From the 23rd floor of Touchstone’s West 8th building in Seattle, a palette for placemaking frames the northerly view towards Elliott Bay. The 12 acre assemblage of parking lots and low rise uses is owned by the Clise family, who attempted to market the properties en masse in 2007 to no avail. The original, poster-like rendering below invites thoughts of the redevelopment potential which could be realized with the effective vision and management of an innovative purchaser.
In another postcard for your urbanist, transit-oriented friends, an interurban transit operator guards himself from the sun.
For an additional reference, consider Stephen Killion’s June 24 Architizer post, which provides the nineteenth century history of the U.S. Camel Corps as a prologue to a discussion of transit issues in Los Angeles. He ironically warns that without care, new transit proposals of the Obama-era could go the way of the failed allocation of 28 camels to the city for cargo purposes as part of the Camel Corps’ downsizing in 1863.
Rich city texture (complete with pedestrian and transit opportunities and magnetic color) is another feature of high urbandwidth. Below, renderings of Nice, France display the remade city center focused around the Nice Tramway, which I described in seattlepi.com (click here) last year.
Street performance in a public space is one feature of high urbandwidth.
Here, we return to Seattle’s Occidental Park, (also featured here and, by Dan Bertolet, here), to walk with A.K. “Mimi” Allin, for a strolling read of a complex novel, merged with the notion of enhanced mutual ownership of public space.
Click here to read more about Allin and 4Culture’s site-specific performance exhibit, “Walking in War in Peace”.
The recalibration of urbandwidth in a suburban, outdoor mall:
