I love this because it demonstrates that the main tenets of good planning, in this case multi-modal transportation, isn't just cool or trendy. It's strategic. It aims to create a better and more functional environment.
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Europe. Show all posts
Thursday, January 26, 2012
Ever better than Muenster cheese...
I love this because it demonstrates that the main tenets of good planning, in this case multi-modal transportation, isn't just cool or trendy. It's strategic. It aims to create a better and more functional environment.
Sunday, August 14, 2011
Stockholm Syndrome
Questor on OKC Talk asked for more Stockholm pictures, so here they are. Now with captions!
Bustling Drottninggatan street in Central Stockholm, a pedestrian shopping mall
A typical side street in Gamla Stan (Old Town)
Inside the Sveriges Riksdag (Swedish Parliament)
Standing in front of the Nobel Institute in Gamla Stan (Old Town)
Busy Hornsgatan street in Sodermalm
Gotgatan street in Sodermalm
Overlooking Gamla Stan (Old Town) from Sodermalm
Skeppsbron Street in Gamla Stan (Old Town)
Bustling Drottninggatan street in Central Stockholm, a pedestrian shopping mall
A typical side street in Gamla Stan (Old Town)
Inside the Sveriges Riksdag (Swedish Parliament)
Standing in front of the Nobel Institute in Gamla Stan (Old Town)
Busy Hornsgatan street in Sodermalm
Gotgatan street in Sodermalm
Overlooking Gamla Stan (Old Town) from Sodermalm
Skeppsbron Street in Gamla Stan (Old Town)
Sunday, June 19, 2011
The news from where I am
Apologies to all who have been checking this blog expecting something new. Currently sailing the Mediterranean in all its glory. What a life, eh? Current location: Dubrovnik, Croatia. Lord Byron was right, it IS the most beautiful place on Earth.
Ciao!
Ciao!
Monday, May 9, 2011
Quick tour around Europe
Thought I would share some photos from a few of my trips thus far, just for those who enjoy the urban photography. Starting in the North...
Stockholm - fashionable, sophisticated, well-planned
Tallinn - charming, historic, modern, contrasting
Helsinki - poorly planned, functionalist, cold
Moscow - monstrously huge, bustling, monumental
Saint-Petersburg - beautiful, artsy, charming, classy
Next-up, Western Europe. Until next time, stay classy Okies.
Stockholm - fashionable, sophisticated, well-planned
Tallinn - charming, historic, modern, contrasting
Helsinki - poorly planned, functionalist, cold
Moscow - monstrously huge, bustling, monumental
Saint-Petersburg - beautiful, artsy, charming, classy
Next-up, Western Europe. Until next time, stay classy Okies.
Tuesday, April 19, 2011
"Eastern Bloc" architecture = bad?
As many know, I've been a ways from OKC lately. Indeed so much has been happening lately, as many decisions are going to be coming to a head here soon. My personal life has mostly consisted of extensive travels across Europe, then returning to the north for 3-4 days at a time to placate my professors, and then departing again. For example, I spent last week in Russia. Moscow is amazing. I got back today and I have 3 days here, leaving Thursday for the Netherlands, where I've already spent quite a bit of time in the last few months. So it's been a busy time for me. Uppsala. Stockholm. Tallinn. Helsinki. Germany. Amsterdam. Copenhagen. And in the last week, Moscow and St. Petersburg.
One of the things I am struck by is the prevalence of so-called "Eastern Bloc" architecture (or more commonly called "Commie Bloc" colloquially) not just in Russia, but everywhere in Europe. Even in Stockholm, in my opinion Europe's most advanced city by a long shot, the "Eastern Bloc" is the prevalent suburban building form. Maybe it's a cold country thing, but just the idea of it doesn't seem very attractive. Likewise, Europeans are often repulsed by the idea of America's cutesy little cookie cutter houses with just enough wasted space to pretend to be landscaped. Considering that's what I grew up in, obviously I'm not repulsed by it, as much as I wish OKC would move beyond that kind of prevailing housing style. It's just the vernacular architecture, as it would be called academically.
It's very unfortunate that I haven't had much time to weigh in on the rapidly moving developments shaping downtown OKC, or even to provide some kind of narrative of my travels on here--though I will start doing that soon, especially when I stay in one place after this upcoming Netherlands weekend trip.. But one thing that's struck me is how the "commie blocs" really aren't that bad. Actually, a lot of them are renovated and fairly nice inside. Most are usually surrounded by parks that are maintained by more than one person, obviously. In effect, imagine if one neighborhood instead bundled all of its front yards and back yards and gardens into one huge green space in front of everyone's front door.
Even in Russia, where sometimes commie bloc suburbs are the slum neighborhoods (compare to American inner cities), many blocs are actually in very desirable neighborhoods. Generally, a Russian city will be comprised about half-and-half of historic center city, architecture often ranges from baroque to art deco, and beyond which are the suburb blocs. Beyond the suburb blocs is a new phenomenon of American-style suburbs, which is surprising to see, but growing very large--indicative of a very large country with rapidly expanding resources and a penchant for flaunting that. As far as the blocs go, they themselves come in many different varieties.
There are Stalin blocs, Krushchev blocs, Brezhnev blocs, and so on. Stalin may have been the most evil man to walk the planet, but at least he hired some impressive architects. Krushchev was the one who really got the ball rolling on blocs in a huge way. Krushchev was a liberal who focused on undoing the damage done by Stalin and embarked on building quality blocs to solve the USSR's housing shortage at the time, with many families still sharing cramped flats in areas that were prime real estate. Brezhnev was a conservative who presided over the USSR at a time with terrible inflation and other economic problems beginning to manifest, and the durability of blocs built under him decreased as the size of the blocs dramatically increased. Brezhnev blocs were built with the intention of replacing them every 30 years, the only problem with that is that the Soviet Union no longer existed when that 30 year timeframe elapsed and now ownership in the blocs is too haphazardly distributed to individuals (in many fmr USSR countries the flats were just handed over to the occupants at the time) to be able to organize massive improvement projects.
So in this sense, I can't help but draw parallels to American suburbs, which are often very temporary structures as well. You build one ring of suburbs, then as that clump of cookie cutters deteriorates over 30 years, the people with the means to do so just move further out while the rest of us are saddled with this problem of unattractive and generally unusable neighborhoods.
Compared to that first ring of suburbs that have since deteriorated in OKC (think inner south side, Del City, NE OKC), do you really think that these blocs in East Berlin look that bad?
These blocs are about as archetypical as you can get, blocky style, square buildings, 5-stories, potentially ghastly colors, etc. They have been well-maintained and renovated, they are in a nice part of East Berlin, granted, but as other areas of Eastern Europe continue to improve, I'm optimistic more and more of these blocs will be renovated as such and probably sold for high rents, as is happening all over Eastern Europe already. Try getting a small studio flat inside Moscow for under $1 Million (actually, it's close to impossible).
Actually, when I see those buildings and others like them, I think that they look kinda cool and urban. They've dressed them up and given that these were actually built along a streetwall reinforcing a great street, for me it is a positive environment. There are probably some very expensive lofts, offices, or galleries in this building. Just think, what kind of adaptive reuse could someone get out of Del City-style neighborhoods?
This design for the Wiggin proposal for the former Mercy Hospital site in Mid-town has been called "Eastern Bloc" architecture. Or actually, I like the OCURA committee report's euphemism for that: "Institutional." Really? It is a blocky building, with edgy urban accents, and brick masonry. If this is "Eastern Bloc" architecture, then all of Bricktown is Eastern Bloc motif. Or, excuse me, I meant to say "institutional."
One of the things I am struck by is the prevalence of so-called "Eastern Bloc" architecture (or more commonly called "Commie Bloc" colloquially) not just in Russia, but everywhere in Europe. Even in Stockholm, in my opinion Europe's most advanced city by a long shot, the "Eastern Bloc" is the prevalent suburban building form. Maybe it's a cold country thing, but just the idea of it doesn't seem very attractive. Likewise, Europeans are often repulsed by the idea of America's cutesy little cookie cutter houses with just enough wasted space to pretend to be landscaped. Considering that's what I grew up in, obviously I'm not repulsed by it, as much as I wish OKC would move beyond that kind of prevailing housing style. It's just the vernacular architecture, as it would be called academically.
It's very unfortunate that I haven't had much time to weigh in on the rapidly moving developments shaping downtown OKC, or even to provide some kind of narrative of my travels on here--though I will start doing that soon, especially when I stay in one place after this upcoming Netherlands weekend trip.. But one thing that's struck me is how the "commie blocs" really aren't that bad. Actually, a lot of them are renovated and fairly nice inside. Most are usually surrounded by parks that are maintained by more than one person, obviously. In effect, imagine if one neighborhood instead bundled all of its front yards and back yards and gardens into one huge green space in front of everyone's front door.
Even in Russia, where sometimes commie bloc suburbs are the slum neighborhoods (compare to American inner cities), many blocs are actually in very desirable neighborhoods. Generally, a Russian city will be comprised about half-and-half of historic center city, architecture often ranges from baroque to art deco, and beyond which are the suburb blocs. Beyond the suburb blocs is a new phenomenon of American-style suburbs, which is surprising to see, but growing very large--indicative of a very large country with rapidly expanding resources and a penchant for flaunting that. As far as the blocs go, they themselves come in many different varieties.
There are Stalin blocs, Krushchev blocs, Brezhnev blocs, and so on. Stalin may have been the most evil man to walk the planet, but at least he hired some impressive architects. Krushchev was the one who really got the ball rolling on blocs in a huge way. Krushchev was a liberal who focused on undoing the damage done by Stalin and embarked on building quality blocs to solve the USSR's housing shortage at the time, with many families still sharing cramped flats in areas that were prime real estate. Brezhnev was a conservative who presided over the USSR at a time with terrible inflation and other economic problems beginning to manifest, and the durability of blocs built under him decreased as the size of the blocs dramatically increased. Brezhnev blocs were built with the intention of replacing them every 30 years, the only problem with that is that the Soviet Union no longer existed when that 30 year timeframe elapsed and now ownership in the blocs is too haphazardly distributed to individuals (in many fmr USSR countries the flats were just handed over to the occupants at the time) to be able to organize massive improvement projects.
So in this sense, I can't help but draw parallels to American suburbs, which are often very temporary structures as well. You build one ring of suburbs, then as that clump of cookie cutters deteriorates over 30 years, the people with the means to do so just move further out while the rest of us are saddled with this problem of unattractive and generally unusable neighborhoods.
Compared to that first ring of suburbs that have since deteriorated in OKC (think inner south side, Del City, NE OKC), do you really think that these blocs in East Berlin look that bad?
These blocs are about as archetypical as you can get, blocky style, square buildings, 5-stories, potentially ghastly colors, etc. They have been well-maintained and renovated, they are in a nice part of East Berlin, granted, but as other areas of Eastern Europe continue to improve, I'm optimistic more and more of these blocs will be renovated as such and probably sold for high rents, as is happening all over Eastern Europe already. Try getting a small studio flat inside Moscow for under $1 Million (actually, it's close to impossible).
Actually, when I see those buildings and others like them, I think that they look kinda cool and urban. They've dressed them up and given that these were actually built along a streetwall reinforcing a great street, for me it is a positive environment. There are probably some very expensive lofts, offices, or galleries in this building. Just think, what kind of adaptive reuse could someone get out of Del City-style neighborhoods?
This design for the Wiggin proposal for the former Mercy Hospital site in Mid-town has been called "Eastern Bloc" architecture. Or actually, I like the OCURA committee report's euphemism for that: "Institutional." Really? It is a blocky building, with edgy urban accents, and brick masonry. If this is "Eastern Bloc" architecture, then all of Bricktown is Eastern Bloc motif. Or, excuse me, I meant to say "institutional."
Thursday, March 24, 2011
Neat idea from Helsinki..
Well, I was in Helsinki this last weekend. The above "!" doesn't exactly convey the level of my enthusiasm for Helsinki..To be honest, I was pretty underwhelmed and unimpressed, and that's even considering my expectations weren't all that high. But it was a fascinating trip from an urban design standpoint, since there are so many interesting things that they've done successful and so many enormous planning blunders that I think they've made. All in all, not really a well-planned city to be honest. In fact it's probably Europe's version of Oklahoma City. But it does have a beautiful city center.
In said beautiful city center is a really fascinating idea: they have a permanent urban planning exhibition center where they have 4 really cool things:
1. An exhibit of urban planning in the Finland-Estonia region, which surprisingly has a lot of really interesting modern architecture.
2. A huge-scale aerial of the city mapping large development projects, showing a cohesive masterplan for the entire city.
3. Literature available for all of the big urban planning projects, to inform citizens of urban planning. Literature is available in Finnish, Swedish, Russian, English, and more.
4. City of Helsinki staff on hand (sitting at an actual desk) to answer questions about urban planning and talk to citizens, take suggestions, etc.
At the very least, it would be nice to have a total downtown masterplan in City Hall that shows Project 180, Devon, streetcar, convention center, Core 2 Shore, central park, Oklahoma River, and countless other major improvements. Something like this:
And of course, I can't help it but to make some sort of band reference:
Who on earth would draw lyrical-musical inspiration from the architecture in Helsinki?? Schiza! That is a very spartan reference indeed.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
Greetings from Tram-sterdam
Just got back from a 4-day weekend in Amsterdam, which was absolutely amazing. What an incredible city. What an incredible test tube for urbanism. It's hard not to be interested in the trams from an American standpoint at this point in time, with so many cities wanting to adopt modern streetcar, and it's so easy to be quickly overwhelmed by the size and scope of some of these European transit systems. Amsterdam's trams..just wow. Unfortunately my camera died on my second day, but here's one photo:
Keep in mind, that Amsterdam is possibly one of the world's most famous cities for transit, but it's not the trams that earned it that reputation: it's bicycles. The city is the most bicycle-friendly place in the world, and it goes without saying you haven't experiences Amsterdam until you've spent an entire day on bike.
The tram system actually reminds me of a significantly enhanced version of the Toronto streetcar, with an intense network of mostly linear tram lines:
[Might have to open the pic in a new window to get to see it] So it's amazing that a city of about 800,000 people has all of these tram lines (granted at any given time tourists clearly outnumber locals). It's also amazing that it supports this in addition to a highly-developed underground metro system, commuter trains to other close-in regional cities, elevated rail similar to Chicago (they call theirs "the tube"), the bicycle-centric focus, and even the canals and River Amstel serve a transit function. It's truly a transit city. Not to mention so many areas in the Centre Ring are pedestrian-only.
I think perhaps all of these modes of transit have grown up around each other. At first it might appear to be a lot of competition for ridership--are the Dutch really that "on the move"? But then you realize, the simple fact is that having a car in Amsterdam is a nightmare! I saw it first-hand several times in the Centre Ring, and never more than when I saw a taxi trying to squeeze in with the bicycles and pedestrians through a crowded bridge a block from a busy weekend market in De Jordaan. Cars in Amsterdam simply go against the laws of physics.
Now obviously, this is not the case in any American city except perhaps NYC, and even NYC is packed full of too many cars. But the point still stands: there is no competition for ridership in a true transit-centered environment, as long as the different modes of transit each serve a real purpose. If Amsterdam was not the bicycle haven that it is, would the tram system be as well-used? Probably not. Would the commuter trains or even the inter-city trains to Den Haag and Utrecht be as heavily-utilized? Probably not.
Lesson that OKC can take from Amsterdam: In order for big-time streetcar utilization to work successfully, grow as many different complementary modes at once. This is why Project 180 coinciding with the streetcar timeline is actually an enormous opportunity, not a duplication of efforts. The city needs to do a lot to expand basic walkability and human access, including a real bicycle strategy that doesn't just involve the system of scenic park trails. That's not really what we need...
I see no reason OKC couldn't use a system of bicycle roads. Bicycle-only intersections, even bicycle round-abouts. Special bicycle lights at each intersection, some busier intersections even with dedicated bicycle left-turn lanes. Or at the very least, sidewalks on every street, that are actually usable. That would be a good start, even if it's just in the inner city! Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself here and forgetting just how many 100s of years OKC is behind other cities in terms of basic sidewalk infrastructure. It is beyond embarrassing.
One great phrase you will never hear in OKC: Lekker fietstocht!
Keep in mind, that Amsterdam is possibly one of the world's most famous cities for transit, but it's not the trams that earned it that reputation: it's bicycles. The city is the most bicycle-friendly place in the world, and it goes without saying you haven't experiences Amsterdam until you've spent an entire day on bike.
The tram system actually reminds me of a significantly enhanced version of the Toronto streetcar, with an intense network of mostly linear tram lines:
[Might have to open the pic in a new window to get to see it] So it's amazing that a city of about 800,000 people has all of these tram lines (granted at any given time tourists clearly outnumber locals). It's also amazing that it supports this in addition to a highly-developed underground metro system, commuter trains to other close-in regional cities, elevated rail similar to Chicago (they call theirs "the tube"), the bicycle-centric focus, and even the canals and River Amstel serve a transit function. It's truly a transit city. Not to mention so many areas in the Centre Ring are pedestrian-only.
I think perhaps all of these modes of transit have grown up around each other. At first it might appear to be a lot of competition for ridership--are the Dutch really that "on the move"? But then you realize, the simple fact is that having a car in Amsterdam is a nightmare! I saw it first-hand several times in the Centre Ring, and never more than when I saw a taxi trying to squeeze in with the bicycles and pedestrians through a crowded bridge a block from a busy weekend market in De Jordaan. Cars in Amsterdam simply go against the laws of physics.
Now obviously, this is not the case in any American city except perhaps NYC, and even NYC is packed full of too many cars. But the point still stands: there is no competition for ridership in a true transit-centered environment, as long as the different modes of transit each serve a real purpose. If Amsterdam was not the bicycle haven that it is, would the tram system be as well-used? Probably not. Would the commuter trains or even the inter-city trains to Den Haag and Utrecht be as heavily-utilized? Probably not.
Lesson that OKC can take from Amsterdam: In order for big-time streetcar utilization to work successfully, grow as many different complementary modes at once. This is why Project 180 coinciding with the streetcar timeline is actually an enormous opportunity, not a duplication of efforts. The city needs to do a lot to expand basic walkability and human access, including a real bicycle strategy that doesn't just involve the system of scenic park trails. That's not really what we need...
I see no reason OKC couldn't use a system of bicycle roads. Bicycle-only intersections, even bicycle round-abouts. Special bicycle lights at each intersection, some busier intersections even with dedicated bicycle left-turn lanes. Or at the very least, sidewalks on every street, that are actually usable. That would be a good start, even if it's just in the inner city! Perhaps I'm getting ahead of myself here and forgetting just how many 100s of years OKC is behind other cities in terms of basic sidewalk infrastructure. It is beyond embarrassing.
One great phrase you will never hear in OKC: Lekker fietstocht!
Friday, February 19, 2010
Wow, it's a big world..
Guess what city this is. Hint: Quickly becoming Europe's "urban boom" city. And by the way, this isn't even this city's "downtown" -- but even though none of its tallest scrapers are in this pic, it probably is the densest "skyline" developing in this World City.
Wouldn't it be cool to just backpack around Europe for a few months?
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