When you walk on foot, it’s a 360-degree experience.
New York: A Walkable City – wonderful short documentary from the Everybody Walk initiative. We already know that walkability is a key aspect of what makes a great city.
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London’s explosive population change 1801-2011, in an animated GIF. Compare and contrast with a similar visualization in vintage infographics.
The Guardian data team maps the Twitter languages of NYC – best thing since mapping the dogs of NYC.
Something about cyclists seems to provoke fury in other road users. If you doubt this, try a search for the word “cyclist” on Twitter. As I write this one of the latest tweets is this: “Had enough of cyclists today! Just wanna ram them with my car.” This kind of sentiment would get people locked up if directed against an ethnic minority or religion, but it seems to be fair game, in many people’s minds, when directed against cyclists.
Why all the rage? … My theory is that motorists hate cyclists because they think they offend the moral order.
BBC’s Tom Stafford applies behavioral economics and social psychology to understanding the age-old tension between cyclists and drivers
Alissa Walker takes a tour of LA’s original subway. Complement with the original style manual for the NYC subway.
I finished The Age of Innocence and decided to keep reading as much Wharton as I could, and after awhile, I began to understand what was truly wonderful and great about her work. I realized that when Edith Wharton wrote about New York, she was writing about the New York that she once loved, a New York that she saw vanish as she grew older.
[…]
Wharton’s nostalgia was primarily aesthetic.
Today, when I walk through the neighborhood where young Edith Wharton lived as a child, when I retrace the pathways that gave her a first-hand look at the world that she would eventually commit to paper, I still can’t quite find her exact footsteps. Instead, I stop into nearby Eataly to gaze into the meat case and buy fresh mozzarella. I sometimes take money out of the ATM a few feet away, and every summer find myself drawn to the Shake Shack across the street, inevitably waiting in line for a hot dog and beer to take to watch the US Open on the Madison Square Park big screen. I always take a moment to pause when I’m walking down Twenty-Third to look up and down and try to imagine what it looked like over one hundred fifty years ago. I try and see what Wharton saw; what she loved and what she despised. I try to see the way things were when she was young; the way things were changing as she grew, the way she wanted things to look, and I try to reconcile that with what remains. When I do that, I have an easier time understanding Edith Wharton, her writing, and that little slice of New York I once tried so hard to avoid.
Jason Diamond on Edith Wharton and New York City. Wharton passed away just when photographer Berenice Abbott was beginning to document NYC’s changing face in her iconic black-and-white photos of the 1930s.
Wharton’s Age of Innocence represents New York in this recent selection of 50 great American love stories for 50 states.
We need more bike lanes, because eventually almost everybody grows up
A thoughtful piece on NYC’s bicycle infrastructure, in response to recent ignorant comments that bike lanes are for “woosies.” Tragically, virtually none of New York’s mayoral candidates supports bike lanes.
This is how you can help get more bike lanes in your town. If you’re a pro-cycling New Yorker, you can petition the mayor’s office here.
Rent is too damn high, San Francisco edition – fantastic new tool by Jeff Kaufman renders heatmaps of rent prices in several cities.
Kurt Vonnegut had some thoughts on that.
(↬ Chart Porn)
Amazing Google Maps mashup displaying global light pollution.
Glorious vintage map of a proposed subway system for Los Angeles, 1925, which would’ve taken LA significantly closer to the urbanist ideal of the walkable city.
Fantastic Design Matters interview with design writer and urbanism advocate Alissa Walker, who is on a mission to make Los Angeles – one of the world’s most traffic-laden cities – a mecca for walking and public transportation.
Complement with Walkable City.
