urban
Around Kassel
Much of Kassel was destroyed in the war so there are three distinct kinds of buildings in the city: the first are the pre-War buildings which are made with brick and are more earth toned in color. These appear to be from the late 19th century and if you look closely you can see the scars in the stone work from the bombings. The second are the buildings that were rebuilt after the war. Everyone has the same decorative style but they use stucco instead of brick for the body of the building which gives them an almost plasticy feel, like these were mass produced knock offs (which in fact they were). The last kind of buildings are the modern ones. These range from classic Bauhause to poor-man’s Bauhause, from Soviet housing blocks to elegant towers-in-the-park. All these buildings are built literally right next to one another, seemingly everywhere. It makes for quite the juxtaposition.
Las Vegas followup video
A quick follow up to the Las Vegas 25 years post, this is a video from Current TV about the quick decline of Las Vegas in this recession.
Unbuilt Robert Moses Highway Maps
I present my Google Maps version of the proposed Lower Manhattan Expressway and Mid Manhattan Expressways. Now there have been maps showing these proposed highways before (they are included in my Unbuilt Highways Map of NYC) but the point of doing it up to look like a Google Map was to put these highways in a modern context (also I’m sure there are plenty of people who didn’t even know about these). We have become so accustomed to viewing the world through Google Maps (or some other online mapping software) that I feel like these maps are starting to shape our view point of the city.
21st Century City: A New Geography
There is a great article in the March 2009 edition of The Atlantic by Richard Florida entitled “How the Crash Will Reshape America“. The article looks at how certain cities, notably New York, Charlotte, Detroit, and Las Vegas, have been shaped by the development patterns of the last 50 years and where the cities [...]
