urbanism

San Francisco population: 815,201

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Denver_International_Airport

"The 52.4 square miles (136 km2; 33,500 acres) of land occupied by the airport is more than one and a half times the size of Manhattan (33.6 square miles or 87 square kilometres). DIA is larger in land area (excluding water) than the US cities of Boston, Massachusetts and San Francisco, California. DIA occupies the largest amount of commercial airport land area in North America, by a great extent."

Wild.

Thought all you sickos would like this video about a train network in Shanghai. Also includes some non-baby takes about China overall, like the rapid construction since 1997 and how it's been made possible by heavy investment and copy-pasting stationrs. He also reviews networks in different parts of the world on their own merits.

Some renders of the project: https://www.chapmantaylor.com/projects/xiongan-new-area-urban-masterplan

More info: https://www.hitachi.com/rev/archive/2021/r2021_01/gir/index.html

And a funny fp article: https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/01/22/china-xi-xiongan-future-city/

If Shenzhen signaled China’s experimentation with market reforms under Deng Xiaoping, then Xiongan represents a partial reversal. Today, the phrase Xiongan zhiliang (“Xiongan quality”) is used to describe the city as a symbol of “high-quality development,”

I know this is old news now, but it seems like they've finished the train station and are developing quickly. Pls Xi send us decade long infrastructure plans which aren't a bucket of cement to plaster over exposed rebar.

What do the urban planning heads here think?

https://www.bbc.com/future/article/20240318-climate-change-is-fuelling-the-us-insurance-problem

https://mastodon.scot/@thisismyglasgow/112101386191632255

Duquesne Incline

The Duquesne Incline (dew-KAYN) is a funicular located near Pittsburgh's South Side neighborhood, scaling Mt. Washington in the United States. Designed by Hungarian-American engineer Samuel Diescher, the incline was completed in 1877.

In the last 40 years can you remember an adult lead character choosing to ride a bike as a form of transportation in an American movie or tv series?

If a minor character has a bike and uses it for transportation - it's clear they would like a car but for whatever reason they don't have one. Another character might say to them "Why don't you have a car?" and their reply will be something like "Don't ask."

Last night I watched "Flashdance (1983)". Jennifer Beals plays an 18 year-old who lives on her own and she doesn't have a car. She uses a bike instead.

Is Boston ever going to make a good transit decision this century???

Silver lining (not the silver line - that sucks) is that the proposal is to go from a terrible schedule of 45 minute weekday headway and 90 minute weekend headway to a 20 minute weekday headway and 30 minute weekend headway schedule. I'm using headway correctly, right? And the current trains are diesel. They're just American so they're scared of spending money on wires.

In fact, in spite of their electrification goals, the T has been ripping out miles of catenary wire that once powered fully-electric bus routes in Cambridge and Watertown.

cross-posted from: https://hexbear.net/post/2070920

The Hokuriku Shinkansen has just been extended from Kanazawa to Tsuruga, allowing for direct trains from Tsuruga to Tokyo and speeding up trips in Fukui Prefecture

News links:

Japanese

English

Right in front of an intersection on a heavily trafficked state highway that's the main thoroughfare of the town.

Some amazing quotes in this article:

And there’s been an extra edge to their critiques that’s gone beyond standard-issue NIMBYism about too-tall buildings and preserving neighbourhood character. There’s also been a persistent sense of disbelief that Indigenous people could be responsible for this futuristic version of urban living. In 2022, Gordon Price, a prominent Vancouver urban planner and a former city councillor, told Gitxsan reporter Angela Sterritt, “When you’re building 30, 40-storey high rises out of concrete, there’s a big gap between that and an Indigenous way of building.”

The subtext is as unmissable as a skyscraper: Indigenous culture and urban life—let alone urban development—don’t mix. That response isn’t confined to Sen̓áḵw, either. On Vancouver’s west side, the Musqueam, Squamish and Tsleil-Waututh Nations—through a joint partnership called MST Development Corp.—are planning a 12-tower development called the Heather Lands. In 2022, city councillor Colleen Hardwick said of that project, “How do you reconcile Indigenous ways of being with 18-storey high-rises?” (Hardwick, it goes without saying, is not Indigenous.) MST is also planning an even bigger development, called Iy̓álmexw in the Squamish language and ʔəy̓alməxʷ in Halkomelem. Better known as Jericho Lands, it will include 13,000 new homes on a 90-acre site. At a city council meeting this January, a stream of non-Indigenous residents turned up to oppose it. One woman speculated that the late Tsleil-Waututh Chief Dan George would be outraged at the “monstrous development on sacred land.”