Tag Archives: urban planning
The gentle density and radical façadism of Toronto
One of the reasons I like to walk great distances through new cities is to experience the zoning and density. (You thought I was going to say I do this for snacking opportunities, didn’t you?) We weren’t in Toronto long, but we got around, and I was continually impressed by how well Toronto does density. […]
Where to walk your wife in Chicago
I’m so tired from trying to learn to sleep without sleeping pills that my brain is in a deep freeze. Talking and writing is like bobbing for apples must think of word stick head in tub of water and try to find the word grab the word with my mouth now what was I saying […]
Nowa Huta: Krakow’s cuddly ideal city
I went to Nowa Huta to gawk at a dreary communist dystopia and found myself in a Renaissance ideal city. Oh man, I just love when this happens, the travel surprise. In fact, not including that time we traveled to Ghent and accidentally encountered a blackface Christmas celebration have I ever had my expectations so […]
Walking the West Rogers Park eruv, the invisible spiritual city on Chicago’s North Side
Look closely. See the long, black rectangle hidden in the mural below, beneath the red arms? That’s a door to a invisible city. An invisible city, or perhaps more accurately, an enclosed spiritual zone, known as an eruv. I’ve been traveling through the West Rogers Park eruv for years, unaware of its existence, until a few weeks […]
Pienza: all Renaissance towns should have a bird that talks like a refrigerator
During a fascinating period of the Italian Renaissance, humanist scholars and architects set out to create the ideal city. Surprisingly, one of these urban planners was a pope–Pope Pious II. Pius II (formerly known as Enea Silvio Piccolomini) transformed his home town, Cosignano, into a miniature urban Renaissance Utopia. He hired the architect Rossellino to […]
Picnic at the Cathedral 