Des Temps

Tag: urban planning

  • The Design Trust + CFDA + Jordan Alport FTW!!

    jordan alport

    Jordan Alport was selected as a 2010 fellow with the The Design Trust / Council of Fashion Designers of America (CFDA). He will be helping to create and launch Made in Midtown, a study about the role that the Fashion District plays in the life of NYC.

    As explained by The Design Trust:

    New York remains a global fashion leader, but few outside the industry understand the complex networks that establish both its competitive edge and the unique character of its physical spaces. Made in Midtown will make the Garment District’s industrial ecosystem visible and accessible to a broad public audience and will present a compelling vision for the District’s future based on an accurate assessment of the political and economic resources available to support creative industries in Midtown and throughout New York City.

    Project Fellows – a filmmaker, a journalist, an urban planner and an urban design team – will interview and film key stakeholders (from designers to garment workers, landlords to suppliers), weaving these stories together with accessible, engaging infographics and diagrams that illustrate how fashion industry businesses are tied to each other and to the physical spaces of the District.

    The Fellows will also examine how specific elements – from storefronts displaying colorful fabrics to the ubiquitous garment delivery racks crowding the sidewalks – help produce the Garment District’s unique identity. All of this work will culminate in an interactive website and an accompanying publication that will help guide policies for light manufacturing industries citywide.

  • The Heidelberg Project

    Noah

    I am in Detroit.

    I think I have a crush on Detroit.

    Last night, I realized that I always fall for cities in a state of remix and change. Witnessed this in the economic rise of Mumbai, the empty spaces of Berlin, the shifting socio- cultural politics of CapeTown/Joburg. My previous life of urban planning has stuck with.

    Intro

    Detroit has become quite the media darling, rather than me add my two cents, I suggest you read this very smart essay from New Geography, and some snark from Viceland.

    dosbirditos

    In the meantime, here are some pics from Tyree Guyton’s mind boggling Heidelberg Project.

    candylandy

    The color and the scale reminds me of Niki de Saint Phalle’s Tarot Garden, built in empty Tuscany. Both pieces are simultaneously audacious and humble; both artists are defined by these singular works.

    dosbirditos

    Both pieces are so emotionally open that walking within them is overwhelming. You see, but moreso, you feel.

    homeric

    I know I’ll be going back to Heidelberg tomorrow.

    tickled

  • Urban Planning = New Media Planning

    hall-partners-pecha-kucha.gif
    Below is the Pecha Kucha presentation I gave at Hall & Partners about remix culture via urban planning. Before working with brands and film, I was an urban planner and did research in a raft of cities round the globe.

    One thing planners have learned is that people have an innate need to remix and customize any urban system or grid that they encounter. Rules will be broken, it’s not about ‘if’, it’s ‘when & how’. See below Jason Lewis’s pics of skaters, parking garages and rollerrinks. Or take a look at HBO’s The Wire. Both engage in this dance of spatial rules and regulations…and are far better executed than my YouTubed musings.

    M8XUmvSIAv0

    img_9937_blog.jpg

    _jason-lewis-photography-1409.jpg
    skaters017.jpg
    (more…)

  • The Wire: Social Structure (the game is rigged)

    jdwilliams.jpgSeason 4 of The Wire just dropped on DVD, so this weekend I was glued to the telly and composing armchair academic essays about the structure of this B’more world. Then I read media scholar Jason Mittel’s writing about the show, and decided best just to step aside and give him the mic. I’ve quoted at length cause I know yall might not click through. And this should be read:

    [Series creator David] Simon has suggested that The Wire is a show about the relationship between individuals and institutions, a claim that the program seems to uphold. But I would argue that the point of emphasis is much more clearly on institutions rather than individuals, as within each of the social systems that the show explores—the police, the drug trade, the shipyard, city government, the educational system—the institution is brought into focus through the lens of numerous characters. Certainly McNulty is a central point of access to understand police bureaucracy and functions nominally as the show’s main character, but by season four he is in the margins while characters like Daniels, Colvin, and Bunk provide alternate entry points to explore the police system.
    jimmymcnulty.jpg
    Likewise we experience the drug trade through a range of characters from D’Angelo to Stringer, Omar to Cutty. While all of these characters have depth and complexity, we rarely see much of their existence beyond how they fit into their institutional roles—even romantic relationships seem to foreground inter-institutional links between police, lawyers, and politicians more than interpersonal bonds deepening characters’ inner lives and motivations. The chronic alcoholism and infidelity of The Wire’s police officers offers a portrait less of flawed personalities than of a flawed institution—the police admire the systematic discipline and coordination of Barksdale’s crew, which is distinctly lacking in the Baltimore Police Department.”

    I1VoK2VH_I0
    (more…)