chicago maintains no global geographic advantage particularly interesting because that very point highlights the exact problem posed by the rise of the global city: it has become very easy, in contemporary culture, to assume the inevitability of places like Chicago, which have in fact gained their prominence for very regional reasons. The loss of importance of physical regions and the diminished need for literal proximity represent a very basic but worldview-altering paradigm shift; Chicago is important in terms of American and especially Midwestern economics -- it rose as the transportation and distribution hub of the country -- but without increased efforts toward economic and connectivity diversity, it might just wind up as the Pittsburgh of the global megacity hierarchy.

Thanks again to Jim Russell for proposing this week's debate. Make sure to check out The Burgh Diaspora -- a must not just for Pittsburghers, but for anyone interested in learning more about diasporic networks in the global urban age.

(Photo found on FFFFOUND!. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Chi-Pitts Globalization (The Burgh Diaspora)

Chi-Pitts, or Vice-versa (Richard Florida and the Creative Class Exchange)

Diasporas, In and Out (Richard Florida and the Creative Class Exchange)

12.18.2007

Chicago vs. Pittsburgh: Round 2

Tonight's post is the second of three in a blogging debate, in which Jim Russell of The Burgh Diaspora, who guest posted at Where last month, and I will discuss the relationship between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and which city relies more heavily on the other.

Yesterday and today, in arguing Pittsburgh's heavier reliance on Chicago, The Burgh Diaspora made the following points:

(1) "Pittsburghers are using their extended network and doing all the heavy lifting concerning the connectivity between the two cities. On the other hand, I suspect that a Chicago located firm looking for opportunity discovers Pittsburgh through Pittsburghers, not via transplants to the City of Bridges."

(2) "Chicago needs the talent developed in Pittsburgh...However, Chicago is also an impressive producer of human capital. If Chicago retained all of its local graduates, then would the city need Pittsburgh at all? Like Pittsburgh, Chicago's research universities are world class. Furthermore, Chicago attracts global human capital in ways Pittsburgh has not...Chicago does not actively seek Pittsburgh talent, but Pittsburghers still move there as a result of established migration patterns[.]"

But these two passages, when read together, play off each other in a way that suggests that Chicago's reliance on Pittsburgh and other domestic second-tier cities plays a very major role in Chicago's establishing itself as a global city in the first place.

Let's start by looking at the second statement. Assuming that it were able to retain the talent developed at universities like U of Chicago, Northwestern, Loyola, and UIC, Chicago would indeed be sitting pretty. So would Pittsburgh, if it were able to retail all of the graduates of Pitt, CMU, and Duquense. This is, especially in a fluid global economy, impossible. As sociologists have recently documented, a new phase is being added to the life cycle for young people in developed countries: the odyssey. Young people have a tendency, once they have their diploma in hand, to strike out into the world, seeking their proverbial fortunes.

This creates a diasporic network of people across the country and the world with strong roots in a community other than they one in which they are living. As its title suggests, this is exactly what The Burgh Diaspora covers in depth: Pittsburgh's diasporic population, often considered to be one of the most extensive such networks. This is where cities like Pittsburgh, Cleveland, and Milwaukee, traditionally viewed as demographic "losers," gain a foothold. As the process of globalization continues to make centralization less of a necessity and more of a luxury, second-tier cities not only provide the cheaper business climate than their megacity counterparts (though, ironically, Pittsburgh is currently burdened by byzantine economic policies), they also become the default choice for smaller start-ups, making second-tier cities even more important incubators for the kind of talent needed to keep a megacity economy chugging along.

Back to the first of Burgh Diaspora's points: Pittsburgh's network, now, provides it with a unique opportunity to lift smaller businesses looking for a less overwhelming (read: risky) market in which to develop their product. Pittsburgh is able, through its extended diasporic network in Chicago, to earn free word-of-mouth advertising from its expatriate sons and daughters that could potentially drive these smaller companies east to the Appalachians. In the end, the Pittsburgh market is not as important to Chicago companies as the Chicago market is to Pittsburgh companies; I'll concede this. But in a global marketplace, Chicago's larger companies do need Pittsburgh's smaller ones to stay ahead of the international competition.

(Photo from Flickr user scoobyfoo. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
IntoPittsburgh: Chicago (The Burgh Diaspora)

IntoPittsburgh: Chicago II (The Burgh Diaspora)

12.17.2007

Chicago vs. Pittsburgh: Round 1

Tonight's post is the first of three in a blogging debate, in which Jim Russell of The Burgh Diaspora, who guest posted at Where last month, and I will discuss the relationship between Pittsburgh and Chicago, and which city relies more heavily on the other.

Nowadays, anyone following urbanism, economics, public policy, or related fields will have certainly heard of the theory that we are entering into an age of global urbanism where cities all over the world will be competing directly with each other for talent. Talent, we are told, will be more and more valuable as society becomes more technologically advanced, shifting even more heavily toward an international information economy. What you know, essentially, will become what you're worth. In this economic environment, megacities like Chicago will no longer merely be competing with New York, Washington DC, and San Francisco for talent; soon (already, many would say) Chicago will have to go head to head with London, Paris, Buenos Aires, Cape Town, Mumbai, Tokyo, Shanghai, Sydney, and on and on.

This is a fairly logical progression of events. The major city has always acted as a magnet throughout its history in human civilization. People come to the city to get a job, to prove themselves, to make their fortune. The individual reasons are myriad, but the inspiration is the same: people come to the city to improve their quality of life. It doesn't always work out that way, but that's the basic impetus. Chicago, then, has long needed Pittsburgh -- and other cities like it -- to sustain itself. The larger the city, the more daunting it is to dream-chasers and immigrants. Medium-sized cities, then, are a prime source of population for larger cities.

Without Pittsburgh, in the literal sense, Chicago would not crumble and blow away; to think so would be naive. But Pittsburgh is a part of a group of cities that, together, have allowed Chicago to experience its recent -- and rather stunning -- revival over the past two decades. As post-industrial Western megacities like Chicago, New York, or London began to try to pick themselves up after losing manufacturing jobs in the 1970s and 80s, they began to rely on what you could call innovation-intensive fields like biomedicine, design, information technology, and (of course) the arts. These are highly specialized fields, and ones that many traditional middle class workers were not trained or educated to particpate in. Megacities, then, needed to draw in new talent from surrounding smaller cities.

Here's where Pittsburgh gets the upper hand over Chicago. As a mid-sized city, Pittsburgh is large enough to provide a genuinely urban lifestyle while not overwhelming the newcomer. As a bonus, the city also happens to be an important center of higher education, with two of the nation's best colleges (U of Pitt and Carnegie-Mellon) located in the Oakland neighborhood of the city. Generationally speaking, this works in the city's favor because it becomes an excellent place for people to move from a smaller city to start a family, where the parents can take advantage of the lower cost of living and provide for their kids, who can then more easily take advantage of nearby educational resources. Pittsburgh is, for all intents and purposes, a creative class factory.

This happens around the country. Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Cincinnati, Milwaukee, Minneapolis, Saint Louis -- all of these mid-sized cities have traditionally fed job-seekers into Chicago. Today, the competition is national, and Chicago draws more than ever from Seattle, Portland, San Antonio, Birmingham, San Diego, Denver, et. al. As the stakes are raised in coming decades, Bordeaux, Liverpool, Fortaleza, Adelaide, Fukuoka, Busan, Medellin, and Alexandria will all enter the mix. And not in the sense of traditional immigration, which creates ethnic communities, but in the sense of global creative class migration, which could create massive gentrified (or at least economically stable), internationally diverse areas in cities around the world.

Western society already operates as a sort of imperfect meritocracy. As this becomes more true, Chicago will need places like Pittsburgh more and more as it works to maintain and build its competitive creative core. Pittsburghers have the option to stay put; Chicago needs to convince them not to. It has to prove, however possible, that it can provide a better life. The burden lies with larger city.

(Photo from Flickr user -Nicole-. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
The Burgh Diaspora

12.16.2007

Urbanffffinds 009









US Election 08: The Mayors Speak

The Nation and the Drum Major Institute for Public Policy recently did a video-survey of big-city mayors across the US to find out what they thought about the current state of the US and its cities, the current presidential administration, and the 2008 that's now in full swing here in the States. Of the ten mayors surveyed, all have interesting things to say, but there are two issues that get an especially high level of attention. They are:

1) Urban crime problems -- or, more specifically in many cases, gun control and illegal drugs.
2) The need for a presidential administration that takes cities seriously, as opposed to the standoffish relationship established by the Bush White House, which the mayors almost universally decry, outright.


What this seems to suggest is that day-to-day life for most Americans has little or nothing to do with the "hot-button" issues that presidential candidates are so concerned about. Abortion, gay marriage, and the Iraq war, while all important in their own ways, are by no means the issues that have the greatest impact on this country, yet they receive a greatly disproportionate amount of attention in the media because they are easily polarized issues, and thus much easier to sell. Meanwhile, people struggle every day with crime, education, drugs, and economic issues that go largely unaddressed.

At least, that's what the people in charge at the local level are saying. And how many people do you know that live their lives internationally, or even nationally for that matter?

Many of the mayors interviewed in the series speak fondly of the work they are doing as a part of the US Conference of Mayors, a group that has only increased in importance as the Bush Administration as proven itself to be utterly incapable of remembering that there is an actual country full of people that they are trying to "defend" with their wars overseas. What is especially interesting is how several mayors commented explain the stark difference between the ways that the Clinton and Bush administrations dealt with the USCoM: Clinton met with each mayor individually and attended group sessions, while GW has dropped in on a handful of meetings.

The videos each run about 4-5 minutes, and the series is worth an hour of your time. If you only have a few minutes, try one of the following, which I found to be highlights:

"Frankly, the Federal government has become largely irrelevant to most of the significant work that we're doing ... My city is stronger because we have different values than the Washington values that have been pushed onto us." -- Minneapolis, MN Mayor T. R. Rybak

"You just do not get a sense that cities are a priority in the current administration, and perhaps not a priority with many of the candidates running ... [With] the lack of investment in our own country and the lack of investment in our cities, in essence we are losing the hearts and minds of the American people." -- Rochester, NY Mayor Bob Duffy

"We shouldn't take for granted that the infrastructure that we built 100 or 75 years ago can withstand the climate shifts, or the economic shifts, can withstand the pressure on that infrastructure forever ... Clearly, we need an urban agenda. We need an agenda the speaks to the issues of where people are congregating for most of their lives, working, living, and learning." -- Atlanta, GA Mayor Shirley Franklin

"Mayors have to be pragmatic, it's part of the job ... Ultimately, I think that's what any presidential agenda has to get to, is the point where we start solving problems instead of just throwing money at them."
-- Denver, CO Mayor John Hickenlooper




Links:
Campaign in the City: Mayors on the Issues (The Nation)

Drum Major Institute for Public Policy

US Conference of Mayors

12.14.2007

WEEKEND READING: December 8-14, 2007

Oh, this is an exciting week. There is a lot of really fantastic reading for you, if you are interested.

ITEM ONE: A short but stunningly effective piece at Spacing Wire on the need for humanism in the environmental movement proves that, sometimes, you really can say the most with the fewest words. It's a must-read.

ITEM TWO: The Burgh Diaspora puts out a call to all Rust Belt bloggers (and citizens).

ITEM THREE: Critical Spatial Practice takes a look at the history of labor struggles in urban America.

ITEM FOUR: Airoots goes gangbusters on Tokyo retail and high-end boutique architecture. This is another must-read.

ITEM FIVE: Does Marseille hold the key to Europe's future? The Smithsonian mag thinks so.

ITEM SIX: David Adjaye's Whitechapel Idea Store gets the Flickr treatment from Life Without Buildings.

ITEM SEVEN: And to finish up this wonderfully weighty edition of WR, a good, old-fashioned traffic joke that will at least inspire a chuckle.

Have a great weekend, and enjoy the reading!

(Photo from Flickr user hampshiregirl. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

12.13.2007

The Dream Remains the Same

A recent post over at TNAC's blog, The Street, suggests that it may be time to change the American Dream. But what is the American Dream, exactly? It's a well-worn turn of phrase (were it a turn in the road, the guardrail might be out from being hit so many times), and while people usually use "American Dream" as slang for "house in 'burbs, lawn, two cars, spouse, 2.5 kids, dog," I would argue very strongly against this interpretation. The American Dream is not about houses or property or ownership -- heck, it's not even about money; it's about "new hopes, new dreams, and a better way of life for the future."

That quote was taken from an animated short produced by the Walt Disney Company in the 1950s. The subject was, surprise surprise, the future of superhighways. The Disney folks imagined a tomorrowland where automobiles provided the ultimate in high-tech freedom and mobility, populations were dispersed over "vast metropolitan regions" and the family unit was supported and enhanced by the great amounts of leisure time left over from avoiding the hassles of urban existence. On top of that, a global system of superhighways was to connect all nations and peoples and increase cross-cultural communication and collaboration. Oh, how glorious it looks on that little YouTube screen.

The present, as we are well aware, looks slightly different. Private vehicles do provide freedom and mobility, in a way...even if much of that free time is spent in the car, staring at a bumper. As a result, we've given up on that whole "extra time with the family" thing; in fact, divorce rates have soared as our population has spread out, stretching marital relationships to their breaking points by removing the basic social frameworks that might allow spouses to have some much-needed time apart outside of the workday (since both work full-time to pay for the oversized McMansion and the two SUVs).

Then again, that scenario is as well-worn as the term "American Dream." Still, the Dream itself is in no need of an overhaul. We would do well, perhaps, to wrestle it out of the arms of marketing-types still using it to pitch the 1-Acre Lots For All, Ford Chevy Ram MegaCharger bullshit. But the American Dream is as honest and straightforward and bright today as it ever was. You can see it in the modern sustainability movement in the same way that you can see it in Disney's adorably retro vision of the superhighways of tomorrow: the American Dream is about change. More specifically, it's about things changing for the better, and about people having the freedom to enjoy and participate in the process of change. Society and culture are driven -- and have always been driven -- by the masses. The dream of a brighter future took the "American" moniker from the fact that the United States was the first modern nation to do away with the European monarchal system. Change will always happen since the people will demand it; the US was one of the earliest countries to make that its raison d'etre.

In the eternal quest for the elusive "brighter tomorrow," we will continue to make mistakes. We will have disasters and wars, and terrible things will happen. People will die, dictators will rise and fall, and the oceans might rise up to claim some of our cities. But we will continue to evolve with the world around us. So the American Dream is in no need of modification. It is always a good idea to stop along the path and shake off some cobwebs, but hope for something better is the essence of what makes us congregate, collaborate, and create.

Cities are based on this principle; at their core, they rely on change. Cities lose buildings and parks and whole districts; much like any living organism, old cells must be shed to make way for the new. While it is sometimes painful, change will always happen, and as the largest, most interactive manifestations of mankind's ambition, cities will have to change for the good and the bad, just like we do. In short, you can't curse the suburbs; you'll just run out of breath. Instead, try to imagine what the next batch could look like. Try to imagine a brighter tomorrow while accepting that the suburbs will be a part of it.

More on this soon, as a review of Paul Lukez's Suburban Transformations is forthcoming.

(Photo from Flickr user brassplayer. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)


Links:
Changing the American Dream (The Streets)

Magic Highway USA (Part IV)

Magic Highway USA Publicity Stills (Paleo-Future)