#cities
Material 2024
Berlin, Germany
Here are some of the coolest posters I saw in the city this year. Here's the collection from last year.
Material 2023
Berlin, Germany
Berlin has cash only bars, stickers to put over your phone's camera before you can come into the party, and a strong poster culture. The surfaces of the city are covered in a growing, shedding, and regenerating skin of posters. Most are good. Here are the ones I liked this year.
Notes from Granta 165 (Deutschland)
The Granta office in Berlin is located in the district of Friedenau. It’s a neighborhood of shuttered vinyl record shops and thriving funeral parlors that few visit, and fewer seem to leave. In the 1970s and 1980s, Friedenau became home to a concentration of West German writers, several of whom would make significant contributions to Granta: Hans Magnus Enzensberger, Günter Grass, Herta Müller. Today, on Niedstraße, in Enzensberger’s old building, piano lessons are offered on the ground floor; in Grass’s stout brick house next door, his widow runs an Airbnb (€145 a night). The residue of the Cold War is thick on the ground.
Bells
The church bells in this place, my god. They toll for 10 solid minutes every week night and for God knows how long on a Sunday morning. For a short time today there was a relentless tolling of the bells and a old timey horn honking at once. Chaos. This sort of thing is charming and atmopheric out in the countyside where the sounds have space to drift from afar. They are apocalyptic in the city where people live next to, under, on, and indeed inside the belfry. We're all heathens here anyway.
Why is there a cluster of tall buildings in the City of London?
— Why is there a cluster of tall buildings in the City of London?, in Diamond Geezer
Pubs in London with outdoor heaters
I was forwarded a PDF that began life as a Google Doc, before it was overwhelmed by demand. Crowd-sourced, guerrilla resources often spring up like this in times of difficulty. Perhaps I should be less surprised at how quickly Londoners have acted to work out where to get a pint without exposing yourself to the virus or the freezing cold. PDFs are notoriusly inconvenient to quickly reference, so I'm mirroring here. Text presented as found, below.
Evicted in the pandemic
— His Landlord Evicted Him During The Pandemic And Then Demanded $1,100 For Him To Get His Belongings, Vanessa Wong in BuzzFeed News
It's very hard to tear down a bridge
— Robert Caro Wonders What New York Is Going To Become , Christopher Robbins in Gothamist via Kottke
A Case for Turning Empty Malls Into Housing
— A Case for Turning Empty Malls Into Housing, Patrick Sisson in Citylab
Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism?
— Neofeudalism: The End of Capitalism? - Los Angeles Review of Books, Jodi Dean in Los Angeles Review of Books
My Ten Games of the Decade
Moments of intense concentration, placing things just right, are interspersed with blissful periods of sitting back and just watching the city work. Immensely satisfying, gratifyingly creative and endlessly mesmerising, Cities has spent half the decade as one of my most successful tools for relaxation. — My Ten Games of the Decade, Dom Ford
Coronavirus is not fuel for urbanist fantasies
— Coronavirus and cities: What urban designers don't get about COVID-19, Alissa Walker in Curbed
The Coronavirus Quieted City Noise
— The Coronavirus Quieted City Noise, Quoctrung Bui and Emily Badger in The New York Times
Large areas of London to be made car-free as lockdown eased
— Large areas of London to be made car-free as lockdown eased, Matthew Taylor in The Guardian
Cities Are Meant to Stop Traffic
— Cities Are Meant to Stop Traffic, Jason Kottke quoting Kirkpatrick Sale's 1980 book Human Scale
When Manhattan Was Mannahatta: A Stroll Through the Centuries
— When Manhattan Was Mannahatta: A Stroll Through the Centuries, Michael Kimmelman in The New York Times
When Oil Derricks Ruled the L.A. Landscape
— When Oil Derricks Ruled the L.A. Landscape, Nathan Masters in Lost L.A.
The Pandemic Shows What Cities Have Surrendered to Cars
— The Pandemic Shows What Cities Have Surrendered to Cars, Tom Vanderbilt in The Atlantic