Posted on Tuesday June 30th by Jebediah Reed | 125
- The way we live now involves many quadrillion BTUs of wasted energy. But we’ve also spent trillions to build our cities the way they are. What to do? A few easy retrofits: Bike shares, smart grid, mobility hubs, reskinning buildings, and more. (Boston Globe)
- The 21st century American city is a “self service” affair–surrveillance cameras replace cops at the same time citizens take up small scale agriculture. Altogether, it is “shrunken, less personal and meaner on one level, more neighborly on another.” (NYT)
- Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago–an ambitious urban vision that gave the city much of its present shape–will be celebrated on its 100th anniversary in the Windy City this holiday weekend. (WSJ)
- The Economist’s first-rate Gulliver blog continues the discussion about lost train stations we began here last week. (Economist)
- Paris is midway through automating its busiest subway line. The city is installing new automatic doors on the platforms to ensure passenger safety, and managing to do this this without interupting service. (Transport Politic)
- US News & World Report digs into the numbers and diagnoses America’s sickest malls. Not “sick” in the positive sense, as kids these days use the word, but sickest as in about to become dead. And not to be mean, but we would be remiss in not noting that US News one sick magazine. (USNWR)
- Who knew: when a book is pulped the leftover fiber pellets can be used to make highways. One mile of roadway requires about 50,000 experimental novels. (How We Drive)
- Crazy people who call themselves “sovereign citizens” don’t need no stinkin’ DMV. They just make their own license plates with magic markers and little squares of cardboard. Screw you, Man! (Autopia)
June 30th, 2009 at 12:57 pm
Isn’t it Daniel Burnham, not Thomas Burnham?
June 30th, 2009 at 1:22 pm
We’re #1! We’re #1! How sad that the pictures of my youth with Santa Claus were taken at the sickest mall in America.
June 30th, 2009 at 1:34 pm
Yes, thanks — fixed. I’d read something about the writer Thomas Bernhard this morning and apparently the first name got stuck in my head.
-JR
June 30th, 2009 at 1:47 pm
The addition of cellulose fibers to asphalt is nothing new. In fact, states in the US have been using it as a stabilizer for porous surface layers.
June 30th, 2009 at 2:00 pm
On my base in Iraq last year we didn’t have license plates either. You could build your own car out of scrap parts if you were savvy enough, and toodle around the base with it in your spare time. You couldn’t sell it, however, because all the scrap belonged to the US government.
June 30th, 2009 at 11:25 pm
[...] The Daily Dig continues to be one of our favorite daily link journalism roundups and not just because everyday has a new “edition” like our Leaderboards. [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 7:38 am
[...] Most Endangered Malls: Via Infrastructurist. Earlier Consumed on dead retail reuse [...]
July 1st, 2009 at 11:14 am
Carl, that’s true, but it’s always good to hear about it again. Keeps it in mind.
July 6th, 2009 at 4:49 pm
For a whole website devoted to shopping centers on the skids, go to “Deadmalls.com”–yep there’s a website for darn near anything.
July 6th, 2009 at 5:11 pm
I think we linked that in the item, didn’t we? If not, we meant to…
-Jebediah
July 6th, 2009 at 5:12 pm
I think we linked that in the item, didn’t we? If not, meant to…
-Jebediah