"Try to remember the verses to your favorite song near an airport while planes are taking off; try to read a novel on top of a highway overpass. You’ll understand why birds struggle."
Climate resilience: Has the time come to start demanding lighter-coloured streets in hotter climates?
At this stage, the challenge with climate change is not just preventing it from happening by cutting emissions. We also need to make our cities resilient to the climate change we've already locked in.
That's where lighter coloured paving for streets, rather than dark asphalt, can help:
"Sebastian Pfautsch doesn't hesitate when asked what he would change first to cool Australian cities in summer.
"And it's not what you might expect. It's not the seemingly endless expanse of black roofs, soaking up the sun beneath a shimmering haze.
"It's the roads. About a third of any outer suburb is thermally dense black asphalt that can reach 75 degrees Celsius, according to Professor Pfautsch, an expert on urban heat at the University of Western Sydney.
...
"Lighter-coloured roads may make intuitive sense, like wearing a white shirt on a hot day, but how effectively do they reduce surface and ambient air temperature?
"In 2020, two separate cool roads trials in Sydney and Adelaide set out to conclusively answer these questions.
"The Sydney trial, which took place at about 10 sites in the Western Sydney suburbs of Blacktown, Campbelltown and Parramatta, recorded an average surface temperature reduction of 5.6C and 2C for day and night respectively.
"For context, tree shade reduced the surface temperatures of roads by 16C."
A mid-century relic of Virginia’s pedestrian infrastructure, next to the church-gas station, is coming down this summer
"One of Rosslyn’s few remaining skywalks is set to come down as part of an effort to realize a walkable corridor from one end of the neighborhood to the other...demolishing a skywalk over N. Nash Street, near the Arlington Temple United Methodist Church building and Sunoco gas station dubbed “Our Lady of Exxon.”
The sooner the #Tories are consigned to the dustbin of history the better...And whilst I'm having a moan, for the love of God, please bring in #ProportionalRepresentation in the UK. Maybe then our #politicians would work harder to actually do what's right for this country & the #environment.
Slide 1. 2023. Me. My arty photo, walking one storey below the rooftop.
Slide 2. 2023. Whatdis. A screenshot from Apple Maps, the blue paint piqued my curiosity!
Slide 3. 1991. Beginnings. Melbourne Central finishes construction. Designed by Kisho Kurokawa from Japan.
Slide 4. Hair. Especially when seeing the city from afar, the Melbourne central office tower reminds me of The Pointy-Haired Boss, looming over the skyline.
Slide 5. 2014. Nike. As part of the Australian Open, Nike collaborates with the centres owner’s GPTgroup on a pop-up tennis court. The first time the empty roof is used.
Slide 6. 2015. Tents. After a short stint Nike packs up and St Jerome’s The Hotel opens up. Considered a success (although only for well heeled patrons), the CBD glamping hotel experience lasts three years.
Slide 7. 2019. Pool. Reunion Island Pool Club opens, a ticketed swimming pool/spa/bar. Another well liked (but how profitable?) venture, twenty thousand visitors enter in it’s five month tenure.
Slide 8. 2019. Reno. GPT Group announce an application has been lodged with City of Melbourne for redevelopment. Designed by ARM Architects, who have returned, having also done the centres first renovation in 2005. It’s to feature a new tall timber structure, as well as more retail, office space, dining and art galleries. It’s slated for a 2021 completion.
2020 - Pandemic. The CBD is hit hard, cultururally as well as economically. The redevelopment never starts, and there are no more updates. Killed by COVID?
Slide 9. 2020. Mural. To keep the space from being completely neglected, GPT Group hire Kitt Benett to cover the space with this mural. Over 100 litres of paint!
No More Freeways, a grassroots and community-funded 501c(3) organization, is raising money to be matched to total roughly $30,000 by the end of 2023, but they're a couple thousand short of their $15,000 goal! Please donate by midnight to help end freeway expansion in the Portland metro area! Oregon desperately needs a transportation revolution.
Few snaps of this old petrol station, before it becomes 8 three story dwellings. Sorry to see the old fixtures go, but excellent to see the feasibility of converting otherwise wasted land. Although good luck goes to the developers: Remediation of these sites can often take years and cost upwards of $1 million. And when the owners of these small, privately owned stations have gone into liquidation (sometimes decades ago!) the cost of cleanup falls to the next site owner. Consequently many of these take a long to sell, becoming wasted land and eye sores in the meantime.
The most dangerous intersections for pedestrians in Bloomington, Indiana.
Red heat is pedestrian crash concentration over 20 years. White stars are pedestrian fatalities. Green roads are non-city-maintained-- mostly Indiana University roads.
I'm planning to create a blog post with more analysis.
Highway Expansion Project Not Approved by California Transportation Commission
"While we're putting passenger vehicles and light duty trucks onto express lanes, we're then creating more capacity for trucks to go on those lanes, but the [environmental analysis assumes] that there will be no more trucks. ...it will and can induce truck traffic. Those truck impacts are ignored"
How Smart Cities Influence Real Estate Investment
Planetizen - December 14, 2023
“By integrating technology and infrastructure, smart cities are attracting investors with their potential for improved quality of life, efficient resource management, and innovative urban development projects.”
I’ve built a dashboard that shows how many km of cycleway infrastructure (and safe streets) there is in every council in Australia using #OpenStreetMap!
It also includes under construction and proposed cycleways along with international comparisons.
Very rough around the edges and may have errors in the #OverpassTurbo queries, but keen to hear your thoughts. PRs welcome!
The Carnoustie Street Facade of the 1890s Scottish Cooperative Wholesale Society building in Glasgow, overshadowed by the access roads and off-ramps for the 1970s Kingston Bridge.
[News] America is becoming a country of YIMBYs (www.cnn.com)
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