Writing about infrastructure is everywhere these days...or at the very least, all over the parts of the Internet that I frequent. Here's a partial roundup of noteworthy recent road-related gems. Just a few of many, really:
First, Shawn Micallef of Spacing--one of my favorite publications--travels the length of Spadina Avenue, one of Toronto's main thoroughfares. Simply put, it's good writing about a cool street and the great city that has grown up around it.
Second, pause to consider this essay in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel that mulls how different development patterns affect more than just quality of life. After time spent in a typically convivial, walkable Spanish city, the author takes a huge letdown of a ride through the deserted streets of Milwaukee. Sound familiar? Far too many places could replace Milwaukee in this piece without the story sounding any different:
Arriving home from Spain, we drove through Milwaukee from Mitchell International Airport, and the eerie calm of sealing ourselves behind car windows settled over us; the "carness" of our life here spread out like a gray pall all around us. Instead of people, conversation, shopping, eating and attending to business on the hoof, we were surrounded by access roads, parking lots, highways and bridges until we eventually passed under the shadow of the hulking three-story garage whose gloomy, and empty, cavern overshadows our magnificent art museum.
We Americans are all infrastructure - and no people.
And what can we do with that? What is our relationship to all this asphalt, and what does it say about us? Another recent piece queries the psychogeographical significance of highway interchanges, referring to one particular interchange, also in Milwaukee, that this author's brother had a hand in redesigning.
A city and country centered on the automobile are by necessity also centered on the road. Today’s highway intersections are not just landmarks but the modern equivalents of crossroads and town squares, meeting places that become geographical centers of reference. And both as landmarks and utilitarian features of life, they are getting more consideration. With federal stimulus money flowing to shovel-ready projects that have been on the drawing boards for years, new intersections are sprouting all over.
Elsewhere, infrastructure that inspires: news of the opening of a sculptural new footbridge spanning the Brisbane River, in the Australian city of the same name:
About 36,500 people are expected to use the new Kurilpa Bridge each week to walk or bike across the Brisbane River between the CBD and the arts precinct at South Bank. The bridge, which has been described as looking like knitting needles, is not only one of the longest footbridges, but also features a sophisticated LED lighting scheme that is powered by the sun and can produce a number of different lighting effects.
(Via the Architectural Review.)
An airy, humane, and striking piece of public architecture, it happens to be the world's largest tensegrity bridge. It also happens to be entirely solar-powered, the world's largest example of such a thing. Designed by Australian practice Cox Architects, it spans 470 meters, is 6.5 meters wide, and is projected to save nearly 40 tons of carbon emissions yearly, compared with a conventionally lit structure.
