A Curious Eye

Through their various services, Sound Transit and Metro together carry about 500,000 riders a day; that’s almost as much as I-5, I-405, and the viaduct combined. Or to visualize it another way, the average capacity of a single freeway lane is about 18,000 vehicles a day—making ST/Metro’s half-million rides a day roughly equivalent to building a 28-lane freeway through downtown Seattle.

But bureaucratic snares and funding mishaps have jeopardized the process.

A good walking environment may not be enough to encourage more walking, according to a recent study led by UW Associate Professor Cynthia Perry.

Street food, density, signage, and unconventional retail spaces

Seattle is #1!

Singapore’s latest development opens this month, with imposing 50-meter-tall artificial trees towering over botanical gardens.

Seattle’s vision of an urban food oasis is going forward. A seven-acre plot of land in the city’s Beacon Hill neighborhood will be planted with hundreds of different kinds of edibles: walnut and chestnut trees; blueberry and raspberry bushes; fruit trees, including apples and pears; exotics like pineapple, yuzu citrus, guava, persimmons, honeyberries, and lingonberries; herbs; and more. All will be available for public plucking to anyone who wanders into the city’s first food forest.

The two green walls, each 10-by-10 feet, will together hold more than 500 plants, including 23 species, 70 percent native to the Pacific Northwest. SolTerra, a Pacific Northwest firm, built and will install the green wall, which is composed of permeable fabric mounted on an aluminum frame … Along with measuring plant growth, the Green  Futures Lab team will monitor such things as building and local air temperature impacts, biodiversity and water use in the areas affected by the walls and screen.

The Edible Green Screen, a system of 39-foot steel cables, will actually be a giant trellis, holding hops and kiwi vines grown from the ground.  Hops were chosen because of visual appeal, fast growth and fun, Rottle said.  UW Farm, the demonstration project on sustainable urban agriculture, is interested in harvesting the kiwi, chosen for its hardiness, beauty of its vine and fruit, and appropriateness for a south wall in Seattle.

Read more at TheAtlanticCities.com

Trip Adviser describes Milan’s public-transit system as “excellent.” But no such system is without occasional hiccups that leave commuters stranded, twiddling their fingers over smartphones and issuing grumpy little sighs.

Artist Fra Biancoshock, whose website says he specializes in “creating unconventional experiences seen on streets of Italy,” has found a solution to frustratingly late buses. He recently deployed his concept in Milan, which he calls “Antistress For Free.” It’s simply sheets of bubble wrap hanging on the side of a bus shelter. Bored commuters, or those with ADHD, can while away the minutes by engaging in that supremely satisfying activity of popping the bubbles.

Keep reading at TheAtlanticCities.com

Bay Area developer Patrick Kennedy of Panoramic Interests believes tiny dwellings will “get huge” for a number of social, economic, and planning reasons. Cities benefit from the expanded tax base, neighborhoods benefit from the infusion of people, residents benefit from the social dynamics of density. At a time when public budgets are crunched, says Kennedy, micro-unit buildings are also “a way of civilizing an area without using city or state or federal funds.”

Keep reading about micro-apartments at TheAtlanticCities.com

Another day, another proposal for a new Chinese city. The 1.3 square-kilometer Great City, designed byAdrian Smith and Gordon Gillwill be a massive new development that is completely sustainable, affordable, and, most strikingly, car-less. The masterplan, which has been planned for 80,000 people, will be built around a massive transit hub at its center, with all destinations to be within a few minutes walk, a planning innovation that would make “Great City” China’s (and the world’s?) first pedestrian-only city.

Before drawing up blueprints, Smith and Gill had to find the perfect setting for this new, 320-acre green city. They discovered a plot outside the city of Chengdu with plenty of buffer landscape including forests, valleys, and bodies of water to integrate into the city. After delineating local farm land for its preservation, the designers meticulously drafted plans that partitioned the site into several zones, reserving 15 percent of the land for parks and green spaces, dedicating 60 percent to construction, and saving the remaining 25 percent for roads and walkways.

Read more at TheAtlanticCities.com

Rare is the American city-dweller who thinks, “This park that I’m walking through in the middle of the night is too well-lit.”

But that’s exactly what Birgitta Ralston and Alexandre Bau, a couple of Norway-based designers, thought when they worked with residents of a Nordic village during the long, dark Scandinavian winter. “The amazing light of stars and aurora borealis (Nordic lights) are affected by public lighting,”Ralston & Bausaid in a press release, “Therefore it made sense to make light fixtures that are fully lit only when needed.”

So they invented Shroom Lighting. The Shrooms, made of steel and linen composite, are elegant and diversely shaped. The shortest two Shrooms also function as seats for one or several people. Each Shroom has a motion sensor that determines its illumination level. When all is still, the light dims to a 10 percent glow. When someone approaches, it reaches full luminosity.

This not only prevents light pollution, letting park-goers stargaze or enjoy a moment of moonlight, it also saves energy. “The result,” say the designers, “is a small forest of magic Shrooms.”

For a few hours last weekend, the last untouched section of the High Line railway on Manhattan’s West Side was open to members of the public who had signed up in advance and paid a small fee. This used to be a secret place that you would sneak into, if you were a bum, or an urban daredevil, or just someone who was lucky enough to know someone else who knew where a hole in the fence was.

Now, entry was by reservation only, and spots had been snapped up quickly. While the usual crowds jammed the manicured sections of the celebrated High Line park to the south, a relatively small group was admitted onto the elevated tracks to the north to see them in their naturally unnatural state.

Keep reading at TheAtlanticCities.com