Earlier, I wrote that the Boston Arcology is as incredible as it is implausible (and currently, unnecessary). By contrast, the NVArt digital art challenge knew that its concepts were steeped heavily in unattainable science fiction—but pretty, pretty science fiction inded.

Often, people leave the city because it’s much too hectic. Too much noise, too much chaos, too many people. Refuge is found away from the city and its worries. However, imagine if the city came with you. Or even brought you where you wanted to go:

Hi-ho, City! Away!

The latest NVArt digital art challenge invited artists to submit their visions of cities of the future, but not in the cold and desolate Blade Runner style. Rather, they were to offer an arguably more optimistic view, one in which cities and the environment were perfectly fused together. The results are nothing short of breathtaking, and I want to live in these places (more than I do Pandora).

Next Stop: Urban Fantasy Street

The winning submission was this one:

This couldn't possibly be an as-of-right development.

Called the City at the Center of the Universe, the city possesses an elevated walkway resplendent with gardens (eat that, High Line), an enormous park at the top complete with fountains and … what might be restaurants? And it appears to have its own airport (or maybe a spaceport. This is sci fi, after all). This appears to be the cleanest of the three winning entrants (the third place winner is a little too much on the wtf side of my architectural comfort zone).

What I’m more concerned about, though, is what is going on inside the City at the Center of the Universe? The image presents a beautiful exterior shot, but I would like to know what the implications are for society in this kind of future. The City here seems a little bit too clean and pristine, as if there is no room for urban chaos at all. Where do people live and work inside that massive structure? Does everyone work from home now? Is the population perfectly and sufficiently employed? And how would such a fixed structure even begin to account for the inevitable growth of the population? At least the image seems to suggest that humanity is perfectly in balance with nature (or at least, that water is really, really fucking blue).

Given the chance, though? I’d probably live there, if only to be able to study how it works and think way too much about it.

-jl

A waterway-cum-street-cum-painted-waterway

It’s an old-ish story from 2007 and 2008, but it’s still relevant today as there are apparently rumors that Portland wants to do something similar on a much larger scale.

In April 2007, Dutch artist Henk Hofstra painted an entire street blue to symbolize the path of a waterway that used to be there. The installation in its entirety stretched 1,000 meters (or, yes, 1 kilometer, gasp!) long and 8 meters wide. Hofstra’s work also had a bit of a snarkiness to it: in one section, a car is painted blue and is half-submerged into the road, as if the phantom urban waterway swallowed it up:

Underwater parking rules are in effect.

(More pretty, pretty photos via Henk Hofstra)

Next stop: What Does It All Mean? Boulevard

I like the concept. It brings a large degree of awareness to the issue of just how much land and how many resources cities consume just to exist. Imagine implementing something similar in New York City and painting blue everywhere that used to be water.

However, what are the implications of the project? It’s not as if we can turn the streets back to waterway in the modern day. The purpose of the art installation doesn’t really seem to be to invoke a desire to live in the old days as much as it presents a warning for our and future generations to be wary of what we’re consuming. Initiating a similar “blue streets” program in the U.S. may turn a few more heads, though I doubt that it would change much given the current state of those in favor of more sustainable practices and those who don’t believe that global climate change is something to really worry about. And they’re getting a bit of traction on that end, too. Unfortunately, the art installation, while pretty to look at, may not be able to inspire any degree of action on the part of the government to at least try to comply with some part of the tentative and nonbinding agreements made at Copenhagen this past December.

The future isn’t looking particularly bright at the moment, though it does feel a little on the warm side.

-jl

One of the oddest features I remember about SimCity 2000 was the inclusion of “arcologies,” which were gigantic, highly populous and dense hyperstructures that provided a perfect balance between human needs and sustainability. Being that the game came out in 1993 before “sustainability” became a household word, I found SimCity’s inclusion of these as something way ahead of its time, in retrospect.

And even odder, it may become a reality in our world:

The Boa (Boston Arcology) stretching into the harbor

Next Stop: Holy Crap This Is Implausible Station

Allow me a minute to breathe.

Okay.

Here’s another image.

Revel in its implausible largeness.

While the concept is so incredible, I actually have very little faith in its practicality. I do hope that it goes ahead and becomes a success story, but the more logical part of me says it’s never going to get out of the design room.

These are the basic facts of the Boa:

1. It can house 15,000 people, complete with hotels, offices, retail, museums, condominiums, and a new city hall.
2. Sky gardens in the three main towers every 30 floors with landscaped atria (yes, the plural of atrium).
3. All-pedestrian environment, though select floors will have moving walkways and electric train carriers.
4. Eliminates the need for cars as a carbon neutral entity.
5. LEED certified.
6. It’s a fucking golden box.

There are some issues I can point at, though. The Boa claims to be a carbon-neutral entity and provides several features within its confines such that residents wouldn’t ever have to leave. But the Boa would never be able to replace everything inside the city—the entire working population of the Boa would not possibly be able to find employment totally within the confines of the arcology. There is no mention of educational provisions (school or college), and if these are left out, the children are going to have to get to school somehow. Those things considered, the people who live inside the arcology are going to need cars, unless there’s a hyper-viable public transit system in the vicinity that can sustain an additional 15,000 people.

Meanwhile, being able to access the amenities of a city is largely one of the reasons why people move to the city in the first place. The arcology, while a structure that inspires shock and awe in its presentation, is really just a suburb disguised as a city. Sitting in the Boston Harbor, the Boa would ever be a spectacle of the city, something that outsiders would have wildly different reactions about and that insiders would not be part of. If the purpose of the Boa is to confine all life within its walls, then there’s no point to putting it in the city in the first place. Not to mention, being that city land values are functionally highest, it would make more sense for arcologies to be built elsewhere.

Not to mention, this design does not contextually fit with Boston at all. There would be no end of anger from preservationists and residents of adjacent neighborhoods—imagine the anger surrounding a certain university’s invasive expansion with buildings considered to be eyesores and multiply that by however much larger the Boa is.

Arcologies will probably remain something out of science fiction for a long while. What designers need to do is figure out how to make these hyperstructures part of the city instead of being an added appendage.

-jl

I’m not prominently in the video, but if you really wanted to put your face right in front of the screen, you can probably pick me out in the large crowd standing in Union Square. Good luck with that. I, for one, value my eyesight … more than being warm and properly dressed, apparently.

Next stop: Unfortunate Criticism Junction

After returning home a bit later than originally expected, I did come across some negative comments regarding the No Pants Subway Ride. Improv Everywhere prides itself on its “victimless pranks” mantra, opting instead to bring a little bit of chaos, Project Mayhem-style, into New Yorkers’ lives but in such a way that makes you smile rather than feel like the ass-end of a joke.

Those who weren’t as amused by the prank took their stances based on a few things. First, it was a stupid prank. Albeit, a stupid, worldwide prank (though, it’s likely that not every city that participated had as many as at least 3,000 Improv Everywhere agents in NYC). No one wants to go around seeing other people’s asses for a long, awkward commute. Second, the participants could be somewhat dickish because of the requirement that you can’t tell people that you’re participating in an Improv Everywhere prank. The standard responses are supposed to be, “I was feeling uncomfortable” or “It was kinda warm” or whatever. And, by the time there are hundreds of people in sight without pants on, everyone will have already figured out something was way out of the ordinary.

The logical question is, would it hurt to just let people in on the joke? Improv Everywhere would probably be breaking its victimless pranks mantra if people felt like they were being talked down to or patronized.

The last question is one to consider for the subsequent No Pants Subway Rides. Perhaps such a response would have been funnier years ago, when the tradition was just starting and there weren’t so many people doing it. However, when it becomes such a prominent event, Improv Everywhere might even be doing itself a disservice in not telling the bystanders that they’re pranking the whole city—and should probably invite them to join in. In this way, the participants come off as much more in the spirit of just having fun rather than feeling like the superior one without pants on.

But perhaps this level of mischievousness is still necessary, regardless of the fame and popularity of the event. In the end, still no one is hurt by the prank and everyone (or mostly everyone) goes home happy for being part of “one of those days” they can tell their friends, family, and coworkers about. After all, the Improv Everywhere agents have to balance out their awesome acts of charity somehow. Why not with a little bit of January devilry?

-jl

HaTT is HaWT

Who comes up with neighborhood names? The history of the naming of East Village in New York is well-documented, but what about other neighborhoods? Where did “FiDi” (Financial District) come from? Or “TriBeCa” (Triangle Below Canal Street)?

Or “Harlem Tennis Triangle,” which is now a neighborhood in Harlem. AKA ‘HaTT.”

I have to imagine that it’s going to be really hard for people to start taking this name seriously, much less actually adapt it. According to the map, the three tennis courts the bind the HaTT neighborhood are located at the Harlem Tennis Center, Frederick Johnson Park, and Mill Pond Park. In the Bronx. Meaning that the neighborhood stretches across the river.

Which brings me to another question: how many people actually live in this neighborhood? Being that the boundaries of it pretty much only bind the river, it would seem that your only neighbors would be fish here. So does the name of the neighborhood actually refer to the general area surrounding the triangle? Triangle wouldn’t exactly be the greatest descriptor, then.

All things considered? Screw this. I’ll take “WhoDi” any day.

-jl

There are no words.

The recent earthquake in Haiti, by all accounts, is absolutely devastating. If you’ve not donated money to the relief effort yet but plan to, keep in mind to make yours an unrestricted donation so that the organization can earmark can earmark your money for other charitable purposes (don’t worry about corruption if you’re doing this for Red Cross or Doctors Without Borders).

Garry Pierre-Pierre (an awesome name) from the daily Haitian Times wrote an article recently profiling the current situation in Rue Berne, a neighborhood in Port-au-Prince, and what it is like to spend a night on the streets. The story is uplifting as it is depressing. While it is inspiring to see how people are banding together to survive, there’s no escaping the fact that the death toll has surpassed 50,000, that few hospitals are functioning, and that the entire city has become “a giant homeless shelter.”

One line stands out however: “In many ways, those in Rue Berne are better off than many.”

In Rue Berne, though it currently resembles a homeless shantytown, people can at least find shelter of some kind:

Those who cannot sleep among friends in the streets, have sought shelter in courtyards of various government buildings such as the Prime Minister’s Office, the National Television Network, known as by its French acronym, TNH.

However, several neighborhoods throughout the city were already in poor condition before the earthquake even hit. Pierre-Pierre traces the “degradation” began in the 1960s, when the city of professionals became a city of peasants when the dictator Francois Duvalier brought in bus loads of the poor from the countryside to praise him while foreign dignitaries came to visit. However, these peasants would remain in the city and abandon their farms, leading to the creation of several slums, such as Site Soleil.

Port-au-Prince was originally designed for 200,000 residents. An estimated 2 million lived there at the time of the earthquake, but Pierre-Pierre admits that this is an estimated number: “a Census hasn’t been taken in nearly three decades.”

I have to wonder, how many other cities are in a vulnerable position like this? The prevalence of slums and rapidly-growing populations is not a problem limited only to Haiti but in developing nations outside the Western hemisphere. Mike Davis’ brilliant Planet of Slums details the living conditions of the poorest of the poor all across the world and the dangers they face, whether natural disasters, economic disasters, or terrorism. (The one point of criticism I have, though, is that the book revels in the suffering of others without offering concrete solutions or pointing in the direction of steps to take to alleviate the problems associated with poverty).

Keep your donations coming, of course. I predict that within a month or two, most media coverage of the earthquake and relief efforts will dry up as other stories come to the fore (like the Winter Olympics), so people are going to start forgetting about Haiti and the fact that it’s going to take years before it gets back on its feet again.

Does anyone know how the Sichuan province in China is doing?

-jl

Are we really this helpless? An article by Susannah Cahalan in the New York Post covers the “growing number of malfunctioning crosswalk signs” that send the confusing message of “WALK” and “DON’T WALK” simultaneously. There have been a number of 311 complaints, but I have to wonder: Honestly. Are we really this helpless and dependent on crosswalk signs?

DOT, you've doomed us all.

Next stop: Grand Confusion Station

I still remember one of the first things I learned was to look both ways before crossing the street. With the high exorbitant rate of Jay Leno walking jaywalking that occurs in New York City, I assumed that the “look both ways” rule pervaded city culture. Apparently not. Several people have been calling into 311 to complain about the signs and the Department of Transportation’s on it. Or so they say. They’re probably un-designating bike lanes somewhere (Booo!) or putting chairs in Times Square (Yaaaay!)

-jl

Riding without pants is also an expression of independence. From pants.

An article at the VTA Watch blog argues the case of public transit as a tool of independence, just as much as individual automobiles are. As it stands, public transit is the unattractive object. Poor people use it. The rich have cars. (And soon, hybrids!) Effectively, it’s more attractive to support issues related to automotive transit rather than funding public transportation projects. Unless, that is, you’re talking about light rail systems. Which apparently don’t actually work as well as advertised.

Next stop: Block Quote Station

The article makes a good point. Public transit allows greater access to amenities otherwise unaccessible to certain populations:

As unattractive as it may appear to people who have cars, local transit provides independence for the low income, seniors, the disabled, and teenagers. Although they cannot travel as fast as those with cars, transit service allows them independently to access jobs, shopping centers, schools, and hospitals/clinics on their own. Public transportation is generally safer, less expensive, more dependable, and environmentally superior than any other alternatives, including owning unsafe and uninsured clunkers to get around. Although transit services may appear optional and less important than other societal priorities, transit serves as a critical link for many to these other priorities, a mean to an end.

The “owning unsafe and uninsured clunkers” line is a bit of an editorialization, though. Not everyone on the road owns a clunker and, if the recent Detroit Auto Show is any indication, car manufacturers may indeed be shifting production heavily toward more environmentally-friendly vehicle designs. Of course, these vehicles are likely to be quite expensive and remain on the side of unaffordable for lower-income commuters.

-jl