#SketchUp ScrewUps

I’m still working on my design. And while I agree with Odie that it is bittersweet, I will be more than happy to take a break from my good old buddy, SketchUp. In his honor, I’d like to present a few ScrewUps I never could have created without his help. There’s only 2 at the moment, but if this day keeps going like it’s going, I imagine there will be more, real soon.

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Atlanta, Then and Now (1871 to 2011) A pretty standard comparison showing how much has changed. This one attracts me in particular because I spent so much time in downtown Atlanta this summer. The above photograph is actually of the building I worked in (the building in the bottom left). I love looking at this stuff, particularly images of old and new juxtaposed with each other. Sites like Dear Photograph and Historypin are treasure troves for this type of thing. (via Atlantic Cities)

The Limits of Preservation An interesting look at how landmines and other remnant munitions from the wars of the 1990s have protected natural areas in Bosnia. “The project closes with a particularly dark observation: ‘I see the idea of hand-placed landmines protecting the natural setting and allowing the environment to regenerate itself as an ironic twist on our inability to conserve and see into the future.’” (via bldgblog)

Can You Afford NOT to Use Your Bicycle for Commuting? “According to Harvard University professor of medicine, John J. Ratey. The average activity level of people in the industrialized part of the world is 38% of what our body and mind, was developed for. Even if you do the weekly 3-4 hours most governmental health organisations tend to advocate, you do not exceed 50% of what you were born to.” (via Copenhagenize)

The Marines Go Renewable “Normally, a patrol carries enough batteries to last three or four days—20 to 35 pounds for each grunt—and is dependent on frequent and dangerous resupplies. But with the packable solar panels, says Patterson, his patrol of 35 soldiers shed 700 pounds. “We stayed out for three weeks and didn’t need a battery resupply once,” he says.” If the Marines can’t convince the doubters to go solar, I’m not sure what will. (via Outside)

#A Little Post-Black Friday Song of the Day

you cut your leg off to save a buck or two / because you never consider the cost

you find the lowest prices everyday / but would you look at everything that we’ve lost

yeah it’s true i learned it from watching you / but now it’s you who doesn’t know what a dollar is worth

you got the market it’s own bodyguard / and all the people are getting hurt

in these strange negotiations / man they really are getting me down

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Making the Case for the Value of Environmental Rules“In a 2010 analysis of rules passed in the prior decade, the non-partisan Office of Management and Budget calculated benefits-to-cost ratios across various government agencies. The EPA came out on top with the highest ratios by far, with benefits from its regulations exceeding costs by an average of more than 10 to 1. If you care about well-functioning, free markets, the EPA would be the last federal agency you’d want to cut.” (via Yale Environment 360)

Artificial Glacier to Cool Mongolian Capital “In a somewhat bonkers plan — first reported in the Guardian— the city of Ulan Bator will attempt to capture some of the cool winter temperatures in huge ice blocks that will slowly melt over the summer and cool down the city. The aim is to build artificial ice shields — or “naleds” — that occur naturally in far northern climates and can grow to be more than seven meters thick.” (via Wired Science)

Yet Again, Organic Ag Proves Just as Productive as Chemical Ag “It turns out, when you actually compare chemical-intensive and organic farming in the field, organic proves just as productive in terms of gross yield—and brings many other advantages to the table as well. The Rodale Institute’s test plots in Pennsylvania have been demonstrating this point for years.” (via Mother Jones)

Counting Parking Spots, From Above” …they counted 21,690 parking spots in New Haven in 1951. By 2009, the number was 106,410. Hartford, meanwhile, went from about 47,000 spots in the mid-1950s to about 141,000 today. All the while, both cities lost considerable population, while the number of parking spaces per driver doubled.These trends speak to a conventional wisdom that more development, more businesses, more people—more of anything—should always come with more parking.” (via Atlantic Cities)

#Moses Bridge

I saw the title of this entry on ArchDaily and got excited. Turns out, it’s exactly what I was hoping for. Impractical? Sure. Potentially a maintenance nightmare? Absolutely. But man is it cool.

More here.

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As Congress Moves to Slash Budget for Conservation and National Parks, Businessmen Speak Out “Conservation and preservation programs constitute only 1.2 percent of the overall budget. However, these programs are primers for generating exponentially greater nonfederal investments. Natural resources conservation, historic preservation and outdoor recreation contribute more than $1 trillion to our economy each year. This supports millions of American jobs, the overwhelming majority of which are impossible to export abroad. For example, outdoor recreation alone creates nearly 6.5 million jobs for individuals directly employed in the industry.” (via Treehugger)

The Budget Super Committee’s Ax Could Fall on…National Parks “National parks cost every American about $8 per head per year. And parks contribute about $13.2 billion to the economy, even as they received $2.6 billion in funding for 2011, an amount which already was cut $140 million. Overall funding for the NPS has been cut by $400 million since 2001. Nobody in this space would argue that the parks aren’t a freaking bargain, but under the recent budget agreement, if the so-called Super Committee in congress cannot find $1.3 trillion to excise from national spending, there are threatened across-the-board cuts of 9 percent — that’s $231 million more cut from the parks. This might be the last straw, because the parks are all massively hamstrung already, with a backlog of $3.7 billion in critical maintenance (that’d be stuff like roads and building safety), and are incredibly short-staffed, too. If the park system is a bargain right now, that’s also a mirage, because it’s crumbling under the weight of unprecedented traffic (281 million visitors in 2010, nearly 90 percent of the population of this country).” (via Adventure Journal)

The Death of Middle-Class Neighborhoods “The isolation of the prosperous, he said, means less interaction with people from other income groups and a greater risk to their support for policies and investments that benefit the broader public — like schools, parks and public transportation systems.” (via Mother Jones)

A New Vision for D.C.’s Abandoned Streetcar Tunnels “Even beyond the unfortunate Dupont Down Under history, the Dupont Circle neighborhood, and really Washington, D.C., as a whole is saddled with some peculiar structural and cultural realities that make getting ambitious architectural projects off the ground particularly difficult. For one, the city is a veritable patchwork of publicly owned land that is not always under the city’s control. While the District of Columbia owns the tunnels themselves, many of the logical entrances to the underground space lay in the middle of small parks, like Dupont Circle itself, that are controlled by the National Park Service. And for another, being the nation’s capital, there is no shortage of historic preservation forces ready to pounce on anything that doesn’t conform to the classical ideal of the federal city, even in residential neighborhoods like Dupont.

“The reality is that for this to succeed it needs to have thousands of people in Washington think that this is a good idea,” says Paul Ruppert, the chairman of the Dupont Underground’s current board and a fixture in the local restaurant and arts scene.” (via Atlantic Cities)

The Partisians Will Never Find Us Here: Minneapolis Mayour R.T. Rybak and the Art of Getting Shit Done “City governments are the last standing functional form of government in the United States and possibly the world,” says Rybak.” (via GOOD)