Côte du Galet, at Pontoise. Paul Cezanne, c. 1880. (More here.)
Art
Patrick Geddes and Tel Aviv
White City, Tel Aviv. Photo: Google.
Esra Magazine has a nice piece about Sir Patrick G., and his role in planning the Israeli seaside city. Geddes had a special impact on what would become known as the White City– a coastal neighborhood with one of the world’s largest concentrations of ultramodern Bauhaus-style architecture. The combination of white concrete, modern lines, green desert brush, wide boulevards, and the blue Mediterranean make the White City a striking conceptual project in town planning. Sadly, a look around the newly released Google Streetviews of Tel Aviv shows that many of the structures in the neighborhood have not been well maintained over the years; worse, many parcels are occupied by ugly buildings that fail to realize the vision’s potential.
London Subterranea
Londonist has some details of a novel map by Stephen Walter: an intense look at the secrets that lie buried, physically and historically, under the streets.
Checking In
Work has kept me away from Legal Towns for the last month, but I thought I’d post this link to a funny article by the artist David Kramer about the perils and pluses of smoking. I wonder how much of the fall of Western civilization will ultimately be attributed to the anti-smoking movement. I quit about seven years ago, myself. I haven’t missed nicotine in years, but sometimes, in an anxious moment, I still miss the physical habit. I’ve also never been able to recover the prolific writing ability that I had as a smoker (when I could sit down and write–creatively, productively–for four or five hours). Sadly, iced coffee is my daily vice now.
Art Imitates Land Use
Hill and Ploughed Field Near Dresden. Caspar David Friedrich. 1824.
Cityscapes
Sometimes, the mindset of planning can cause us to lose track of something that makes the field so compelling: the social fabric that neighborhoods express. Here’s a story that brings the American cityscape back to earth. It’s about an amateur photographer– a young policeman– whose work over the last decade captured the grit and beauty of ordinary time in some of New York City’s least glamorous precincts. To some extent, a few of his images remind me of my own memories of doing Census field work in Jersey City, when I was 19.
An Online Look at Gismondi’s Rome
Here’s a large photo set posted on Flickr, by a user called MrJennings, showing Italo Gismondi’s Model of Imperial Rome, at the Museo della Civiltà Romana. The 1:250 scale model depicts the city in the time of Constantine. Snapshots of the model turn up frequently in the context of articles about the imperial city, but this is a rare look at the work itself in its entirety. Meanwhile, here’s a more interactive look (zoom, pan, etc.) that also includes a bit of a description.
Art Imitates Land Use: Miniatur Wunderland
From Hamburg, Germany, an amazing project that began as a model railroad. More videos here.
Art Imitates Land Use: Edward Hopper
The City: Edward Hopper, 1927.
The ‘Champs-Élysées of the Bronx’
A Deco doorway on the Concourse. Source: NYC Landmarks Comm.
Let’s hear it for the Grand Concourse, one of America’s greatest concentrations of Art Deco and Late Victorian apartment buildings. Truly, some of New York City’s most amazing apartments are located there. The Concourse, itself, also has the potential to become a great public space. (At present, it has largely been paved over and is very underutilized.) A large swath of the southern Concourse (between East 153rd and 167th Streets) has just been designated as a new historic district by the New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission.
And, yes, it’s true: There’s been a lot of the Bronx on this page.