Dog and Deco. My name is Pickles McConchie. I’m a 15 year old Art Deco and camera loving Terrier from Scotland. I like to travel the country with my bitch and pose in front of art deco factories and industrial buildings from the 1920s, 30s and 40s, as well as other twentieth century architectural gems.
posted by The Discredited Ape
on Jul 12, 2011 -
12 comments
Moving Beyond the Automobile is a series of ten short videos by
Streetfilms that highlights new directions in urban transportation. It shows how cities in the U.S. are encouraging a shift away from car dependency and making it easier and more pleasant to get around by other means.
[more inside]
posted by parudox
on Apr 26, 2011 -
36 comments
I like urban art fun with a sense of humor:
OakOak is a french artist who likes to play with urban elements.
posted by Waslijn
on Apr 2, 2011 -
9 comments
"Completed in 1954, the 33 11-story buildings of the Pruitt-Igoe housing development was built as an attempt to address the housing crisis the poor faced in St Louis, Missouri. Only twenty years later, at 3pm on the 16th of March, 1972, the buildings were leveled, declared unfit for habitation because of unsafe and unsanitary conditions, coupled with rampant crime. The story of Pruitt-Igoe is a tragic urban fable, a complicated and loaded story of ambition, hubris and failure." (src)
"The Pruitt-Igoe Myth" is a documentary directed by Chad Freidrichs that dives into the complex history of the
famed housing project (YouTube or Vimeo trailer). RustWire has
an interesting interview with the documentary's creator. More information from
Architizer,
Homo Ludens, and
Magical Urbanism. Be sure to check out the collection of pictures from the area and from the documentary in the creators'
Flickr stream.
[via Archinect and Mefi Projects] [more inside]
posted by spiderskull
on Feb 28, 2011 -
29 comments
The Urban Homestead®: Where sustainable urban living and intellectual property collide.
Previously on mefi we learned about some urban homesteaders in Pasadena, CA calling themselves the Dervaes Institute. According to the OC Weekly
Blog Stick a Fork in It: "In October of last year, the Dervaeses successfully registered the terms "Urban Homestead" and "Urban Homesteading" with the United States Patent and Trademark Office. But only in the past couple of weeks have they been sending cease-and-desist letters to organizations and blogs using the terms without their permission, successfully asking Facebook to shut down groups using those terms as their name."
[more inside]
posted by mandymanwasregistered
on Feb 16, 2011 -
54 comments
The Jungle. Made in 1967 and awarded a Documentary Film Award at the Festival de Popoli, Italy, The Jungle is a short film made in Philly by Harold Haskins and the 12 & Oxford Film Corp. Re-discovered a few years back through Temple University’s Urban Archives.
posted by fixedgear
on Jan 26, 2011 -
2 comments
In the 1960's, 70's and 80's, urban decay and high crime rates caused retail chain supermarkets to
flee New York City.
(google books link) Korean immigrants filled the gap with corner grocery stores. For nearly two decades they were ubiquitous -- symbols of the group's ongoing quest to achieve the American Dream. But 30 years later,
Where Did The Korean Greengrocers Go? [more inside]
posted by zarq
on Jan 18, 2011 -
19 comments
Ballerina Project — Nine years ago, young photographer
Dane Shitagi walked up New York City’s Broadway towards the highly patronized and well known
STEPS dance studios in search of a ballet dancer who could help him begin his project: to capture images of ballerinas in urban environments. Those images first started appearing on Blogspot, but have since migrated to
Facebook. [
via]
posted by netbros
on Dec 10, 2010 -
9 comments
Urban gardening and agriculture are becoming increasingly important as our world becomes more urbanized.
Urban Gardening Help is for those environmentally conscious urban dwellers who want to use
hydroponics and other tools to create a green corner devoted to nature in their own home.
Urban Gardens looks for innovative and eco-friendly designs, trends, and ideas for the stylish urban home. See, for example,
tiny herb gardens, where succulent cuttings come in small packages.
Urban Garden Casual works with the constraints of limited-space, light, and micro-climates created from the shadows of neighboring buildings by using unconventional ideas like the
garden pouch.
posted by netbros
on Jul 10, 2010 -
9 comments
Urban knitting, guerilla knitting, textile street art,
yarn bombing. Whatever you choose to call it, this artform takes everyday objects of the city — such as trees, lampposts, street signs, bike racks — and wraps them up in colorful knit cozies. You'll find these wonderful oddities all over the world, from
Manhattan to
Sydney to Edinburgh to
Philadelphia to Oakland to
Chicago to
Bisbane and back to
Manhattan again. People have
written books about it. It has inspired an
Irish cellphone commercial. Metafilter's own
ErikaB made a
tree sweater that was featured on
Metafilter and on the front cover of Seattle's
The Stranger. Magda Sayeg's blog
Knitta Please is a showcase for some of her delightful projects, including a
Smart car,
coffee shop sign, and
crutches. (
Also, previously.)
[more inside]
posted by Blazecock Pileon
on Jun 25, 2010 -
37 comments
The Brookings Institution’s
Metropolitan Policy Program (led by
Bruce Katz) has just released its
The State of Metropolitan America report (full
pdf). The report builds on eight years of the Census Bureau’s
American Community Surveys; and includes a spiffy
State of Metropolitan America Indicator Map of changes in population indicators at state, metropolitan, and suburban levels.160;160;
Some interesting
findings:
- America's suburbs are now more likely to be home to minorities, the poor and a rapidly growing older population as many younger, educated whites move to cities for jobs and shorter commutes.
- Two-thirds of primary cities in large metropolitan areas grew from 2000 to 2008
- For the first time in several decades, the population is growing at a faster rate than households, due to delays in marriage, divorce and births as well as longer life spans. People living alone and nonmarried couple families are among the fastest-growing in suburbs.
[more inside]
posted by stratastar
on May 8, 2010 -
12 comments
Window Farms is a DIY urban agriculture project started in New York. It's not just about changing the way we think about plants in urban contexts — it's also about creating a kind of "open-source" approach to solving eco-urban challenges. (
Treehugger has some more context.)
The folks behind Window Farms are
now trying to take it to the next level using everyone's favorite new funding platform, Kickstarter. (Including a cute intro video which is worth checking out.)
And if window farming ain't your thing, maybe
one of their other DIY projects is more up your alley...
posted by chasing
on Dec 5, 2009 -
14 comments
