Race and ethnicity: Atlanta by Eric Fischer.
I was astounded by Bill Rankin’s map of Chicago’s racial and ethnic divides and wanted to see what other cities looked like mapped the same way. To match his map, Red is White, Blue is Black, Green is Asian, Orange is Hispanic, Gray is Other, and each dot is 25 people. Data from Census 2000.
Dead Man Walking – Pedestrian fatalities per 100,000 residents. Atlanta wins! (via)
Why cities grow and why urban planning as we now practice it won’t really help the millions who are moving to mega-cities (read: slums) in other parts of the world.
A 1910 illustration of how Atlanta’s Peachtree Street would look in 2010. The future is now! « pecanne log.
Where I live is culturally neutral. If I lived in New Orleans I’d have to embrace the local culture because it’s so good. In California you can be your own person.
Richard Thompson, in the Financial Times.
After listening to an interesting interview with Richard Florida on the “personal economics” of location, I’m not sure this is 100% why I feel so comfortable in L.A. I suspect it’s more a perfect stew of things—the autonomy/anonymity provided by a large metropolis, the proximity to likeminded souls, the insane cultural diversity and, hey, let’s not forget about the exceptional quality of Western light. But yeah, Chicago? Seattle? Portland? (Which would be a strong contender, except for that pesky light thing.) All distinctive. And maybe a little oppressive, because of it.
Warrants thought, anyway. Or maybe I’m just nuts, and really like thinking about shit like this.
[via]
“Cultural neutrality” is just the phrase I’ve been looking for. It’s one of the reasons Atlanta has really grown on me as I’ve been able to compare it to other cities.
“Jaywalkers were involved in fewer collisions than their law-abiding counterparts who waited for the "walk” sign, though they were likelier to be killed or seriously hurt by the collision.“
New York Study of Pedestrian Victims Leads to Unexpected Conclusions – NYTimes.com
“Welcome to Chongqing, the biggest city you’ve never heard of.” (No relation.)
Chicago on the Yangtze – By Christina Larson | Foreign Policy
Dallas and Los Angeles represent two distinct models for successful American cities, which both reflect and reinforce different cultural and political attitudes. One model fosters a family-oriented, middle-class lifestyle—the proverbial home-centered “balanced life.” The other rewards highly productive, work-driven people with a yen for stimulating public activities, for arts venues, world-class universities, luxury shopping, restaurants that aren’t kid-friendly. One makes room for a wide range of incomes, offering most working people a comfortable life. The other, over time, becomes an enclave for the rich. Since day-to-day experience shapes people’s sense of what is typical and normal, these differences in turn lead to contrasting perceptions of economic and social reality. It’s easy to believe the middle class is vanishing when you live in Los Angeles, much harder in Dallas. These differences also reinforce different norms and values—different ideas of what it means to live a good life. Real estate may be as important as religion in explaining the infamous gap between red and blue states.
For a while there, Charles Dickens was suffering from insomnia, so he took up walking “houseless” around London until the sun came up. A great portrait of a city and state of mind:
The restlessness of a great city, and the way in which it tumbles and tosses before it can get to sleep, formed one of the first entertainments offered to the contemplation of us houseless people. It lasted about two hours. We lost a great deal of companionship when the late public-houses turned their lamps out, and when the potmen thrust the last brawling drunkards into the street; but stray vehicles and stray people were left us, after that. If we were very lucky, a policeman’s rattle sprang and a fray turned up; but, in general, surprisingly little of this diversion was provided. […]
At length these flickering sparks would die away, worn out–the last veritable sparks of waking life trailed from some late pieman or hot-potato man–and London would sink to rest. And then the yearning of the houseless mind would be for any sign of company, any lighted place, any movement, anything suggestive of any one being up–nay, even so much as awake, for the houseless eye looked out for lights in windows.
I like that it’s ugly, because it keeps the city empty and cheap and it keeps away the non-serious. There are not many (any?) splashy major sights. Even the Wall is mostly gone. The way to see and experience Berlin is to do things. The ugliness selects for people who want to enjoy the city’s musical, theatrical, museum, and literary treasures.
Berlin is evidence that most tourists don’t actually care so much about history, culture, and museums, as it is not for most people a major tourist destination, despite having world-class offerings in each of those areas. Mostly tourists like large, visually spectacular sites, or family activities, combined with the feeling that they are taking in culture or seeing something important.
Arguing that bohemias are temporary, neighborhood-centered, and artists don’t have much to do with it. (via).
The problem with restricting self-expressive action to artists is that being an artist requires talent. Bohemias solve this problem by democratizing the expressive life.
Young, educated professionals and entrepreneurs in Atlanta and Nashville might be more likely to put their brains and energy into cultural industries over technology start-ups.
Urban Economics: Atlanta, the Rap and R&B Capital of the World | Music & the Entertainment Economy
Then came the renaissance, but only for those cities reborn into more dematerialized economies. Vacant lots were filled in, old warehouses were turned into lofts or offices or replaced, downtowns became upscale chain outlets, janitors and cops became people who commuted in from downscale suburbs, and the children of that white flight came back to cities that were not exactly cities in the old sense. The new American cities trade in information, entertainment, tourism, software, finance. They are abstract. Even the souvenirs in these new economies often come from a sweatshop in China. The United States can be mapped as two zones now, a high-pressure zone of economic boom times and escalating real estate prices, and a low- pressure zone, where housing might be the only thing that’s easy to come by.
Detroit arcadia: Exploring the post-American landscape — By Rebecca Solnit (Harper’s Magazine)
Each time he took a walk, he felt as though he were leaving himself behind, and by giving himself up to the movement of the streets, by reducing himself to a seeing eye, he was able to escape the obligation to think, and this, more than anything else, brought him a measure of peace, a salutary emptiness within… By wandering aimlessly, all places became equal and it no longer mattered where he was. On his best walks he was able to feel that he was nowhere.
L.A. is the apocalypse: it’s you and a bunch of parking lots. No one’s going to save you; no one’s looking out for you. It’s the only city I know where that’s the explicit premise of living there – that’s the deal you make when you move to L.A.
The city, ironically, is emotionally authentic.
It says: no one loves you; you’re the least important person in the room; get over it.
What you have to find is your own niche that will allow you to keep feeding and clothing and sheltering yourself without getting downtown. (Laughs.) Because that’s death. That’s really where death is.
Map of the original 1854 Atlanta Ward System.
Really awesome background on two of Atlanta’s 19th-century sketchy neighborhoods: Snake Nation (now Castleberry Hill) and Murrell’s Row (in today’s Old Fourth Ward/Five Points area). I’d never heard of them before.
This bothers me more than it should:
The parking meters reduce the walking width of the sidewalk. Without room for two people to pass comfortably, someone gets forced off onto the grass. Thus, long dead streaks of dirt. It’s a car’s world.
Mark Larson 