Infra-structured

Oslo's Almost Pedestrian Street

2012-01-05T06:00:00.000-08:00

I took my bicycle out to run some errands today. It is the beginning of January and I am in Oslo, but don't imagine that I was braving a blizzard with ice pegs on my tires (I will never be Norwegian enough for this). It has been a surprisingly mild winter this year; a couple icy spots are left over undrained puddles, but I was more than warm and safe enough to take on the environment after donning just a wool shirt, down vest, and lined leather gloves.

The bizarre part of this story began when, having the luxury of time, I decided to try taking actual bike lanes home. Oslo is not known for being bike-able and it seems to have a surprisingly long way to go compared to other Scandinavian capitals. Drivers are extremely pedestrian careful here, but on a bicycle it is a different story. Bike lanes start and end without reason or warning and cars (and bicyclists) often pretend not to notice their existence. On my (ten minute) detoured ride home, I encountered the following episodes.

First on Torggata - a street which this year received almost all the makings of a great pedestrian way - I found myself having to swerve twice around the same car who was apparently attempting a three-point U-turn or two and backing up parking-spot-seeking-traffic in several directions. Watching the timid 'pedestrianization' moves of the eastern half of Torggata has been rather excruciating. A few steps forward resulting in several steps back. The two ends of the stretch have been blocked off with bollards and markings for bicycle lanes, but the several blocks between this are basically open to traffic from side streets, loading and parking in particular. If you have ever been a pedestrian or bicyclist walking in a shopping street or parking lot, you may understand how uncomfortable (and actually dangerous) it is to be unsuspectingly adjacent to cars and trucks in the midst of parking maneuvers. Either there is a phase not yet implemented in this project, or this confusing-to-all result has entirely escaped the attention of the street's planners.

Torggata street end "closure" to car traffic, looks like a bike lane.

Pedestrian use of Torggata this summer.

Great pedestrian street elements and... parking?!

Continuing on my bicycle after this street I was continually surprised - turning onto streets that I was certain held bike lanes only to find that the end of the street where I had entered the street indeed did not. At one point in the middle of a bridge's car lane, I had to challenge a pedestrian carrying a guitar case for position because the sidewalks were apparently slippery. Finally, on the home stretch I was preparing to take a left onto the last marked bike lane home and I encountered two police women on horseback wearing hijab under reflective safety vests - why didn't I have my camera with me?!

So if I was a bit confused about bicycle etiquette in Oslo before, I was then at a complete loss of how to share the bicycle lane with horses. Instead of attempting to use it and pass them, I remained on the wrong side of the street and defeated-ly rode the final length on the sidewalk. People often ask me what I miss from living in New York, and they probably expect a whole host of answers. My typical (automatic) response is food related, but these days I really wish Oslo had a RideTheCity website!

A Landscape of Litigation

2011-11-11T02:22:00.000-08:00

I liked London - it's a quintessential big city with both quintessential urban possibilities and urban problems. Arriving there from Oslo made me re-aware of a few things - 1) Oslo really is a very small city, 2) the UK really is the older cultural/governmental ancestor of the US, and 3) we from the US - along with those from the UK - actually grow up within a landscape that demonstrates a culture of litigation.

I'm well accustomed to the visual onslaught of signage and advertising typical to cities, but coming from Norway I was not exactly prepared for the blatant commands constantly surrounding, advising, and guiding people in London. Nearly every intersection tells pedestrians which way to look, plus when, where, and how to cross traffic. Traffic is guided by more signage and all is enforced with a multitude of security/safety/surveillance cameras.

The contrast is in the details perhaps. Norway has similar traffic rules, and even an amount of signage to reinforce them. They do not, however, typically use wording on the signs, and in many cases the rules are stated and understood more as healthy suggestions rather than mandates. The impressive part of this contrast (to me) is that most Norwegians will not cross a busy road without the pedestrian signal, while Londoners (and those from most American cities I've seen) are commonly spotted dashing through any traffic gaps - despite blatant warnings all around.

While I didn't set out on this trip to document the signage, browsing through my trip photos I see that I have inadvertently still captured a series of the conditions which struck me.

My favorite from signage spotting in London was the graffiti stencil over the 'do not enter' sign above (one of the few signs there that do not write out its meaning in verbiage). This guy spotted throughout the city reminds me that while the UK may be the birthplace of many establishments that tend towards the conservative and outdated, but it was also home to much of the punk movement.

Finland: Lapland Landscape

2011-10-16T10:33:00.000-07:00

Some photos from the bus window on the road between Rovaniemi and Kilpisjarvi, Finland.

Hiking With Reindeer and Robots

2011-09-29T10:47:00.000-07:00

Some fellow creatures on a hike that took place around here.

Robot by Niki Passath.

Reindeer by.. mother nature?

Natural Reactions

2011-09-27T03:55:00.000-07:00

I've landed in Lapland of Northern Finland for a week workshop/think tank to consider the relationship between humans and nature. In the dialogues (between artists, scientists, and those of us who fall un-categorically between), we make the point of understanding humans as a part of nature - reversing "scientific" thought of removing oneself from the equation. Already on the first day, some interesting points have come up and I believe that I'm starting to reshape (or sharpen the focus of) my perspectives on sustainability.

One question from this morning was - since we humans are looking at nature and attempting to learn from what we deem as 'positive' or 'effective' qualities, do other objects in nature do this? Butterflies move their wings when hanging on trees to resemble leafs when predators are near without any cognitive ability to consciously know that their movement protects them. We had read some Darwin in the build up to the program, and we (as humans) tend to believe that plants and non-conscientious species adapt in reactive ways to somehow better themselves/the future of their species. An interesting note here is the habit of separating humans from the rest, but perhaps we too are simply reacting to our surroundings.

There has been a lot of talk about human impacts and how to mitigate the disturbances to ecosystems that we are causing - from lessening our consumption, to the potentials of creating new species to replace those that go extinct. There is a wide range of backgrounds and expertise at this workshop which bring a lot of new perspectives, reactions, and possibilities together (for better or worse). A point can be made in looking objectively at the human species on the planet that we are a biological case of overpopulation - a simple scientific thought with very complex ethical implications.

Fortunately so far, humans are not subscribing to the prescription of culling that we use when other species overpopulate an area and ruin resource bases or cause pollution (as you hear of for deer perhaps), but many are realizing that our impact must be lessened. Many people like to argue for or against sustainability as some kind of human duty to the planet, but I am realizing it can also be seen as a human duty to humans. Sustainability is a reaction the human species is developing to a threat - adaptations to species and to life habits are necessary if we are to continue to survive at current or projected population levels. Some questions remain in do we try to change ourselves, or do we try to change the world around us to accommodate us, or are both approaches necessary for the planet to support us?

road art between Rovaniemi and Kilpisjaarvi

Oslo Urbanism

2011-09-22T03:07:00.000-07:00

I have noticed some seasonal effects to my blog writing - namely, that during the winter the weather and snow cover makes many observations difficult and that during the summer the weather and sunshine make sitting at a computer to write difficult. Keeping this in mind, I've spent a summer enjoying Oslo and taking photos, making mental notes of things to write about. Now that autumn has arrived in it's chilly gray splendor, I am finding some quality computer time to go back over those photos and thoughts.

In general, it seems like urbanism is a new, but snowballing concept for Oslo. Norwegians are not accustomed to density, but the pressures are here and they're growing at a rapid pace. Globalization and rising populations are happening here as in any other world city, but there are some Oslo specific geographical aspects that currently prohibit sprawl. Oslo is located on a fjord and otherwise surrounded by an incredible >300 sq km cover of hilly forest. The forests are protected, and they are building into the water but for the most part, densification is the answer. It is interesting to watch the construction trends and see the car mentality of the last decades clashing with the progressive hopes for a sustainable city.

The future waterfront of Oslo with Bjørvika's center extension.

I am certain to come back with more detail on this topic later, but for now I offer two takes on pedestrianization.

Torggata - the almost pedestrian street.

Bar Code Area plaza and pedestrian bridge in background (urban design by MVRDV and others)

The pedestrian bridge, currently linking a gas station with a construction site over the train tracks, someday will connect the new "Opera Quarter" with whatever post-gentrification brings to (currently multicultural, working class) Grønland.

The Other Side of the Street

2011-08-16T16:01:00.000-07:00

As often happens on a subtler scale, a few disconnected influences coincided over the past week which kicked off the thought process behind this blog entry.

First, I've been reading - in Norwegian - a book about the ongoing gentrification process in a section of my Oslo neighborhood which is becoming less and less known by the name 'Little Pakistan.' The book is called Tøyengata and written by a human geographer named Tone Huse who has conducted a research project somewhat similar to my thesis fieldwork, just five years or so prior. In the process of describing the neighborhood, Huse writes about the bias of both the passerby and of the researcher in a multicultural, largely Muslim neighborhood of a westernized city. To (somewhat poorly) translate and paraphrase, she writes that it is easy in this setting for one to allow themselves to be lead to misunderstandings, being blinded by the apparent foreignness of it all (the women in hijab, the asian pastry cafes, the exotic vegetable markets and the fabric shops).

"Miljoet er ikke ens egen. Og selv om en skulle være del av ett av Tøyengatas miljøer, er andre sider ved gata fremdeles ukjente." She writes that that environment is not one's own, and that even when you are a part of one of the street's communities, other side of the street remains unknown. Huse's words strike a resonance with me because I have been that passerby, that researcher, and I continue to be that resident misfit as I am now marking the end of my first year of living in Tøyen. Each day I leave my apartment and am confronted with cultures I know little about. Immigrant families in my neighborhood come from countries as far removed from Norway as Somalia, Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan. I feel like I learn a bit about these people each day, and each day I wonder more. We shop together in the markets and share public spaces and public amenities - in many cases we also share at least a second language knowledge (in my case) of Norwegian, but our lives rarely intersect.

In general, I greatly enjoy my neighborhood. In my personal, subtle ongoing cultural experiment of smiling to passersby on city streets, I quickly found that my smiles and nods are more often returned here than amongst higher native Norwegian populations nearby. Shopkeepers here strike up conversation and small communities develop around where people buy their vegetables. Despite these pleasantries, it is sometimes difficult to shake the perceptions of difference from all sides - boundaries do exist between groups of people here. There are stores and prayer rooms only frequented by the Somalian or the Pakistani populations, and there are local pubs only used by an older Norwegian crowd of regulars. These differences and boundaries can be frustrating to get past, but I find the interactions that happen in the spaces between to be of both great interest and of great potential as an urbanist and as a resident.

I think about these themes often, but they have seemed especially relevant in the aftermath of the 22 July attacks on Oslo and the heightened aftermath awareness of risks associated with prejudice. A Norwegian friend of mine shared a moving story on her blog about overhearing an account of Utøya from a surviver on a bus, with the poignant lesson of how we can never (and should never attempt to) know anything about a person at first sight, without hearing who they are, what they've been through, or what they aspire to.

These messages seem particularly important to me lately as well, while the political arena in the US reels. I'm afraid that sometimes it's all too easy for us as humans to forget humanity. Whether differences lie in opinions, ethnicities, social statuses or other realms, they are irrelevant at the end of the day. As humans, we are the same at the core and we hold the same basic needs and aspirations across our outward appearances and expressions. Political debates and pointing fingers against ideologies, immigration policies, or religious practices accomplish nothing towards what should be the greater goal of making society stronger and more sustainable.

I was contacted about my blog entry after the Oslo attacks via email by a film project called My Fellow American, which seeks to recognize the Muslim community in the United States as any other neighbors, any other group of citizens. To help them spread their message, I'm sharing their film at the bottom of this post. The point follows the the same in the US as in Oslo and Norway, as much as anywhere across the world. It seems to me that the understanding of our potential misunderstandings may be the key to cultural pluralism.

Film: My Fellow American - linked from youtube.com

A Landscape of Grief

2011-07-28T02:49:00.000-07:00

Photo by Øyvind Tveter, found: http://cache.20minutes.fr/img/photos/20mn/2011-07/2011-07-22/article_oslo.jpg

Last Friday, when I first saw images published by Aftenposten such as the one above, one of my early thoughts after the horror passed was the irony of the bollards at this site. Having worked on various security landscape projects, I've held an amount of skepticism to the overwhelming number of bollards planted in the world, particularly in the past decade. Engineers tell us that these steel and metal forms can stop a vehicle carrying explosives in the event of a terror attack, keeping blasts from damaging the structural components of a building.

Seeing the aftermath of a car-borne blast outside the bollard zone here makes me question how much these stanchions actually help. While the building has not fallen down, it seems unlikely that it will be ever occupied in this form again. Further, rumors of possible structural instability have been circulated in the news, explaining added difficulty to the search and rescue process - so what actually have the bollards in all their perimeter multitude accomplished?

I ask this question more so now, after visiting the area surrounding the bombed site the other day. I took this photo of what seems to be new bollards going into place, effectively blocking the road to the targeted government building.

Perhaps these new bollards signal a new strategy in keeping vehicles off the route to important buildings and disallowing parking on such streets. In fact, in the aftermath of these attacks, a great many streets in Oslo have been closed to traffic while investigation, demolition, and reconstruction take place. It may now be a good time for the city to look at the benefits of pedestrian streets from a newly relevant angle and reconsider the auto-driven habits that clog city streets with parking.

Interestingly, in the new experience of the city, I find these blockages not to reinforce a landscape of terror and fear, as they well could. The barriers are lightweight and transparent, seeming (much like the law system in Norway) more suggestive rather than prohibitive or restrictive. Rather than people attempting to bypass these barriers, they have not only been respected as limits but have also been turned into memorials by the people. What could easily be an oppressive sign of fear another place, here has been transformed into a beautiful sign of grief and unity.

I've written a more personal note to this event in my second blog here, so I will keep this commentary short. However, from an urban perspective, experiencing this event has noted the transformation of a city in grief. These gates to the destroyed areas have becomes nodes in the city collecting people. Construction staging has created extra pedestrian streets and an open view feeling to the process of reconstruction. Destruction in some areas is being memorialized. Small statues, steps, and gates throughout the city bear flowers in mourning and remind passersby that we are all together in facing this tragedy.

Deconstructivism

2011-07-06T02:26:00.000-07:00

Deconstructivism at its (natural) best. This landscape is around the mountain peak Melfjellet in Nordland - an iron rich area of sedimentary rock. As the pictures (from June) note, the area is under snow cover much of the year, with the main traffic artery left unplowed through winter, accessible by only skiers and snowmobilers. The summer thaw reveals forms that could easily inspire or compete with the last decades in architectural deconstruction formal thought.

Learning Landscape - 1

2011-06-15T02:56:00.000-07:00

Having moved to Norway nearly two years ago, I've been noticing subtle differences in the (physical, natural and planned) landscape - from topography to plant species. Now realizing the need for a more structured study of such phenomena (if I am to work in landscape architecture here), I will turn some of my blogging to this focus.

Starting with a reflection on some photos - unstructured observations over the past year in Oslo, which I will attempt here to structure into the following categories: what nature has planted in the forest and on the islands/coast surrounding the city, then what people shop atthe market and plant within the city.

For now, Nature - forest:

The forest plays a huge role in the lives and culture of Norwegians - even here in the city. Each weekend or evening day of good (and sometimes bad) weather, people flock by public transit and autos to the many entry points to the 300 (+) square kilometers of forest that surrounds the city (Oslomarka). In the winter, ski trails abound under conifers punctuated by busy "hytta" 's selling sausages, waffles and coffee. In the summer, more trails appear for hikers and mountain bikers, ponds thaw for swimming and fishing. Plants here are layered, from framing dramatic scenes over the fjord, then entering species-specific groves and finding a multitude of smaller flowering plants tucked into the brush surrounding paths and creeks.

The city forests are one locale in Norway where people greet strangers happily - society coming together to mutual enjoy and benefit from the health provided by nature. The proximity of this resource may be the most incredible aspect of Oslo - one can go from a hip downtown cafe (sipping 6$ coffee) to stumbling over moose droppings in about 20 to 30 minutes using the local subway or bus lines.

In the meantime I play to try keeping tabs on both the downtown flower market and the local botanical garden to see what's in bloom through the seasons. This will require a bit more discipline in scheduling on my part.

Emotional Infrastructure

2011-05-18T02:30:00.000-07:00

This year, when I set out to write a masters thesis on how city sustainability goals are breaking down at the local and neighborhood scales in Oslo it turned into 150 pages about values. What values we hold and why, which ones we share and what that can foster, and which we disagree with, halting communal goals.

In today's blog browsing I came across this - http://www.infrastructurist.com/2011/05/17/why-arent-we-building-emotionally-connected-cities-a-guest-post/

The author asks (and in part answers) why are cities not investing more in emotional infrastructure. Understanding that things we love thrive because of the extra effort, can the same approach not be taken for cities? How can we as designers, planners, and everyday citizens encourage our neighbors to care about and personally invest in a place?

Home

2011-03-09T02:38:00.000-08:00

Somewhere in the midst of living in another country, writing a thesis based in residential neighborhoods characterized by immigration, and meeting people from all over the world I've noticed a theme in my thoughts and conversations lately - the concept of home. In the very global world of today, the question "Where are you from?" becomes more and more complicated to answer - in truth, I don't think it belongs in the introductory chapters of language learning books seeing as the reply nowadays is rarely as simple as "I am from city/country x."

An example of this phenomena - I recently made a new friend in my Oslo neighborhood - a woman originally from Vietnam who just so happened to also have lived many years ago a few blocks from my first NYC apartment on the Upper West Side. She generalized that in her adult life she has not stayed in any one place for more than three consecutive years - herself promoting an idea I have always loved - 'you need no more than two suitcases!'

This two-suitcase (or 100 item or however you'd like to phrase it-) mentality is one I find much tougher in practice than in theory. I even went through the exercise of dispersing (though not necessarily disposing) my New York apartment-life's worth of "stuff" down to two suitcases before I moved to Norway less than two years ago. Somehow I have since (jointly) accumulated a series of minimal yet substantial furniture and housewares that were deemed necessary when moving into an empty apartment. (I largely blame Ikea for making this possible.) After two moves with two suitcases and a bit of time in attempting to make a place into a home, clutter has amounted to the point that if and when we move next, there are certainly more than two suitcases to worry about.

The difference between having a place to live and a home is striking to me - particularly in the difficulty of defining what makes a home. One of my professor's here wrote a dissertation on re-housing displaced refugees and likes to quote John Berger's 'A Home is Not a House' that "Home was the center of the world because that was the place where the vertical line crossed with the horizontal. The vertical line was a path leading upwards to the sky and downwards to the underworld. The horizontal line represented the traffic of the world, all the possible roads leading across the earth to others." All religious connotations aside, I like the definition because there is an inherent amount of mobility - where ever one chooses to place their vertical axis is the place from which they identify themselves within the world around them.

I am, however, finding a bit of struggle with the concept of identity with the act of mobility. My readings on place identity largely link residence - real time spent in a place - with being able to have a personal identity and sense of stewardship over it. My own research is seeing the breakdown of that potential happening in the context of growing rental trends in Oslo - when people can easily move (away from neighborhood/building/apartment problems) they have little incentive to care about or work towards improving the place they reside. Simultaneously, the detachment of property owners understanding a place solely as an investment leaves little personal attachment or incentive - all in all creating a difficult cycle for those of us who seek to maintain quality or promote sustainability in the built environment.

So now I wonder, as more of the world's population increases the rate at which we move and change place, where will we consider ourselves most at home? And can our attention spans alter at similar rates to maintain and steward the concept of neighborhood despite this near constant flux?

Soldagen

2011-02-17T02:40:00.000-08:00

Winter still feels like it will be a long time leaving, but the dark times are over in Norway. Living in Oslo this winter, the darkness was less dramatic with short days just a couple hours shorter than winter days in New York. But in the north, the return of the sun is both noticed and celebrated.

From what I understand, the holiday "Soldagen" can vary date-wise for different places, depending on how far north and how many mountains are around, but it is literally marking the appearance of the sun over the horizon, generally around the end of January. It is actually a noted holiday in the north - children have the day off from school and families bake special cakes/pastries for the sun's return. After Soldagen, it becomes more and more comfortable to drink the midday coffee outside and layers can be lessened on the ski trails - the sun directly warming you even while air temperatures remain below freezing.

It's interesting to me that this drastic, recurring phenomena of dark and light times remains so interwoven with the culture. Living here, I've also found a much greater recognition of and appreciation for the sun - never mind the vital need for Vitamin D in the winter months. It's nice to stop for a minute and remember that natural cycles impact us significantly - even when we inhabit cities and overlook the subtleties of season change.

Slightly cheating, this is still from my Copenhagen photos, one of many communal spaces I visited and have yet to write about. When the clouds lift in Oslo I'll get my camera out once again.

What a difference the sun makes..

2011-01-28T00:40:00.001-08:00

I've never thought to ask Norwegians if they find an unhealthy tendency of staring into the sun when travelling to places more south during the winter. The darkness has been something I noticed but did not dwell on - it simply seems like a fact of winter life. That is, until you go somewhere with sun and are reminded. In this case, I didn't have to go very far - just hopped down to Copenhagen, but the sun here is stronger already - a few weeks before it really comes back up in Norway. I walked around yesterday squinting and seeing spots, but it's a wonderful feeling to recognize direct rays of light and a bit of heat from those.

The danes seem to have noticed the sun too - it's only around -4 C outside, but the sun on the benches by the water make public spaces habitable again.

Other notable first impression differences between Denmark and Norway..

The letter 'c' has returned to language, rendering words like center (Nor: sentrum, Dan: centrum) a bit easier to comprehend.

Wine and alcohol are sold at grocery stores - no more nationally regulated special shops with limited hours (guess it's harder to control when you share a border with Germany).

Everything is organic (or økologisk) - even the hot dog stands...

Topography and Weather

2011-01-18T02:02:00.000-08:00

It's easy to be deceived looking at a map or in the experience of traversal, but the entire country of Norway (~149,000 sq mi) is a little smaller in land area than the U.S. state of California (~164,000 sq mi). Despite it's size, a 16 hour train ride (or drive) will only get you from Oslo in the South to about half way up its length (to Mo i Rana, just below Arctic Circle). This phenomena is attributable to a general lack of high speed infrastructure resulting from the wild topography and un-accommodating weather found throughout the land. The results of this have historically been the isolation of communities and the development of hundreds of drastically different dialects among the here).

On a "short" drive, just reaching three hours (110 miles) into Telemark's mountains from downtown Oslo, some sights illustrate these points.

GPS gave us this as a main highway.

Happened to be mostly a trucking route, and they were widening the road.

People actually live out here.

The sun reached this part of the valley around 11am.

This hydro power station started the town of Rjukan in the early 1990s - located in a valley that is too deep and steep for the sun to reach 6 months out of the year.

Core-ten and Concrete

2010-11-09T06:12:00.000-08:00

A handicapped ramp turned public plaza at Schandorffsgate in Oslo.

Oslo in the Autumn

2010-11-09T05:57:00.001-08:00

Early Autumn in Norway finds a lot of colors - the most dreary of places on a dreary day can be beautiful. Above is an old cemetery for statesmen found while rambling around northern-central Oslo.

Eventually the cold and wind take over and the city cleans up the leaves, leaving people trying harder to keep some color around. A small testament here to the either the huge consistency of taste in Norway, or perhaps to the limited variety for cold weather plants - at the city flower market, everyone is selling and buying heather now. A couple months ago, this plaza was covered in juniper and other evergreen shrubs.

Identity

2010-10-25T04:39:00.001-07:00

I've been doing research over the past few months, trying to understand what aspects deter (or can help) residents to identify with urban spaces. A weekend walk through of Oslo reminded me of a larger problem - the city, much as any other in the globalizing world, seems to have an identity crisis of it's own. Now instead of asking how we can identify space in a city as "our own", I ask instead, what are cities defining themselves as? What is Oslo?

Un-learning, Re-learning

2010-10-22T02:34:00.000-07:00

It's been more than a year now since I left the U.S., and I realize I have come to take a lot of aspects of my 'new' surroundings for granted as 'normal'. It is interesting how one begins to forget the differences, or simply assimilates new phenomena over time in a different place. In this regard, I find that Norway sometimes deceives me.

I remember in my first impressions of the country being rather surprised that things don't look much different here than in many parts of the U.S. Most houses are made of wood, apartment blocks still follow modernism, a large percentage of people drive (compared to the rest of Europe) because the towns and cities are relatively low density and subject to sprawl (where geography allows). The culture can seem peculiarly shy, or keeping to small circles of friends but having lived in New York the anonymity does not seem so new (when do city dwellers ever meet their neighbors anyways?).

Despite many apparent similarities, there are, of course, differences - even when masked in subtleties. These differences become all the more important entering the second year in this country - as I attempt to insert myself into the legal system here obstacles continue to appear reminding me that I am not from here and that I do not always have the most clear or complete understanding of my surroundings that I was used to in the U.S. - from social situations that are at the easy end to adjust to, to navigating the infrastructure I interact with every day to various degrees of success.

A very humbling experience yesterday brought this to light when, despite 13 years of holding a driver's license in the U.S., I managed to fail the practical driving exam in Norway. Ironically, or perhaps appropriately, the major fault in the exam was a matter I find to be a shining example of the very subtle differences between the countries. In Norway, a driver does not stop at an intersection - rather they slow down and apply a 'right hand rule' for determining the right of way. Having been explained this rule, and thinking I had understood it I realized to be a very different from practicing it. I find it simple enough to watch to your right as you drive and allow people to go in front of you, but when I approach and intersection it is too bred into me to stop and wait for the traffic to clear before continuing. Maybe it can be the fault of having been a New Yorker (or Bostonian for that matter), or maybe it's simply coming from the U.S. Directly or indirectly, we are taught not to trust other drivers and we operate in a system with limits to prevent interaction when possible. I certainly don't have the experience to judge if one of these is somehow better than the other, but I find it to be potentially an interesting commentary on the link between very basic infrastructure (form and rules) and culture.

Image found in Norwegian traffic discussion thread:

http://www.diskusjon.no/index.php?showtopic=641518

Waterfront

2010-09-28T01:25:00.001-07:00

A recent visit to Zurich and a fieldtrip regarding the Norwegian 'cultural landscape' in Trondheim before that have me thinking about waterfronts. The greater Zurich area has developed seemingly all the land around Lake Zurich, leaving the hills and mountains beyond open for farming and nature. To compensate, waterside promenades and public spaces abound. Trondheim holds an industrial waterfront with sprawl going into the hills around the fjord, yet controversy has arisen over potential building on "the last remaining opening to the fjord." The landscape there might be held open simply for the 'view' - as the reality of residents accessing the fjord from that land is rather small.

Zurich Area:

Trondheim Area:

A narrative

2010-09-10T01:52:00.000-07:00

Trying something a little different here, comments welcome - am keeping my eyes open for an outlet where I might be able to publish this/later work..

It has been a few weeks now since I moved here - to Oslo, to Tøyen. At the grocery store (the larger option in the neighborhood boasting lower prices) the woman in line in front of me wears a burqa. It is a common sight here and I am getting used to it, but I cannot help myself from wondering about her. Where is she from, how long has she been in Norway, does she speak the language, what will she be making for dinner? The differences between us seem accentuated by this one, highly symbolic piece of clothing. We leave the store with our bags and walk in the same direction for a bit, until she turns down a street consistently peppered with various others donning hijab and headscarves. I continue to my own rented apartment.

At my front door, I greet my neighbor on his way out but still in his business-casual dress from the workday. Our building is an old one - solid, possessing character. The apartments inside have been recently renovated to achieve a clean and modern look - energy saving appliances and all. When I take out the trash in the evenings, I must unlock a massive gate leading to the courtyard - a modestly sized space with potted plants and views to greener neighboring lawns. A small table and some potted plants render asphalt plot as cozy. From this space I have coffee and waffles and watch more neighbors come and go. I cannot but acknowledge that we are all the same - young professionals seeking reasonable rent and comfortable rooms. There are no burqas or bright headscarves in my building.

I remember back to the realtor's showing of my apartment. We had arrived a little late and there was a room full of visitors who were just leaving. My boyfriend was the only native Norwegian entering a room that well displayed the diversity that the city of Oslo hosts. Tøyen after all, is known for being multicultural - and for having cheap rent compared to similarly central neighborhoods. The well dressed realtor did little to hide his eagerness to speak to us, and it was shortly after the door closed on the last other visitor that we were informally offered the apartment. This approach was not overly surprising - we had sensed similar interest at previous showings and had already turned down one apartment despite the tight market. It seemed to follow as we are a clean, polite young couple with good educations, a steady income, and the added benefit of northern European genes.

A week after accepting the apartment we read in the local newspaper that young adults from minority backgrounds and students are having excessive difficulties in the rental market. I think back to our visits to other apartments and realize that our demographic is the competition in this market. Not yet established enough to buy, still saving and unwilling to spend too much on rent thereby drawn into neighborhoods characterized by increasing disparity and change. I think again of the woman in the burqa and my architect's mind is drawn to the long block of lesser kept modernist housing where she turned. Those blocks have few balconies and no coutyards - that era of Oslo housing in these parts focused on function - quantity over quality. I do not know how big or light her apartment is, or when it was last renovated. It is certain that, unlike the pattern of residents found in my building, those of neighboring buildings are not all the same. Only a few blocks separate us, we are one community yet we share little beyond the sidewalks and buried infrastructure.

Going back to the gate on my building's courtyard, I wonder why it is locked. Why are other members of the community invited to share 'our' communal space? I walk down local streets where the only trees and greenery to be glimpsed is tucked behind other buildings, locked within large gates, buried in courtyards. While I appreciate that my back window has a view of some trees, I fear that it is unfair to the rest of the community. Some others have no yards by their homes; others have more beautiful ones than mine. I pay more and more attention to the individual people in my community and I wonder just how different are our parallel and adjacent lives.

Mostly, I am quiet in public though I make a point of smiling to the people I pass on my street. At our subway stop, diverse visitors and tourists often ask me for directions - I respond to them as best I can. In stores, I greet shopkeepers and rehearse well practiced phrases hoping not to be caught off-guard with questions outside of the routine. Even though I too, am shut out of the locked courtyards in the district of Gamle Oslo, I feel somehow integrated into this disconnected community. By all outside appearances having fair skin and blue eyes I am typically mistaken for Norwegian, but - as is revealed by the color of my passport and my difficulty pronouncing ø, æ, and å's in conversation - in actuality, I am just another immigrant here.

Forefront, fjord-front

2010-09-06T12:09:00.000-07:00

The forefront of sustainable development? Or, just a shiny new front along the water for the city of Oslo.. A couple shots of the ongoing construction towards a new city area - somewhere on the other side of the railroad tracks building after building is being built on what is likely newly filled land from the fjord-front.

The Intentional and Unintentional Skate-park

2010-08-26T03:02:00.000-07:00

A bit of a throw back, both in place and in line of thought, but I have not stopped thinking about landscape architecture over the past year outside of the profession. Back in Trondheim, in the neighborhood of Rosenborg, there is a public plaza designed - at least in part - to accommodate skate boarders. This area provoked me in particular after having proposed skate parks/plazas to New York clients, who time after time turned down the idea after much consideration on the basis of liability risks and insurance costs.

The theme of this dialogue goes along with many conversations in playground design in the US - how much protection do children at play really need? Do we as designers aim to accommodate the desires of the end user (the child), or do we serve the client and become a slave to the product lines touting "safety" while knowing that the users may very well 'misuse' the elements in the end.

I feel that this plaza space tells the story well - designers cannot guarantee the use and misuse of their spaces, but they can try.

The plaza, the skaters. Variations of smooth and rough paving designate well where the skaters can go at ease.

The elements - benches, steps, plinths - aesthetic choices, or skating intrigue, or both?

The metal edge here allows skating without damaging the corner of the stone. However the light color choice of the stone and the courses of fieldstone imply that perhaps this wasn't originally intended as a skate-element.

Detail of steel edge and skate board marks.

If the squared off stone pieces were not exactly intended for skating, then these rounded elements definitely were not. Despite the soft edge and slightly rough paving, the shape clearly did not work to dissuade skaters from it.

While many see skating and such marks as a form of vandalism or disrespect to a space, I found myself appreciating them. This plaza is in an area with various sports fields, and is seldomly crossed otherwise. In this event the skaters have claimed the space as their own and allowed their marks to dually show its use, declaring themselves as a community. Skating is announced as a sport requiring a 'field', just as the adjacent basketball courts and soccer courts which were planned for. Perhaps the plaza wasn't exactly supposed to be a skate-park, but clearly there was a need for one in the area and this design serves the purpose - intentionally or unintentionally.

Connected..

2010-08-20T07:57:00.000-07:00

I read a blog a few weeks ago wherein the author held a firm stance that it is impossible to go 'off the grid' in this day and age (http://www.infrastructurist.com/2010/07/29/is-it-possible-to-go-truly-off-the-grid-a-guest-post/). It was a good reminder of everything 'the grid' encompasses, and the fact that whether we realize it or not, we are all connected. There are services we share as a society - whether you are living 'remotely' in the countryside off a long driveway or in a dense city where you see your neighbors every day. What strikes me as interesting is that with all we share, why is it so difficult for western society to identify with the concept of communal resources. Is it because our electric wires and sewer systems are buried underground, or is it simply that the road has been there so long we forget that it belongs to all of us?

Now that I am returning to city life I will continue to ponder this and wonder how it is that we designers might be able to exploit the communal-ity of infrastructure and help residents understand the connections that make their (local) world work. And further, to help us remember that the most important systems we need to deliver the resources we live from are not only the man-made technological ones, but also those natural ones which we so often take for granted.

Forces II

2010-07-31T04:38:00.001-07:00

Last week I went to visit a glacier, or at least a small leg of one. Svartisen is the second largest ice mass in Norway, one of the largest in Europe and while I (rightfully) expected to be impressed by the glacier itself, I could never have imagined the incredible workings of it seen on the way. I am convinced that this hike was the best experiential lesson one could have in geology.

It is difficult to travel through Norway and not recognize that the country has been shaped by glaciers. The steep cliffs and uneven coastline quickly signal that this place did not geologically form quite in the same way or at the same time as the larger part of Europe or North America. However, it was not until arriving by boat into area cleared by a glacier within the last 100 years that I truly understood how this intense natural process works. The glacier scrapes away earth and bedrock, leaving a series of vast, uneven masses.

Scale - there is a 6'-2" Norwegian in the photo above.

Given time after the glacier passes, water runs over the newly exposed rock surfaces, smoothing and eroding areas forming puddles, streams, and pools. Sediment turns into soil and slowly birds and insects return and the wind carries seeds which develops vegetation.

Given enough time, soil and vegetation cumulate and become the more typical landscape that Norway is noted for.

Oh, and before I forget.. Here is that little glacier arm that has caused (and continues) all of this-

Forces of Nature

2010-07-20T03:57:00.001-07:00

This was a tree which once stood strong in a forest. Its former part of the forest has been cleared in a way that no machinery ever could.

Last winter, the (now) seemingly gentle waterfall in the picture above began to freeze. Ice collected and created a type of dam which lasted until a warm day in April. With temperatures around 70 degrees (F), the waterfall gained power from the melting snow at its source. Simultaneously, the ice dam weakened in the sun until the water was able to explosively push through. The power from it prevented the water volume from following the usual river path (which curves to the right of this photo). The rush of the water alone, with the debris and rock carried by it, shredded trees and a telephone pole in its new path. The result was stunning in the demonstration of shear force.

These photos were taken in June, and under the soil there were still mounds of ice and snow amongst the forest debris. (Virvasdalen, Nordland, Norway)

Natural Reclamation

2010-07-09T13:03:00.001-07:00

A little eerie, but somehow simultaneously heartwarming and reassuring - the land in this picture was a major highway just 20 years ago. In fact, this stretch used to be part of the E6 - the only main traffic route through northern Norway - where it crosses the arctic circle.

On top of the harsh weather conditions associated with this latitude (there were still spots of snow in mid June), this area also falls on a mountain at rather high altitude for Norway. The tree line in Norway is low - falling around 300 m (or 1200') above sea level for the south, and becoming much lower (down to 100m or lower) as one progresses to the north. The remaining barren landscape exposes the ground to strong winds and snow drifts through the roughly 6 month winter, so locating (and maintaining) road and rail lines becomes a difficult task. In some sections near here, long sheds have been built over the railway to shelter from intense winter drifting. The area is also bisected by many streams which ebb and rage during periods of snow melt, threatening complete wash-outs for the line of infrastructure. After repeated washouts and snow problems, it was determined to move the highway and the Polarsirkelensenteret (arctic tourist visitor's center) east of the original location.

Landscape at 66.56 degrees latitude with arctic circle center and markers.

Today the vacated highway is being reclaimed by the nature around it - and quite rapidly at that. The open landscape and former infrastructure is open to hikers (and grouse hunters) who can actively see the restoration of habitat taking place. We found a nest of eggs from a bird known in Norwegian as Heilo - the Eurasian Golden Plover (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eurasian_Golden_Plover) - camouflaged but out in the open landscape maybe 15 feet off the old road - the current infrastructure far beyond.

The train crossed our path before our return to the visitor's center - allowing an informative shot of the infrastructure - the rail line following the river, with the current highway in the background.

Taming Wilderness

2010-06-29T07:32:00.000-07:00

Over an hours drive from the nearest city, about 5 kilometers on a windy uphill path from the highway and across a couple rivers in Nordland lie a series of farms which were established in the 1830s. Making the hike up from the E6, on what is now a series of decently marked paths in part of Friluftsliv (or outdoor, literally 'free air <=leisure> life') tourism, makes one wonder how and why these farms were ever founded and maintained up until the 1970s.

(Bredek farm is top, center in the distance)

The answer turned out to be fairly simple - at the time, the farmland in the valley served by roads was running short, so farmers were forced upland and into remote areas to establish fields and grazing pastures. Along with this, I can only imagine, came a heavily work-ridden life removed from society around. The alternative option or next step in this migration turned out to be the expensive and arduous move to America where accessible, flat land was still plentiful.

Above is one of the first fields found on approach to Bredek. The stone wall is as old as the cultivation - having been built from the rock found when clearing the land. The full farm follows, with much of the older equipment still intact - from wooden sickles to steel wood stoves which must have been hauled to the site. The farm's environment and site is exquisite in nature with the views to the mountains, shelter from strong winds, natural water sources and constant reassuring sounds of a nearby waterfall and the woods full of birds and wildlife.

Two-thirds of the way back, spotting the highway and railroad infrastructure below, the remoteness really sank in.

The concept of living off the land, and the very real proof that this earth does not hold the capacity for everyone to do just that today. The need for cities and densities becomes clear, but how do we reconcile this with man's desire for space and yearning for natural surroundings. My very presence in this place seems to bring the story full circle without quite answering any of the questions. Settlers moved from Europe to the New World for land and opportunities, built cities far removed from farming sensibilities and nature, and bred a generation of assorted urbanites - some of whom, like myself, now seek a break from the stifling city life to better reflect on its problems only to find that perhaps we simply end up back where we started.

Wilderness

2010-06-25T10:56:00.000-07:00

A trip and several hiking tours up north have had me thinking a lot about wilderness - those natural areas still untouched by man, and how such a landscape transforms slowly over time once we drag our infrastructural entourage through an area. It seems fairly evident how humans change nature when we tread over it, but I also wonder how it changes us. I find more and more of my observances here in Norway certainly reflect some societal practices that have been created and or adapted over time as an effect of the local natural world. My next few posts will delve into this theme of man vs. nature (or is it man in nature, or nature around man, or just nature alone?).

One of the introductions that many foreigners get to Norwegian culture is a saying: "There is no such thing as bad weather, just bad clothing." While one might laugh it away the first couple times they hear it touted, there is definitely something to it. I'm not sure that I've been anywhere else in the world where a cold, rainy day would be so quickly deemed appropriate for a long hike, yet here I find myself again and again encouraged to layer up and head outside despite (or perhaps in spite of) the weather.

All fashion morals aside, last week I donned a full (borrowed) rain outfit for a leisurely stroll in some hills around the Rana and Saltfjellet areas. While the look isn't one I would have tried out in New York, here it works - in the least saving one from cooping themselves up inside for weeks in the name of bad weather.

Hiking comfortably in the rain also makes it possible to experience some ecologies that go unseen on dryer days.

Giant ant mound

Snail

rainbow

Where is the sustainable ghetto?

2010-05-20T05:14:00.000-07:00

A chain of thoughts has been developing in my mind, so thought I'd share them here before polishing them up into some cleaner form. I began research and note-taking for a term paper in which I wanted to dispel the values of territorialism in urban ecological planning, as applies to New York and how working locally might not always be the best solution. My mind keeps returning to the fact that community participation can only work within an educated and informed community.

Beyond this barrier is the concept of resources - resource sharing, distribution, pooling, management. Herein, I find territorialism's weakness - by limiting a resource base, inequalities and disparities between neighboring communities are inherently made more obvious. Territorialism might be nice for communities trying to preserve tradition, but it can not work to bring disparate communities together.

My thoughts keep returning to Long Island City and the transformations I saw underway there. There is such a huge difference between the rent/apartment prices in the new buildings popping up along the river and the rest of (/former residential) LIC, breeding new demographic shifts. Over the two years I lived there, I saw the two small commercial areas becoming more and more distinct from each other - and holding very specific segments of the small area. The new towers claim 'sustainability' while bringing luxury to (part of) the area, creating new social boundaries. The rent of the new buildings has to be inflated to balance the greater initial investments by 'green market' seeking developers. Incoming residents of these towers do not join those living in their shadows shopping at the budget C-Town grocery, even though the 4 or 6 block walk is convenient.

Many people overlook or seem to forget it, but sustainability has a social component, a component of equity which seems to fight with economics. It's great if the costly solar panels on a new building contribute to its electricity usage, but what about the neighbors - the existing communities - who might be forced to move and dissipate in order to continue to afford their meager existence living on the grid?

Subtle Sustainability

2010-04-17T14:54:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I am afraid that I have become too comfortable in Norwegian, as I begin to realize all that I have been taking for granted which is going on around me. For instance, I have realized there are a whole host of sustainable (and sometimes not completely sustainable but interesting) implementations and infrastructure here which I use on a daily basis, but have yet to share with many potentially interested parties back home. The more I have thought about it recently, the more bits come to mind, so I thought I'd share a bit of a list of sustainability related 'facts' I have come across in the past 8 or so months here.

*Disclaimer - many of these simply were derived from casual conversation and I have not done all the background research, so the range of specific accuracy may vary here.

One big one, which I was reminded of by a news article referring to Denmark - but Trondheim burns its trash for electricity and heat. The District Heating System is pretty interesting and quite large - covering (at minimum) the heat of all municipal buildings in the city. This is greatly minimizing the ventilation requirements of included buildings. Many buildings I've encountered (including my student apartment building) operate via passive/natural ventilation.

Some side notes with this... By trash, I mean 'avfall', or items not recycled in paper/plastic/glass/metal. I have further heard that all packaging plastic allowed in Norway is required to be of a certain compound which can be burned without releasing toxins into the air.

Also, building demolition and construction waste is highly regulated in Norway - 60% of materials removed from buildings are required to be reused or diverted from landfill, and localities commonly have centers for building material reuse/resale. These centers often employ people for sorting and cleaning materials on an hourly basis, creating laborious, but paying jobs for those with drug addictions and other problems hindering regular work.

Norway produces more electricity through hydropower than they use on an yearly basis. While commendable, there is a small catch to this.. Through the summers, a great surplus of energy is produced and exported through Northern Europe, but hydropower cannot be produced in the winter months, when rivers have frozen over. It is also during the winter that Norway consumes the most electricity for heating - this is purchased back from, sometimes unclean, sources in continental Europe. I have heard that in the 1980s or early 1990s, an ad campaign ran on the national television station actually encouraging Norwegians to use more electricity, because it is clean. The other concerning downside to this is that many appliances here, heaters and stoves in particular, run off of electricity, which is less than efficient.

To be fair, the (very progressive) building code in Norway is forcing incredible amounts of insulation and high R-values, and has planned for zero-emission buildings level requirements for the near future.

I am sure there is plenty more which will come to mind to be shared later.. But today, in the shadow of clouds of volcanic ash, one must recognize the shear power of nature - with or without humans and their destructive habits. I'm finding the flight groundings a bit refreshing in an ironic way.. The last time this Icelandic volcano erupted in the 1800s, it kept going for a full year - I cannot personally remember the last time in my life I went an entire year without taking a fuel guzzling flight, just imagine the environmental implications of grounding entire countries for any period of time.

The Snow Melts, the Ground Thaws

2010-04-12T10:47:00.000-07:00

Last Fall's farmer's furrows froze. The spring snow's gradual melting again reveals the geometry of cultivated landscape over central Norway. With the reappearance of field demarcations, the land returns to its seasonal status as a venue for privatized production.

An Awareness of the Environment

2010-04-07T05:42:00.000-07:00

Last week, I took the opportunity to join a family on a very Norwegian Easter holiday up north near where the arctic circle passes through the country. We skied and picnicked through remoteness, often with very little sign of fellow skiers or concept of land ownership and boundaries. It was the most true experience I have found of Allemannsretten, and leads me to a better understanding of the relationship between Norwegian culture and the environment.

The Scandinavian Easter is about the sun. It is an important holiday period marking the end of winter darkness and celebrating longer days. And the days are noticeably longer - where I was, around 66 degrees latitude, a slight glow from the sun still remained over the nearby mountain ridges at 9:00pm. What is more, the Easter week is one of the first times when one can feel full radiation from the sun, after many months of only seeing glimpses of it from shallow angles.

My hosts from Rana introduced me to many Easter traditions, and thinking back, it is impressing how many of them are related to the sun and environment in general. Skiing is a major activity, as even so far north, they are approaching the last month of skiing. Beyond recreation, skiing becomes a form of transportation in and of itself, allowing people to reach places beyond car and utility access - pristine nature. It is also the best weather for outdoor activity, as the temperatures creep above freezing, and the sunlight makes spending hours outside very pleasant, even without multiple layers of clothing.

Sunbathing and outdoor picnicking is probably a close second to skiing over Easter. Families ski for hours and then search out perfect spots in the wintry landscape. The goal is to find a large rock or mound that can shelter any wind, then make camp on the sunny face - taking advantage of the natural heat. When at a lack for an ideal spot, it is not uncommon for Norwegians to dig their own. Carrying a shovel (and often a compass) on any trip - the ability to dig a few feet into a snow bank and create a leeward, sun facing bench comes naturally to those making ski tours. Any chance to be outdoors was seized and celebrated.

I was greatly impressed to be able to comfortably spend so much time outdoors in such a climate.

Copper Trees

2010-02-15T08:49:00.000-08:00

Providing a bit of green in a park that is covered by snow perhaps 5 months out of the year, Vigeland cast his trees in copper for the Frogner Park in Oslo.

Open Space in Kathmandu - 2

2010-02-04T01:46:00.000-08:00

Taking a short break from writing my latest research proposal, I just wanted to return to this Kathmandu story about open space which I have left to this point, unfinished on the blog. Realizing that some of the particulars of the story have also lead me to my current research focus, I hope that writing this will better help to sort the many ideas in my mind concerning public space, property ownership, and environmental stewardship in urban areas.

On one of our first days in our Kathmandu study site of Sawal Bahal, we found a very large green lot, backing up into the dense developed neighborhood we had been studying. As you can see in the photo below, the buildings of Sawal Bahal end at the border of this space with no windows looking out onto the rather lush green area.

In fact, the only way to see this open lot from Sawal Bahal was to climb a small ladder and peer over an 8' tall wall - the top of which was covered in shards of glass to discourage possible crossing. Upon questioning some residents, a high school girl finally gave us the story. When she was young, some 10 years ago, she and her friends used to play in the area. The farmers in the next community got upset by the children being on their land and built the wall which we had found - successfully closing the lot off from anyone in Sawal Bahal. Later talks with the farmers confirmed this, and further informed us that caste discrimination is still an issue in Nepal. The open space existed because the farmers had purposely elected to build as far away as possible from the lower caste neighborhood of Sawal Bahal. While only a small percentage of the open land was being used for farming (much of it stands overgrown), and all access to the space is now pedestrian only, the farmers had no intention of sharing the land or allowing its use by their neighbors.

So, I started to wonder where the children of Sawal Bahal now play. For the most part, the narrow streets are the only playground they have, as the lot sizes prohibit yards for most of the buildings. These areas are all paved over, and further, the height of newer construction blocks sunlight from reaching the ground in most of this community. It seemed disappointing that there was not a green field around where children could play, until we found a second open site.

Again, this site was on the fringe of Sawal Bahal, but unlike the former space, it held no immediate neighbors due to a steep change in topography down to the next neighborhood. While the condition was considerably less clean and less maintained than the former area, we did find that children sometimes took it upon themselves to go through the gate and use the space for play. More local interviews informed us that the land is held by several owners and changes hands too often to keep track of, but its history so far has made it rather taboo to build upon. I immediately wanted to clean up the space and find a way to give it back to the community - realizing that it was neglected because the owners were not local, and the local residents had no incentive to keep it clean.

The local community group also wanted the land, and expressed interest in using it as a place for play. The biggest barrier, however, was the complicated nature of the land ownership, doubled with high prices for land in Kathmandu. While the land should have been public land, but had been illegally sold into the private market some years before, the muddy local governance that existed did not provide a solid framework for attempting to return the property to the community. Any legal proceedings would be both costly and far outrun our few months in Kathmandu. Slowly, all hope of our group helping in the matter of the land was given up (our money was from the Norwegian government and the United Nations, so matters of legality and documents of ownership would have been necessary for the class to justify any expenditure).

While the focus of our class turned to other places in the community, the issue of the land was not forgotten by everyone. Just before we left, this lock appeared on the gate (which had never been locked previously). At first this scared me, I thought perhaps the owners had gotten wind of our interference and wanted to close the land permanently to Sawal Bahal. However, when we spoke to the local community group leader (who is also the area representative for the Maoist party), he told us not to worry, he had put the lock there. He and his peers had decided to take it upon themselves to clean up the land for the children to play, and had put the lock up so that people would stop dumping things in the meantime. He told us that he was confident that if they cleaned the space, local people would stop dumping garbage there. When we asked what about the owners, he basically laughed. "We in Sawal Bahal own the only road that accesses the open space, if the owners complain about us using the land that they are neglecting, we will simply block the road so they cannot access it," he said.

This all came about in our final days there, when the Maoists were making a lot of waves throughout Nepal blockading roadways and calling for massive strikes in transportation and other services. For better or for worse, it seemed a bit of empowerment goes a long way with members of this group.

Infrastructure in Kathmandu

2010-01-20T12:33:00.000-08:00

Almost had forgotten about this photo - a pretty good overall description of place.

Boundary-less cities?

2010-01-13T15:32:00.000-08:00

Since I cannot sleep back in the land of dark winters, I figure I will share my most recent thoughts. Most of today I spent putting together a presentation for Fulbright regarding the problems of land ownership in making public use of undeveloped land as contrasted with the Norwegian idea of shared rights to uncultivated land. Thinking more about this, I would like to study how this Allemannsretten concept could be applied to urban areas. Granted, even in Norway there has been much debate on it, as people strive sometimes for privatized property. However, to move towards a true balance, it seems that people bringing their (spare) land together for the appreciation of all could be a small compromise to a greater goal.

If cities could take down walls and fences, encourage vegetation in parcels of land between buildings, make full use of utility easements in ecologically sensitive ways, and allow public passage, could this give the city back to the people - encouraging them to take ownership and show environmental stewardship? And how much land could be given back to nature, for purposes of natural drainage, shading, and CO2 reduction? Maybe planners should think more about un-developing urban areas, if holistic sustainability is truly our goal.

Open Space in Kathmandu - 1

2009-12-08T14:17:00.000-08:00

Flying into (and out from) Kathmandu, the density was striking. But living for an extended period in the city was even more impressive - open, green space almost does not exist here. From afar, one can make out some groupings of trees, only to realize upon closer inspection that they live in the yards of an embassy or the old palace - in either case, the 'yard' is so walled off that a pedestrian on the adjacent street has no concept of what lies on the other side.

There is one large, open green lawn for the city, called Tundikhel. Informally, I would guess that it's perhaps half the size of Central Park, but clear lawn with just two or three trees. While it is a public open space, it is actually the city's parade ground - where protests and riots take place. The area is completely fenced in with perhaps two gates, but I never could determine exactly where those gates were. Outside of military affairs, I seldom witnessed more than sparse groups of families using the space (despite perfect weather for two months).

To make matters worse at the Tundikhel - the area used to be twice as large, with the second portion holding athletic fields for Kathmandu. Some years ago though, the military took over this parcel and currently use it for training - even with its very central location in the city. This parcel now has a different characteristic - instead of a simple (albeit very tall fence) as found at the "public" space, the next parcel has a perimeter of barbed wire and huts with armed guards. A few scattered soccer goals and basketball hoops still stand across the land, providing a reminder to the once public facility of the city.

The Better Side of Fieldwork

2009-11-24T12:18:00.000-08:00

So as to not be unfair to the process and experience of fieldwork, I wanted to include some images of the better points. Overall, no matter the structural issues of the program, being in Kathmandu and working with these communities was an amazing experience. There was an excellent amount of collaboration and warmth found in the Nepali people, and also between our (extremely multicultural) classmates. Everyday was a new situation in learning how to communicate and realizing at times the careful importance of language, and at other times finding that language isn't really necessary.

I think the experience of playing various clapping games with the kids is one that will always stay with me. Often the children would initiate them, one brave one making the connection to get our attention, then others following until they were all in a big mass trying to take turns joining in on the games. It was such a small thing, so common in the international realm of play and everyone could understand the concept without verbal instruction. What made it all the more significant was realizing that these are the children of generations that used to be marked as "untouchables" in the Nepali context. Even just one generation ago, if a Dyola accidentally ran into someone of an upper caste the member of the upper caste had to repeatedly wash themselves and throw away any food or such that he was carrying on the basis of it being contaminated. In a society where a large part of social interaction involves touching and standing close, it was really great to see these habits now are possible between all different castes, no matter if they are Nepali or foreigner, local or migrant, upper caste or lower caste. Children here are just as children anywhere, and their future seems hopeful for truly ending caste and ethnicity based discrimination.

Misguided Aid

2009-11-21T11:04:00.000-08:00

I have been wanting to write about the actual field work my class did in Nepal, but it has taken a bit of time to get at least a small amount of distance and attempt to put it into perspective. My hope is that this will help me to be more fair to the entirety of the situation, but it is a difficult one regardless.

The full title of my course is "Urban Ecological Planning in Developing Countries - Transformation of Cities in an Eco-development Perspective". Students have entered into this program from many backgrounds and with many different assumptions about what Urban Ecological Planning actually entails. It quickly became clear to us that the Ecology here is not as driven by environment or nature as one might suppose, but rather thinking of systems of people. We began the course with lectures and discussions of the problems facing the urban poor and were given a set of readings about how planning and projects at the local level can serve as catalysts, helping communities to empower and strengthen themselves.

Before we left Norway, we learned that this year the course had 5000$ (US) from the Norwegian government to spend on implementing a project along with the typical research that the field work does. We discussed the pluses and minuses of this and all agreed not to let the money drive the research experience. Then we left for Nepal.

For two months there was a lot of talk about participatory methods and gaining input from the community. Our work seemed more directed at extracting information from the community in the form of household surveys - a practice that was difficult given the language barrier and seemed to my western self as intrusive. Nevertheless, we had survey information from 20 years ago for comparison and it did prove to give us a series of interesting information about our case community.

household survey process

Major issues unfolded in the case study, and each student (and each professor) took on one issue and did some research and produced a paper - something between a journalistic article and research paper. The issue topics included local governance, community organizations, water supply, solid waste removal, education, livelihoods, construction practices in an earthquake risk zone, open/communal space (-my issue which I will post more on later), women's roles, and social inclusion.

Working from these issues with specific focus driven by a couple community/teacher meetings the class derived a series of potential projects for the community of Sawal Bahal. To strengthen the roles and abilities of women in the community, the potential of starting a day-care center/work skill training program. To encourage social inclusion and make safer the play environment of the children, aiding the community in finding more formal owner/user-ship of some vacant land was discussed. To promote education and better the relationship between the community and the local school, a focus on improvements came up - ranging from bringing in different types of curriculum from environmental issues to music lessons to providing water to better the sanitation in the building. The students developed these potential projects and explored the obstacles in the way of each as time quickly ran out.

Up to this point, the program was research based, granted the research could have been better structured, but our tasks were reasonably product of our findings. This, however, is when the money came back into the picture. We found ourselves with one week remaining and $5,000 to spend in an economy where the national per capital income is little more 400$ a month. The question was asked if it is better to do something while we are there or leave without doing anything, and it is on this point I am still hung up.

The end product came from a panicked rush of activity and decisions that did not come from the careful participatory community work we had been doing, but out of convenience, showiness, and as seemed a final priority in the motivation, aid. The class (and our professor in particular) were incredibly fortunate for one very patient and capable Nepali student who took on the management and contact of the following projects which began in the final week of our time in Kathmandu.

First, it was decided that the school could be painted, and perhaps the local (actually defunct at the time) youth club would be willing to take on the labor in return for us supplying materials for both the paint job and some finalization of the construction of the club's meeting building. Next, at the push of a few adamant people, we were able to hire a plumber to examine and repair the water system of the school so that toilets could be flushed. The provision of water for this remains a bit tenuous since there is no municipal supply, but the school now has access to an existing storage tank, a new water pump, and some new faucets in each of the bathrooms. Finally, in a rush to obtain as many receipts as possible, the class was sent out to shop for books and toys to give to the school - the idea being that the children could use the toys and if a day care center was ever started then they too could use the toys. Upon receipt of the later, the headmistress of the school told us the problem for the youngest of kids is not that they need toys, but that they have no surface on which to play with such - the school's bare concrete floor and desks that were too large for kindergarteners were neither condusive to the young children nor to a future day care. After this comment, we used more of our fund to pay for some carpets and floor cushions to make a new setting for the little ones.

At the end of the day, these efforts were nice - even if hurried - gestures, but I cannot help feeling a great sense of disappointment at the incongruity between what we did and what we were supposed to be learning in this course. These projects maybe work to show immediate change, but it can be argued how meaningful or lasting any of these changes are. I am not sure that any of them could qualify for beginning a catalyst or helping the community to strengthen themselves. The major collaborative effort we attempted between the youth club and the school ended with the head of the community group starting the painting and then requesting that we hire laborers even though they had signed a contract that the club would do the work for the school.

How quickly after the work's beginning we left also makes me uneasy about what will be actually accomplished to working order. I do have to recognize that this community is and was fully capable before we came, and I completely trust that they (not us) know what is best for themselves. If/when they realize the entire school doesn't need to be painted, they would surely be clever enough to save or re-sell the materials and focus their efforts on better projects (they have already set up 3 different stations for water supply). After their collective decision to go after the vacant open space did not pan out to be legally feasible, the most active community group put a lock on the door to the lot (owned privately outside the community) and began a cleanup effort.

In Sawal Bahal, there do exist some major underlying issues concerning inequality, lack of education/literacy among adults in the community, and a range of attitudes for education of the children (never mind that few, if any, buildings in the area are built to legal limits or could withstand and earthquake). Our work was able to identify these problems, but it did not even attempt to alleviate them. Kathmandu, and even Sawal Bahal is crawling with international volunteers and organizations tripping over each other in the name of aid, but it's hard to see if positive change actually happens anywhere. I'm afraid that most of them, much as in our case, end the day with throwing a shiny new coat of paint on the walls but never addressing the cracks beneath.

leaving Sawal Bahal

Back to Frost

2009-11-17T06:31:00.000-08:00

I fully intend to return to Kathmandu (in this blog at least) and tie up some loose ends, but for the moment I am very much back to Norway and early winter. After a few days here I have made a few observations regarding changes in the ground plane and in the sky above.

First, most of the earth is now frosty, maybe demonstrating the beginnings of a phenomenon of 'permafrost' which I can only begin to imagine. Growing up, I remember frost from winter mornings. I would wake up and wait for the school bus as the sun was just rising and all around, particularly in grassy areas, there laid a light dusting of slippery white that faded within the first hour of the sun being up. Here, I notice some differences - the frost stays, the sun does neither comes to shine on it nor has the power to melt it into dew with the passing of the day.

These photos were taken around 2pm, what should be near the warmest point of the day (and the air temperature is a bit above freezing). Please note that this is not snow - it hasn't snowed since I came back, and these frosty areas are in openings of forest that theoretically would see sunlight. Beyond grass fields, the frost also hits gravel roads and asphalt surfaces in a thick manner, appearing innocent enough but making walking paths extremely slick.

As for the sun and the sky, its habits this time of year here are quite peculiar. The first few days back in Trondheim I woke early and found myself waiting for the sun to come up the rest of the way to begin the day - only it didn't, and it doesn't. Rather than tracing a high arc through the sky, in winter at this latitude the sun actually makes a horizontal movement - appearing on the left of the sky around 7:30 in the morning and moving directly to the right through the course of the day, not to be seen again after 4:30. The result is a peculiar early morning feel through the entire day, but often an extremely beautiful indirect glow above the (ever present) clouds above.

11:30 am

4:30 pm

Multiple Identities

2009-11-06T22:48:00.000-08:00

As the prospect of packing my belongings and leaving my two month home of Kathmandu approaches I am a little stuck on a concept brought up by last week’s conference on tradition and preservation in the Trans-Himalayan area. Many of the lecturers at this conference noted some fears of globalization and the way that contemporary life is forcing people to hold multiple identities – constantly pulled between the traditional and the modern. While I share neither a personal attachment to any “traditional” lifestyle nor the presented fears of loss of culture, I am lately very much aware the multiple identities which I hold.

Hidden back in my suitcase are several items which I have not looked at or thought about in the last 60 days – a down winter vest, some makeup, a student id from NTNU. There is a cell phone with a Norwegian phone number that I never managed to remember even though it belongs to me. Finally, there is a keychain holding the most solid and complicated key I’ve ever owned – one that ironically belongs to the most secure and safe place I have ever lived. The comparison of this key to my Norwegian small town student apartment to the flimsy piece of aluminum used for my hotel room is comical. These keys further remind me of sets I have held through other identities – especially those that used to be part of an internal “keys, wallet, phone” mantra that I would not leave my New York or Boston apartments without repeating in check. Such items become symbols of the habits which form our lives and how we identify with the world.

It is interesting to me the items one believes they cannot leave home without depending on a specific position in life/the globe, or to any one particular identity. I have not owned, or even used, a phone since September and I haven’t particularly missed it. In Norway I used my phone for social commitments and to check the time, in New York the phone was a storage device for any pertinent contact information – personal or business, and often held note reminders for those days when I would be without internet for several hours at a time. These objects and our relationships with them change with our circumstances and environment. In my case, “keys, wallet, phone” became “wallet” or “wallet, camera” by the time I got to Nepal, since life in a hotel allows the keys to be checked at the door. The breaks from some amount of materiality and the barriers to technology here have overall been refreshing. I am reminded of Thoreau writing in Walden how he feels bad to see the poor carrying all their belongings on their back, not because they are poor and have so little, but because they have to labor to carry so much which ties them down.

So here I have fallen into an identity between volunteer worker and transient long term tourist. My class has come here from diverse cultural backgrounds stretching from Norway and France to China and Japan, but in Nepal have become a fairly cohesive international societal unit. I will return to Norway with the full identity of a student, saying goodbye to some good friends and many familiar faces - realizing that some relationships will carry on in different capacities and others will disappear or change completely, along with the habits of the day to day. Being one to typically fight nostalgia and embrace change, I look forward to the new opportunities that later identities may afford me. For me, the possession of multiple identities is a key element, both in the personal development of the individual and in our collective ability to relate to each other, adapting into variously scaled and termed social groups. It may be that multiple identities is the clearest form of underlying social infrastructure in the global environment.

Manual Labor and its Implications

2009-10-29T06:15:00.000-07:00

One of the most obvious, and often most shocking differences that a Westerner can observe regularly in the developing world is the large scale reliance on manual human labor. Having lived in Kathmandu for nearly two months, I have mostly gotten used to seeing single men carrying refrigerators and other similarly sized/weighted loads down the street on their backs using a strap around the forehead while taxis and rickshaws carrying tourists weave between and around them. When the road outside of my hotel was repaved, there were no large machine vehicles in sight – rather a simple metal cart driven by a small tractor engine, holding a mound of pitch inched its way down the street while two men with shovels quickly scooped and smoothed the asphalt over the surface.

It strikes me again and again that the world is an unfair place. To various extents depending where you go and who you ask, it is clear that Nepal is still a caste based society - issues of discrimination between people based on profession (which is traditionally tied to the family name) still occur. I hear rumors that different low castes in Nepal have been recently acquiring more power and better, more stable working conditions since the Maoist movement has formally entered the politically arena here. From the sounds of it, the Deola sweepers are now finding opportunity in municipal janitorial positions which hold pension benefits and job stability, much to the chagrin of the farmers who are traditionally a much higher caste and find their livelihoods to be full of hard, thankless work by comparison. Traditionally, laborers and those who dealt with refuse/waste found themselves at the bottom of the caste system and labeled Untouchables – capable of contaminating the food/lives of the upper castes despite the necessary roles they filled in the context of up-keeping the city.

Perhaps inspired somewhat by the political environment here, I have began reading through a small survey of Marx and Marx-inspired revolutionary communist (and communist criticism) literature. One can quickly see the ways that the ideas/ideals can be romanticized and become popular in a context such as Nepal – where life is hard and poorly appreciated workers are plenty. The sickle and hammer symbol is by far the most popular form of graffiti to be found through the countryside.

Due to the topography of the country, many rural parts of Nepal (and 80% of the national population is rural) truly rely on human labor for their basic needs. I went on a 7 day trek in the Annapurna Sanctuary where Gurung villages largely support themselves by farming and trekking tourism. The tricky part to this is that when your village lies four (long) walking days and 3200 meters above the end of closest vehicular road few crops can be grown and all supplies from rice to cooking and heating fuel must be carried on the back of a porter.

The experience of this, and being here in general, has given me some serious questions about sustainability and social equality. On one hand, it can be argued that human labor is completely sustainable – we have no particulate pollutants in our emissions, we are theoretically a renewable resource, and the limitations of human strength perhaps help to deter over consumption. The counter to this would need to involve some digging through numbers concerning the amount of calories that a porter needs to consume to complete his work, and trace this back to the increased load on farmers to support such laborers (moreso if said laborers are not vegetarian).

Further, judging human labor as sustainable begs the question of what increased health problems and loads on medical facilities and insurance programs. While trekking, I was greatly concerned with the strong fumes coming from fuel tanks carried on the backs of porters while passing on the trail – not only are these men carrying heavy loads quickly on steep terrain, but they are also subjected to fairly toxic fumes for hours at a time. (Ironically, the fuel is necessary primarily because of strict limits against cutting and burning wood which have been imposed on the villages by the National Conservation Trust.) What social capital is lost in a village where most of the men spend their days (and many nights) away from their homes and families for work and then are presumably susceptible to disease and early death?

Many of these questions and problems extend into the developed world as well, but manifest themselves in different (often more clearly less sustainable) professions. Such risky professions are the epitome of social inequality. Unfortunately, I realize that even the ideals of Communism do not cure these problems. There can be plenty of discussion regarding workers’ rights and ‘equality’ between the proletariat and bourgeois, but how does one handle the fact that the world’s society has ‘developed’ in such a way that some citizens somewhere have to perform work which is inherently unsafe, unhealthy and thereby, unequal?

cross referencing

2009-10-12T05:05:00.000-07:00

Just wanted to reference back to the sub-focus of my current coursework: http://uep2009-kathmandu.blogspot.com/2009/09/sawal-bahal-children-caste-open-space.html

We've become heavily involved with a small primary school in our study area, and simultaneously will work towards helping a strong community group secure some (currently) private open land to build a playground. I'll be posting more on this in time.

Also, an interesting read related to nature and society:

http://scienceblogs.com/cortex/2009/10/nature_and_compassion.php

Circumstantial Gardening

2009-10-12T04:39:00.000-07:00

Kathmandu is a city so strangled by development and pressures related to the values of land (which near doubles every 3 years) that natural green space seldom exists. The Nepali people, however are from a rich ecological state and it quickly becomes obvious that city dwellers go out of their way to create some semblances of the natural world. Plastic flowers adorn even the poorest lobby spaces and real plants can be found in more elaborate locales. The rest of the natural will of the populous is forced upwards – to the roofscapes of buildings. Nearly all roof terraces and balconies show small and large attempts at the urban provision of trees, shrubs and even lawns.

At times, the efforts seem to be striving towards overcompensation – to the point that the placement and containers for plant specimens can become haphazard and seemingly circumstantial. Bath tubs, oil drums and discarded containers of many materials become planters. The goal of achieving vegetation takes priority over the aesthetics of the means through which it is accomplished. Nevertheless, these informal, private green projects serve an important function – providing some of the only options for (near) peaceful retreat from the noise, traffic, and dust of the city below.

Kathmandu Traffic

2009-10-05T05:35:00.000-07:00

Where the Water Comes From..

2009-10-04T06:01:00.000-07:00

Working with a moderately poor community in Kathmandu the past 3 weeks, one of our major questions has been wondering where the water supply comes from. They have plumbing infrastructure, but no water supply in this part of the city - instead tanker trucks bring water on a daily basis, filling up water tanks from which the community then distributes rations. I plan to post more on this later, when the picture is more clear - but this weekend my trek ended up at the beginning of the pipeline from which most of Kathmandu gets its water currently. It happens at an interesting point when a national park forest dissipates rather quickly into civilization and then to city.

Roads of Kathmandu

2009-10-04T05:23:00.000-07:00

It's hard to explain, or even to imagine the complete chaos that makes the roads of Kathmandu. Here are a couple of photos, someday I will post a video or two, but I believe that none of these can convey the motion, noise, and smells that come along with local travel through the city. It is a truly amazing experience to traverse, or especially to cross these streets, in general the largest and most agressive vehicle rules, pedestrians have no right of way ever, and it is beyond me, but somehow it all works without major catastrophies on a daily basis.

After acclimating myself to this environment, I cannot imagine ever again having any fears of riding bicycles in Manhattan. I think even New York taxi drivers would have a difficult time in Kathmandu.

Spirituality and Compassion, luxuries?

2009-09-18T08:38:00.000-07:00

Visiting many temples and monasteries here I have been struck by what I perceive to be a paradox. At many of the temples, great care has gone into decoration and maintenance of offering places, however sometimes the buildings are run down, and they are often vacant. What was more disappointing for a westerner seeking to experience Buddhism and Hinduism was that the overall sense of peace and escape from the city atmosphere that I had expected I have not found. Late today we stumbled into a very large temple/stoopa built within a very small courtyard and people were actively making offerings. The structure was grand and beautiful, and there was the chanting of monks echoing down the entrance alleyway. I entered the space expecting a peaceful and humbling setting and took great care to observe the Nepali people around me so as to not interrupt any ongoing rituals. It came as a disappointment to see other Nepali people passing through the courtyard completely ignoring the women praying, and the only ritual that people seemed to be following was approaching a caretaker or priest of sorts to pay money in order to light candles. Some women were making prayer but they did not seem to mind the intrusion of our class or other secular pedestrians. I felt uncomfortable occupying space so close to those taking part in their religion that I moved to the next corner of the courtyard, where I found two Nepali women speaking on their cell phones (perhaps 10 feet from those at prayer). I had to keep moving as I found more pedestrians attempting to push their way through the courtyard on bike in transit and finally came to the back of the temple, which had open space and some beginning of a sense of peace. There was soothing drum music coming from a door which I found to be a shop selling Buddah, Ganesh and other deity figures. It was all so strange to me – things that I would have interpreted as sacred seemed to be turned into businesses of convenience and the one time I would think a culture would seek solitude and quiet was occurring in a minor pedestrian thoroughfare.

A conversation I overheard this morning has keep coming to mind. Two American expatriots were in the coffee shop that I found for breakfast and speaking of their past 2 to 5 years living in Nepal. While they had some lovely things to say about the place and people, they also had a lot of criticism. One that was repeated in many ways was a concern and distaste for the fact that (most) Nepali people seem to be only concerned for themselves. Even police here would rather not be bothered with the good of the people as long as they can maintain their personal jobs and provide for their families. These two Americans had worked for various NGOs and I can imagine their informed frustration was thought through more than my very short experience here allows me, but I have the inklings of a different perspective for this. Thinking of the many NGOs and volunteers I’ve encountered from the US and Europe I wonder if the phenomena of people caring for others is not a luxury of the wealthy. If I try to put myself into the life of a Nepali person, knowing everyday unsurity and insecurities of basic needs such as water, electricity, and home tenureship, I cannot imagine having room in my mind (or time in my life) to worry about the others around me. It is not an easy life here, and people have to work for their health and their survival. In the west, we have come to take these things for granted – I can leave my home in the US and know that whenever I choose to come back it will be standing, no one else will have taken it over, and that I have some form of legal right to the place – defendable in any court. I can drink water from most any source practically for free without worrying that I or any member of my family will lose their health from doing so. For the most part I have job security, or security of some kind of support in the event that I lose my job, I may even have money in the bank for such a downfall. These things are not existant in Nepal in the same manner, the Nepali people cannot take such basic needs (rights we may think of them in the west) for granted. They have to concern themselves with just getting by in life every day, solving their own issues, when and how do they find the luxury of time to look at those problems of others and attempt big problem solutions?

Kathmandu Intro

2009-09-16T03:39:00.000-07:00

Finally finding a comfortable internet connection, I have a bit of backlog to post. Will reorganize from this point forward though.

Day 1 – Friday, 11 September

Arrival to airport after 26 hours of flights and layovers – that in Delhi being the worst. There were leaks coming through acoustic ceiling tiles, soggy tiles falling in the corridor, bamboo planters that seemed to be for decoration placed strategically midhallway under the largest of the leaks to mitigate. Guards (Military? Airport security?) were walking around with exposed handguns and militaristic uniforms. We waited in one glassed in room for 4 hours to receive boarding passes, crossing our fingers that the airline (which had been on strike the day before) would take care of transferring our luggage as none of the 13 of us students and professor had an entry visa to the country of India.

All went well in the end, the hotel hired taxi from the Kathmandu airport provided quite the welcoming experience. Our luggage was strapped to the roof of an SUV. They drive on the left side of the street here and traffic rules are lax at best – largest vehicle governs all. The smell of dust and diesel stung my throat and nose through the ride. In the street (as there is no street sidewalk definition), I saw children sorting trash, old men cooking over open fires, mangy dogs nursing pups, the thinnest cows in my life, some goats loosely corralled and free monkeys. Many buildings appeared vacant or under construction at first glance, but then you can make out a family’s laundry hanging on a line in the top floor, clearly only accessible by a stairway that one would think should be closed (with a railing at least?) but the walls have either not been built or have fallen down at some point. The recurring thought in my head during this ride was “this is real, I have seen this in photographs, but this isn’t a photograph, this isn’t a documentary, this is real and I am here.”

Three days in, I have become accustomed to the shock factor, but still sometimes I find myself shocked at what I am seeing and mentally recording. This place is overwhelming yet wonderful – filthy yet beautiful, loud but personal, and completely foreign but more real to life than any I have experienced.

To Kathmandu

2009-09-08T12:55:00.000-07:00

After a whirlwind couple of days of last minute vaccinations, laundry, packing and the beginning of goodbyes with my new friends in Norway - it is finally sinking in that I am really going to Nepal. My flight(s to be precise - the 4 leg flight-plan is roughly mapped above: Trondheim, Oslo, Munich, Delhi, Kathmandu) leaves on Thursday, and while there is plenty left to do I thought it a good time to give a little bit of an overview prior to being tossed into the life scale reality of Kathmandu.

The country of Nepal is about 4,000 miles away from my current home in Norway - just slightly greater than the distance from New York to Norway which I have already traversed. The country is nestled between India and China (Tibet actually), just at the base of and including much of the Himalayan Mountains. Interestingly, the time zones add just another 3 hours and 45 minutes to the time difference.

I will be staying in the capital - Kathmandu. A small but dense city, holding over 1 million people in an area of about 20 square miles according to Wikipedia (by comparison, New York holds over 8 million people in about 470 square miles which is about 1 in 58).

There have been a lot of questions about what my expectations are for Kathmandu and what I will be doing there. I don't have many answers - my personal intent is to remain as open as possible and involve myself primarily with taking everything in. My only expectation is that I will realize and embrace this as a very new experience and way of life for the next two months. My course program will guide the field work, so hopefully we will be able to gain some perspective on the urban problems in Kathmandu and manage to initiate something in the way of promoting communities to find means towards positive change.

On a lighter note, I'll share a bit of the pertinent advice I've received from my professor and local Nepalese students which I have been repeating as a small mantra in my head..

1- Don't pack too much, you'll "be heavier" coming back.

2- Don't drink the water.

3- Don't get knocked down a mountain by a donkey.

I'll do my best to keep aware of these three items, and will be blogging whenever free time, internet access, and electricity supply allows.

Also, my class will be contributing to a blog so feel free to keep an eye out for postings here as well: http://uep2009-kathmandu.blogspot.com/

Oslo is Contained

2009-09-01T12:47:00.000-07:00

As brief as my visit first visit there, my first impression of Oslo is that it is a city contained. A fellow Fulbrighter is studying the preservation of open space particularly in the Oslo area, so I look forward to both more information and additional visits to the city later in the year.

The 27 minute Airtog express train carries passengers from the airport terminal to the center of Oslo. Perhaps 1/4 of the ride is a tunnel, but the majority of the rest looks something like this..

Re-approaching Trondheim

2009-09-01T12:23:00.000-07:00

In the official countdown before I leave Norway for Nepal, I've had the opportunity in the past two days to document another perspective on the country, and the Trondheim area in particular. In a whirlwind two day trip for the Fulbright Orientation in Oslo, clear skies allowed me some aerial shots to hopefully better provide the bigger picture here. This country is beautiful - the topography is awesome in the most natural and surreal senses, and the sky and its many changes amaze me on a daily basis.

Benches and Desire Paths

2009-08-23T05:25:00.000-07:00

As promised, some visual documentation attempting to demonstrate open land rights in Trondheim.

And finally, a view from one of these benches.

Land Rights

2009-08-21T10:44:00.000-07:00

The past few weeks in Norway, I've been continually aware of the lack of 'boundaries' in the Trondheim landscape. Street becomes sidewalk becomes drainage swale becomes a yard or a field of a farm. Sometimes the 'road' is no more than a gravel driveway or wide dirt path commonly used publicly by bikers and pedestrians alike - though you may be walking through a residential community, there is no concept of 'insiders' on these streets. Sure, some houses enclose their yards in hedges, but for the most part a neighbor could pass into the adjacent property lot with no clear marker and a pedestrian on the street could easily use what in the US would be perceived as a person's yard as a shortcut.

I had chalked most of this up to the small scale of Trondheim paired with low crime rates and a generally casual attitude of Norwegians, but the unclear separation of public and private outdoor space kept appearing. Along intersections and on random roadside (or pathside) hills I keep finding benches. They are placed so casually that anyone may stumble upon them to sit and ponder the landscape (the topography here ensures that there is always a view), but they are not consistent enough to be part of a public citywide 'parks' space.

I'll have to come back to this with some photographs another day, but a couple of lectures from classes this week have begun to shed some light on the phenomena I've been noticing. In Norway (and much of Scandinavia), there is a national law known as 'Allemannsretten' or 'every man's right'. It can also be called the Open Air Act or Freedom to Roam. In short, it allows every person of the general public equal rights to access most land - publicly or privately owned. Many travellers know of this because it's common knowledge that one can camp freely through most of Scandinavia, but I am still learning the details and extent of this law. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_to_roam

Comparing Allemannsretten with what I have heard of land tenure battles in East Africa, or even with the traditional American fenced-in yard (or gated community!) that I know too well, I am becoming very intrigued as to the societal implications of this law (and practice). Remembering that my least favorite thing in Queens was the abundance of chain-link fence and property walls that serve little purpose than to receive graffiti, I imagine that a different frame of thought on land rights and ownership could seriously change an urban sidewalkscape for the better.

I am hoping to find yet another perspective on land rights when in Nepal in a few weeks. I hope to keep the line of thought in mind and see what parallels can be found between land ownership, societal norms/land use, and how the sense of citizen's responsibility to the land varies. At the moment I hypothesize that the concept of having rights and ownership to all the nation's land (shared with your compatriots) makes the society more personally responsible to the land and their environment. Perhaps knocking down a few fences could breed environmental stewardship.

For now, I'll go climb the unclaimed hill down the street to sit on its bench and read for a bit in the few hours of twilight left before the 11pm sunset.

Trondheim Flora

2009-08-14T03:28:00.001-07:00

I need to get to a library and find some more information on the local plants, but the selection of roadside weeds has made quite the impression on me. Just thought I'd share some pictures here.

Social Infrastructure

2009-08-12T05:37:00.000-07:00

Since arriving in Norway a week ago, many thoughts have come to mind, but few have developed far enough to serve an entire blog entry quite yet. For now, I have been thinking a lot about people - and the concept of culture and language as social infrastructure. I'll start with my first impressions of Norway provided by my first perceptions of Norwegians.

I believe that there should be a word in our language (or all languages) for the way a society presents itself in public - not just physical appearance, but something that encompasses cultural nuances such as eye contact, acknowledgment of others, body language, friendly or shy postures, etc. I cannot think of a good term to take all of this into account, but I hope someday to find some sociologists who can describe it better.

So with or without a good vocabulary for the phenomena/cultural norm, 'meeting' Norwegians on the street has presented a paradox in comparision to the personal exchanges I have found thus far. In public, Norway's "street face" reminds me of New York - people here are likewise inwardly focused and show little to no reaction to the strangers around them. It struck me as odd because this is Trondheim - a small town of 160,000 people with little crime and no reason to fear each other. What is more is that the weather has been quite beautiful, but the attitude of the people still reminds me of New York in the winter - when the cold weather and drear forces people to concentrate inwardly and be even more detached from their surroundings. I think back to where I grew up in North Carolina where even in the very antisocial setting of remote 'neighbors' passing each other in their cars it is customary to wave or nod. While Trondheim is not so rural and pedestrians abound, the scale of the city and the great amount of greenspace would have lead me to expect to encounter more nods, smiles, or waves between people.

None of this is to say that Norwegians are a cold people. Many self acknowledge their country's introverted nature when it comes to meeting strangers (strangers being other Norwegians or internationals alike). It has been my experience over the past week that once you approach any Norwegian with a question or to start a conversation, their reaction is incredibly warm, friendly and helpful. This is quite the opposite from New York, when you sometimes are lucky to find a response when asking for help from someone on the street.

My position in a very international student setting has brought another layer of contrast to the Norwegian behaviour visible down the hill in the city. It seems that the incredible mix of cultures truly works against the individual cultural norms that each holds, and the resultant becomes an overall solidarity that is most friendly and outgoing. Granted, with any of this there are deviations to be found across the board, but I am quickly finding that if someone smiles or nods along a sidewalk here, then they too are an international (likely student) and even the very subtle acknowledgement reinforces the similarity of our positions in this place.

Landing in Fog

2009-08-03T11:44:00.000-07:00

My flight arrived in Stockholm today under weather conditions the pilot casually mentioned as a fog bank with no visibility. Assuming 'no visibility' to imply miles outward, on the scale of the plane, I was rather surprised to see nothing but whiteness outside my window and in the plane's pilot-view onscreen video right up until just a few seconds before touching ground. I believe at 7am this morning, visibility in Stockholm might have been measured at about 15'-0".

The fog was dense but bright - white instead of the gloomy gray that I've always associated with Scandinavia (thinking Hamlet and, "there's something rotten in the state of Danemark"). The atmosphere felt very fitting and more than a little illustrative of my state of mind at the time. I could only think of how little I actually know of the culture and language that I am about to immerse myself in.

It was reassuring to be on the ground in the Stockholm airport though. Seeing how well the Scandinavians contrast materials and play with diffused light to create warm spaces despite sometimes bleak overhead was incredibly comforting. Between this and the lush greenery I've already experienced between Sweden and Norway, I am quickly realizing that Scandinavia is a place that feels good - bright and optimistic - even when elements typically characterizing drear perservere. Plus, the fog had lifted completely by the time my 9am connection took off to Trondheim.

To Norway and Beyond...

2009-07-10T08:44:00.000-07:00

As my final weeks in New York wind slowly down, I am more and more often asked what it is that I will be doing in Norway. There is a simple answer to this - studying Urban Ecological Planning under a Fulbright Grant - however, this often leaves more questions than it answers. I will try at the moment to back up and provide a more thorough and explicative answer.

In truth, I will admit that I do not know the specific ends of this trip, but I have carefully planned it and recognize it as a continuation of a broad, if slightly erratic, line of thought beginning in graduate school. My graduate thesis was an architecture project - re-imagining the 19th century promenade. The actual building I designed came after a long route of research through the importance of landscape to urban areas and the human connection to nature, which is so often missing in 21st century city life.

Following this, I moved to New York - perhaps the epitome of urbanity - and found an architecture job in which I slowly switched my focus to landscape architecture. Practicing, and being exposed to landscape architecture in the city is full of paradoxes and beaurocratic challenges far beyond any expectations I had previously held. Still, I find the field fascinating, but I have spent four years wondering why exactly it is so extremely difficult to plant a tree in a sidewalk when everyone involved knows fully well that said tree would provide shade, process carbon dioxide, and generally improve the aesthetic and biological qualities of the space.

Having worked with city agencies, I still cannot pretend to understand how it is that they work, or how to make sustainability easier to accomplish amidst the many time-tested and overpracticed 'standards' of operation. Therefore, when I undertook the application for a Fulbright, I was not driven towards design - which I love but feel comfortable with the practice of - but instead towards planning. How do policies come about, and how can they be streamlined to promote more efficient, more ecological practices? Further, there are so many places in the world that operate sans beaurocracy, and often have stronger connections to or understands of nature despite dense populations. Are there lessons that these places can teach more 'developed' cities about sustainability?

These are the questions I have, and which I hope to find some answers for over the next year or two. Norway is held as the top country in the world by means of their ecological planning policies and general quality of life and the promotion of sustainable practices. The program which I will be attending includes field work in Kathmandu, Nepal, where I will be working with squatter communities to determine how best to apply grant money to better their situation in an ecologically and sociologically sensitive fashion.

I want to better understand human ecology and biophilism - the innate draw to nature that humans hold. Beyond this, I want to professionally be part of reintegrating nature into urban areas to the benefit of the human condition. This is where I am at the moment, we will see where it all goes and what exactly the application of these thoughts leads to.

A Sunday Drive

2009-06-08T16:01:00.000-07:00

Some shots from 55mph - revisiting the area of Randolph County, North Carolina where I grew up. The fields had been rotated between corn, hay, and cow grazing and the local racetrack put up a new sign - but otherwise, not much has changed in the last 10 years.

"You pass through places, and places pass through you, but you carry 'em with you, on the souls of your travellin' shoes." - The Be Good Tanyas

Maybe we should litter..

2009-05-16T19:13:00.000-07:00

I've been reading Paul Shepard, "Where We Belong", and wanted to share some of his thoughts that I found striking. There has been a building aggression in my mind, the more I hear about recycled content and sustainable materials, and building - when the obvious contradiction that no one seems to admit is that the most sustainable building practice is to not build at all. To make his point, the words are strong and ideas provocative, even if disturbingly so. I find myself wondering why sustainability has taken the market driven course it has when there were scholars publishing such words as early as the 1960s..

"If you must have some symbolic actions, I recommend the following: throw your wrappers, papers, butts anywhere, beer cans in the streets, bottles on the berms and terraces; uproot and cut down all ornamental trees and replace them with native fruit-bearing trees and bushes; sabotage all watering systems on all lawns everywhere; pile leaves, manure, and garbage among growing things; return used oil, tires, mattresses, bedsprings, machines, appliances, boxes, foil, plastic containers, rubber goods, and all other debris to their origins - seller or manufacturer, whichever is easier - and dump them there; unwrap packages in the place of purchase and leave the wrappings.

When this has gone on long enough, some tokens of the glut of overconsumption will at least be evident. Equally important, there will be less refuge from the countryside with its regimented monocultures, scalped slopes, poisoned rivers, and degraded rangelands. Our society goes for letting it all hang out, so let's do it. Are encounter groups in? Let's raise the encounter a whole octave and confront the real human ecosystem that we live in. Some great Avon lady keeps rouge on the cheeks of the middle-class neighborhood, the industrial park, and the college campus; the same tinsel earth mother in whose name the slaughterhouse is hidden, the zoo's dead are unobtrusively replaced, and the human dead are pseudo-fossilized." (Shepard, 'Ugly is Better')

Granted, any "civilized" place would never act by these measures, but a point still stands.. If we all had to live in the refuse which we produce, perhaps everyone would be forced to second think their habits?

Infrastructure of Scale - World

2009-05-12T19:33:00.000-07:00

Having spent a reasonable amount of time looking around me and focusing on the day to day, even micro-scale - I decided to back up for just a bit.. A lot of aspects of my life and observation are changing, slowly the day to day perspective in my mind, and soon the day to day physical surroundings. I have began reading Paul Shepard while reflecting on my upcoming move - Norway. It seems only fair to dwell for a second on the global scale at the very most basic and historic infrastructure existing - Geology. Beneath everything that we have ever built or dreamt of building are often overlooked layers of soil and rock - land formations with specific identities and traits that have existed long before us..

Roughly, this is the path I will be taking later this summer. At this scale it appears manageable enough, but scrolling north and east on Google maps between New York, NY and Trondheim, Norway shows it to be an impressive distance, a bit over 3600 miles to be more precise. The change in latitude is most striking when comparing relative location to Italy or Ireland.

As Google's aerial views are taken in winter, the differences between these places stand out even moreso. The following shots are of the areas around New York and Trondheim taken at the same scale:

Long Island really is quite large for the record. The area is impressively flat when it comes down to it.

Norway is dark in the winter. From what I've read, the Trondheim area experiences approximately 3 months of 3-5 hours of daylight or less each year. Zoom into the city of Trondheim in Google and it's covered both in patches of snow and a consistent gray mist, also typical for the Scandinavian countries. The topography is intense - a mountain range runs along the right edge of this image, while the country slowly opens up to Atlantic Ocean further west.

New York and Trondheim are both somewhat coastal, but with various layers of protection from open sea. Beyond this, I expect that both the geologic and climatic differences will be great. As daunting as Norway's winter may be, I continue to believe that it sets up great groundwork for research. How do people live in these conditions, and exactly what infrastructure (on a local scale) is necessary to deal with such an agressive natural infrastructure dealt to this country over the past millions of years on the global scale?

This is Brooklyn - 2

2009-04-13T18:38:00.000-07:00

Back to the eastern DUMBO Buddhist Temple mentioned earlier. This might be my favorite example of adaptive re-use, particularly in New York. What used to be a gas station is now a festive - if meek - Buddhist worship center. The CMU - walled-in site encloses a space that triples in function, from entry courtyard to small parking lot, to basketball court and play area.

On the day I was there, a well respected Bodhisattva was visiting from Asia to perform ceremonies that afternoon. Our tour guide explained that what looks like tattered flags one might see at a used car lot are actually a part of the tradition. They are prayer flags, hung in strands newly for special occasions and buddhist tradition prohibits them from being taken down. Over time, the old flags wear, and new flags are added. As breezes blow through the flags, it is said that the prayers from the center are sent out into the world...

A truly poetic concept, particularly with such a vibrant cultural center being located in such a dreary post-industrial area of the city.

This is Brooklyn - 1

2009-04-05T07:30:00.000-07:00

A walking tour through Vinegar Hill and the Brooklyn Navy Yards, just east of DUMBO shows some unexpected realities existing in Brooklyn.

Typical DUMBO - ever present new development (or halted new development in this case) over the old.
There is a Buddhist center in a most unsuspecting spot (more on this later).

Preserved (and now historically landmarked) brownstones.. few and far between.

The rest of the landmarked district (the only working class district to be landmarked in NYC) - a 1850s-1940s business district is now fully residential - living rooms function behind shaded storefronts.

Most unbelievable for the area, one particularly fortunate family lives in a mansion - the old Navy Commandants' home which is now private property. 28 rooms on 4 acres of land purchased in the early 90s for just $2 million. This is at the crest of Vinegar Hill, maybe 1/2 mile from the waterfront, with a view to lower Manhattan.

The other side of the Navy Yards show an easily missed hot debate topic in the preservation world. 10 + historic buildings formerly owned by the US Navy await their fates as developers consider their demolition for the purpose of providing a supermarket with a 350 car parking lot. The Municipal Arts Society is fighting for their restoration and rehabilitation.

These plastic flowers have been placed with care in the midst of the chaos of overgrowth, which has a powerful aesthetic all of it's own.

The Presidio (and Goldsworthy) - II

2009-03-26T19:06:00.000-07:00

The Presidio exhibit related to the Andy Goldsworthy piece related much of the history of the site, along with Goldsworthy's interpretation. The story is quite interesting - more here (http://www.presidio.gov/experiences/spire.htm). To paraphrase, several species of the originally planted trees have been dying for various reasons, including climate, species selection, and soil conditions. Recently, the organization which oversees the Presidio has been planting new batches of trees to replace those dying - a new 2 to 3 acres of trees are planted each year to stagger the age of the growth and maintenance requirements.

Several articles I have read about this project since the trip speak of the "militaristic" alignment of the existing/original trees in the park. Apparently the army chose to plant trees in a grid, and this practice is being continued. From what I witnessed, the 2-3 acres being planted each year seem to follow with large swaths of single species. Given my brief experience in landscape architecture, I find this curious when current practices greatly discourage monocultures. I would like to dig up more information about what ecologists and arborists think about the Presidio from the standpoint of biodiversity. On the other hand, the aesthetic effect of the grids of plantings surrounding Goldsworthy's 'Spire' of matured and fallen trees is a powerful one.

The Presidio (and Goldsworthy) - I

2009-03-26T18:35:00.000-07:00

When in San Francisco, I had an objective to get out of the city and into a more natural surrounding. Amidst the rain, I realized that I would likely have to settle for a hike through the Presidio during the few clear hours of my visit. Reinforcing this idea was the news that Andy Goldsworthy had recently installed a 'spire' in the park so I set out to learn more about it.

Little did I know before this trip, but the lush seeming Presidio that stands today is a man-made forest. What is more incredible is that the land originally (and not that long ago) consisted of marshy swamps and windblown sand dunes. In 1846, the US Army and eventually the Army Corps of Engineers worked to fill the land in order to build the better known military post and plant what has grown into a forest.

Hiking through the park, the Presidio as it stands today, open to the public, I was impressed to see some passive infrastructures at work. It seemed that hiking through the day after heavy rains was a good time to see the land at work.

Also interesting was spotting the breakdown of some of the enhanced natural systems and human interface of sandbags and piping.

The state of the park varied, particulary during the 'off season' for vegetation in CA. But the quality of the trees, meadows, and the chance to spot some more natural growth still gives a more wild and natural feel than a visitor might expect of a manmade site around 150 years old.

San Francisco in the Rain

2009-02-25T18:49:00.000-08:00

Not heeding the mild warnings of friends resident to Northern California, I visited San Francisco in the midst of their rainy season. And rain it did, for 4 of the 5 days I was there. However, the break from snowy, icy New York and the attitude of the locals even enjoying the marked change in weather lead me to embrace the season and make what I could of exploring the city. It was interesting to see some pacific dwelling plants in funky hibernation modes which I never experienced on my previous summer visits.

This being my third time in San Francisco, I sought to gain further insight on the city's relationship to nature. Surrounded by water and topographically shaped by strong geological forces, no amount of pavement, concrete, and building mass can deny the natural substrate the city was founded on.

As I have noted before, the long growing season and climate makes lush green spaces possible on every scale. It's great to see how residents individually embrace vegetation allowing both manicured landscapes and wild unmaintained plants to thrive.

Weather, Infrastructure, Civilization

2009-01-21T17:22:00.000-08:00

It has been too long since I've written - I blame the weather, the cold turning people within themselves, making it ever so much more difficult to look beyond the layers of warm clothing they wear and slow down to observe what is going on around them.

I have, however, been thinking a lot about the weather. In thinking about Norway, in living through cold days in New York, I realize that it is in the cold that we are most dependent on infrastructure - to whatever extent we may or may not notice it. It seems no surprise to me that people in the deserts of Austrailia remained light-travelling nomads for so many centuries, while Northern Europe and mountain communities worldwide quickly settled into villages and developed systems to pool their resources.

Cities and rural areas become incapacitated in snowy or icy conditions without proper vehicles, labor, planning, and foresight to clear and salt roads and routes. I can remember North Carolina schools and businesses closing upon even a slight possibility of snow or freezing rain because over their vast areas of land, they simply did not have the infrastructure in place to make a safe commute for its residents.

In New York, the clearing of the streets is taken as a given, with most residents rarely even witnessing the early morning plows hard at work. Sidewalks are expected to be walkable under any circumstance, with local property owners I've seen finding any range of solution from shovelling, to salting, to pouring antifreeze - as seems to be the preference of some auto mechanic shops in queens. I see the outages and delays in the subway system, the ongoing weekend track replacement work on the 7 line, and for once I truly realize - it takes a lot of labor to sustain so many people living in a cold climate.

Urban Farming

2008-11-20T20:55:00.000-08:00

Just reflecting/thinking publicly after today's charette for the Grant Houses Community Gardens at Columbia.. Hopefully I will find more time to develop this a bit further..

Queens West - Dense Suburbanism

2008-11-16T11:02:00.000-08:00

As I begin orchestrating a move after two years of living in Long Island City, I want to dedicate a bit of blog time to the ever-changing neighborhood which more and more residents are attempting to make a home of. I have long held mixed feelings about the developments going on along the river, but the focus today is on a recent one, nearly complete in construction which has broken any sense of order in the urban fabric that the previous towers have attempted to abide by. My street now ends in a 10' tall metal fence.

Ironically, the name of the offending development is The View (http://www.queenswest.com/maps/condos_coops/rockrose-condos), and it first caught my attention in early stages of construction when it's massing slowly grew to block a formerly direct and framed view of the United Nations building across the East river from my street (46th Road). It was these lines of sight directly back to Manhattan which had originally attracted me to the still fairly industrial community.

Other towers growing along the coast in the past 15 or so years all managed to abide by some sense of urbanism. The other buildings are oriented so their wide facades face the North and the South, intelligent for maximizing daylight and minimizing heat gain in this climate. Urbanistically, this creates less major shadows on the existing neighborhood, view corridors are preserved, sidewalks at street level remain defined with commercial use where feasible, and open space is left along the water, where it enhances the Gantry Park and will someday be connected north and south to a system of East River coast park spaces from Brooklyn up to the Queensboro Bridge and beyond.

Some shots of maintained view corridors to Manhattan with the previous developments:

"The View", however demonstrates a departure from all of these basic principles. The building is massive, with the bulk of exposure being East and West to maximize views with no obvious concern for shadowing excessive parts of the neighborhood, or internally saving energy which will be required to maintain comfortable temperatures in the predominantly glass housing units. The site planning around the building is even more unfortunate, as a baseball field has been built directly east of the building, where it extends beyond the street grid, forcing 46th Road to end premature of the water and abruptly with a tall fence.

Living in an urban area, and having programmed baseball fields into dense residential greenways, I understand the both the need for such sport facilities and the challenge of finding the space for such, but the siting here is preposterous for several reasons. First, the field will be completely in the shadow of the adjacent buildings for most of the day (particularly after the construction site across the street is also developed). The siting and size destroys the urban fabric by not conforming to the established street grid, leaving the future development of 46th Road to loading and manufacturing rather than encouraging further small scale residential and commercial when the current industrial uses run their course. The fence along the field makes an unwelcoming edge which breaks down the continuation of 5th Street which will be an important corridor when the coast continues development north towards the Silver Cup site at the 59th Street Bridge. The lack of windowed facades facing this portion of the street cause it to feel unsafe in the evenings for pedestrians despite it's proximity (1 block north) to the newly opened residential amenities of a grocery store and pharmacy.

I find it entirely unfortunate that the siting for this development was not better though through. The land was clearly already owned, and a simple siting switch of building and field space could have allowed the community east of this building to continue to grow productively, and given the field to the coastal park, where it could be more of an open and public amenity, rather than a gated intrusion destroying public access to the river and blocking the view which reminds residents of Long Island City's best feature - its proximity to Manhattan.

This development re-emphasizes 46th Road as an edge, the end of residential Long Island City. North of 46th Road, even Vernon Boulevard becomes sparse and inconsistent. A great opportunity to reconnect the old neighborhood with the new has been missed, and with such planning practices as employed at "The View", it seems that the outlying areas will remain neglected - the backs of new development turned upon them and the broad sides of new massing blocking visual connections to Manhattan.

The last new commercial effort on Vernon Blvd. before 46th Road, beyond which taxi repair facilities and industrial warehouses take over amongst scattered residential.

Restoring Habitats

2008-10-25T14:26:00.000-07:00

On Friday, I spent a day of work at Co-op City, assisting in the direction of planting 201 trees. It was a great experience to work with the grounds crew and see the planting. Also impressive was spending some time on this greenway, which was a parking lot only 1.5 years ago. The progress of the space's transformation and growth of the plants we had specified was impressive and brought a much greater respect for the work I have been doing in landscape architecture. For once I could see that the things that I have been familiar with staring at on paper and computer screens have taken shape forming and beautifying a space.

The experience was brought to a deeper level when I returned from my lunch break before the grounds crew had resumed their work and started their machines. I went to sit on a bench in the sun and heard a bird singing loud and happy from the clump of bagged trees dropped off by the truck earlier, waiting to be planted. Walking quietly over to inspect, I found the bird, happily nested among branches of young Hawthorn trees. The day was no longer about counting trees and measuring space, and checking planting specifications at that point, instead it was providing 201 new spots for birds (and insects and hundreds of other species) to call home in the Bronx.

The foliage of the Hornbeams planted a year ago was pretty stunning in the morning light. It will be great to when the trees are a little bigger.

For better or for worse, I kept finding interesting (and often beautiful) small weeds among the newly hydroseeded landscape. Hopefully the grass will eventually establish itself this well.

Delaware Water Gap

2008-10-13T18:41:00.000-07:00

Bit of nature taken in over the weekend.. Foliage by the New Jersey - Pennsylvania border.

Sometimes trees outside the city have a tough time too..

Personal Statement

2008-09-08T19:11:00.000-07:00

Up for comment/suggestions/criticism -

I am best described as an interdisciplinary architectural designer most interested in the social and ecological implications of urbanism and the built environment. My professional experiences have taught me how the convergence of design with global perspectives and fields such as sociology and ecology can intensify the richness and integrity of a problem solution. It is my professional goal to employ and develop practices of ecological planning to globally better cities through sustainable design.

Where I grew up, neighbors exchanged homegrown harvests of tomatoes, corn, squash, grapes, and various other items. Overgrown roadside ditches held and conveyed excess storm water until it could infiltrate back into the land with time. These minor institutions show a latent sustainability and help to create a societal connection to nature. This human connection to nature is one I took for granted before moving from rural North Carolina to the cities of Boston, MA, and then to New York, NY where I reside today. Working in urban architecture and landscape architecture and being exposed to the municipal agencies who strive to maintain one of the world’s greatest cities, I am reminded each day of the severe disconnect between urban life and the forgotten natural ecologies struggling to persist in cities.

Studying architecture within a program that focused on the recognition and analysis of the urban environment broadened my perspective to seek inspiration in landscape architecture and sociological thought. By the time I entered graduate school, my degree was a Masters of Architecture, but my thesis project began with the social implications of urban park space from historic through contemporary times. In researching my thesis I came across a well-established premise in landscape architecture and urban design derived from Transcendentalism which has continued with me - within a natural setting, people can come together on an equal ground - regardless of race, gender, or other societal constraints. In considering the degradation of nature, the state of the earth’s environment, and questions of human equality in the midst of globalization, I am struck by a necessity as a design professional to look back to nature and extract ecological knowledge capable of informing architecture.

I was the first member of my family to have the opportunity to travel abroad. I have long held a fascination with new cultures and languages, so worked hard through college to save money to fund short trips and eventually to spend a semester abroad. I have studied German among internationals in Dresden and tutored English in New York, learning in both cases to step back from situations and observe without presuppositions to comprehend cultural variations. My interactions across cultural boundaries have taught me the duality of culture - as one learns from others, one also becomes more aware of himself. Further, having found travel to provide a unique understanding of the architecture and urban design field, I consistently strive to experience more of the world’s historic and contemporary built environment, to better inform projects of my own.

The Lesson of Peat and Fungal Gnats

2008-09-03T17:26:00.000-07:00

In the midst of a small amount of rage, and as a bit of a public service announcement, I just wanted to share my new findings on pests which threaten the indoor urban gardener. Having recently tossed a young basil plant, soon followed by a young rosemary plant which I found withering and swarming with small flying insects, I did some further research. What I found was a too common species known as the Fungal Gnat. They're slightly smaller than your typical fruit fly and particularly enjoy potted plants.

Apparently the adult fungal gnat itself is not particularly harmful to plants, but their larvae are quite destructive. The gnats lay eggs in soil, particularly soil that is moist. They can lay hundreds of eggs which hatch quickly into larvae. The larvae thrive in the moist soil and attack plants at their roots for nutrients. On top of this, fungal gnats are known to spread diseases from other plants.

I've been annoyed by the flying insects because they were sticking around even after I had tossed all of the potted plants in my apartment, and throughly washed everything down. Granted there were only a couple here or there, but realizing they were not going away I started wondering both what they are and where they might be still living. Upon reading about the larvae in moist soils, I remembered that the large bag of potting soil I had bought (which I used when I repotted both the basil and the rosemary shortly before their downfall) was still loosely sealed under my kitchen sink. In my internet research readings I had seen warnings against using topsoil containing peat, which apparently these (and other pests) are particularly fond of.

Upon inspection, the bag of soil under my sink was teeming with several of the gnats around the opening. I picked the bag up, and quickly saw that the soil mix was one of peat moss with added nutrients for plants. I ended up tossing the entire bag of soil, and vowing never to return to the tiny hardware store up the street who had convinced me to buy the mixture..

So, that is my warning for anyone attempting to grow young plants - beware of soil mixtures containing peat, don't overwater, and act quickly if you ever see gnat like insects around your plants!

I'm starting out some cilantro from seeds in a different soil mixture this week, will see if the results prove better than the first try with herbs!

Chinatown Park - Boston

2008-09-02T16:29:00.000-07:00

This labor day, I stumbled around a very deserted financial district of Boston during a layover between modes of transportation heading back to NY. During the hour I was struck by the complete quiet and lack of pedestrians in the area around South Station even though it was a national holiday. Heading towards the gate to Chinatown, I was pleasantly surprised to find life just at the border of one of widest expanses of asphalt still remaining since the big dig. This little park is the Chinatown park by Carol R. Johnson Associates (more here http://www.masspike.com/bigdig/parks/chinatownpk.html ).

I realized a fundamental difference between photographing architecture and landscape architecture in this - with landscape, you actually want to show people using the space. It was great to see that groups of people dotted the green spot despite the rest of the downtown being empty.

2008-09-02T16:25:00.000-07:00

The tiniest ecology..

2008-08-20T20:36:00.000-07:00

I was in the midst of a small cleaning tirade after my latest disaster attempting to be an urban gardener. I had given up on the basil plant on my kitchen window sill (which I had assumed I had overwatered), and began to notice several tiny black flying insects, smaller than fruit flies beginning to dominate the kitchen. I started to panic a few days when the number of insects did not decrease and the adjacent rosemary plant started to brown and wither. I'm still not sure if the insects were a type of aphid, or some other plant eating pest, but for once I'm fairly certain it's not entirely my fault that the two plants are refusing to thrive.

Anyways this evening I moved the rosemary from the sill and gave the plant a gentle washing (since I'm not yet convinced that this one is gone for good). I returned to the sill to clean up the accumulated spilled dirt and mercifully put to rest the brown crunchy leaves that used to be basil. As I was sponging down the sill, I saw one very small spider scurry to a corner and there discovered the tiniest spider web in the corner by the window frame. The web was maybe an inch and a half at its longest dimension, but held trapped a few of my unidentified pests, along with another insect probably 10 times the size of the spider. Despite not typically being a fan of spiders, it was a welcome sight to see that I wasn't entirely alone in trying to rid the sill of pests, so I took great care not to disturb him or his tiny web. I hope the one or two remaining flying pests in the kitchen will now find their way into the web rather than back to the newly located, ailing rosemary!

Ecological and Social Infrastructures...

2008-08-12T20:01:00.000-07:00

A first pass at a first paragraph for the first research proposal I'm working on..

There is an inherent challenge in reconciling global environmental goals with the design and social function of urban environments. Cities rely on the natural setting of urban parks to bring their residents together on an equal grounding. However, since before the industrial revolution, cities have been developing in opposition to the natural ecology surrounding them. Architecture and communal man-developed infrastructures allow society to survive amidst harsh natural elements. Vast areas of pavement and a reliance on technology have allowed humans to control the natural processes of land occupied by cities to the detriment and obsolescence of local ecologies. In the worldwide concerns of global warming, the policies and habits of urban design now must be rethought. Reintroducing ecological elements to urban areas can redeem natural processing of carbon dioxide and other pollutants. With the return of natural systems, less strain will felt by human constructs which are subject to (and commonly suffering from) deterioration and use beyond original design. Further, this line of practice can serve in creating positive models for future planning of developing urban areas throughout the world. A cross cultural study of ecological urban planning brings together environmental concerns and sustainable solutions which can be employed in the world’s urban areas. It is to this end that I, as an environmentally concerned architecture and landscape professional, propose to enroll in the international Masters of Ecological Urban Planning program at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology.

Biking Manhattan

2008-08-10T18:39:00.000-07:00

New York has finally taken initiative this summer to give some of the streets back to non-auto traffic. Granted the event is limited to periods of 5-6 hours on 3 Saturdays, but it provides an entirely new way for the pedestrian/biker/skater to experience the city.

Biking from 53rd Street to the Brooklyn Bridge along Park Ave, I was brought back to my third year in college. Our Urban Design studio took place in Italy, and our professor insisted on drawing street sections. The task seemed a reasonable excuse to walk around European cities and note differences between neighborhoods and urban atmospheres, but I never fully believed in the street section. It seemed to me that the problem with street sections, no matter the accuracy, is that the pedestrian can never perceive this - the proportions are nearly always distorted because a pedestrian typically stands on a sidewalk by a building. Simple perspective makes the foreground, adjacent building seem much taller and the distance across the street wider to the standing viewer. Summer Streets finally changes this relationship - the streets being closed to automobiles allow the pedestrians into the center of the street. From this position, true proportions can be seen, and over the length of the route, the differences are notable.

My favorite part of this short tour was riding over the raised street cutting through Grand Central. The height provides a unique perspective to the area in midtown. Also, there exists an amount of detail at the old guardrail walls and surroundings of the street that I presume go unappreciated by the typical car traffic passing through.

In The Mission

2008-08-09T13:29:00.000-07:00

Several things about San Francisco greatly impress me. The weather and surrounding scenery are beautiful, the city is easy to navigate and clean, and apartments are spacious (compared to New York) and nearly all have a terrace and/or garden space. The flora of California is extraordinary to me, having grown up and lived on the east coast. Walking around in The Mission it was easy to see that many people have a connection to nature and their small scale horticulture. Thriving and well maintained vegetation was placed to occupy yards, building facades, tree pits, and sidewalk planters throughout the neighborhood. The residents seem to visually compete over who can have the most lush and showy displays.

(Oh.. and they recycle and compost too!)

San Francisco - Xanadu Gallery

2008-08-07T16:17:00.000-07:00

So I have plenty more to write about after my long weekend in San Francisco, but before getting into the rest of the city I will start with one tiny piece of architecture - Frank Lloyd Wright's Xanadu Gallery.

I had heard that this gallery was a predecessor of the New York Guggenheim, and his first study of using a ramp as circulation and display. The most interesting aspect to me is that this is a functioning gallery - and was originally a store for V.C. Morris. I was curious about how an architect with the known character of FLW would deal with the design question of display - could he pull off allowing the architecture to come secondary to the merchandise? The Xanadu Gallery deals in precious and historic decorative arts from various parts of the world, predominantly Asia and Africa from what I could see. The pieces are impressive in themselves, though I found that, as suspected, they fall into the background of this piece of architecture. They become decoration to the building in groups rather than singular disconnected elements. The individual display cases which exist (I presume for the most valuable small pieces of the collection) are actually buried within the smooth curving wall and hidden from site until the viewer is directly in front of the glass pane.

Being an architect rather than a collector, I can say that I really enjoyed the space. The architecture was well executed and provides a ton of visual interest and small curiosities for those not browsing the antiques. The interior is far more comfortable and less severe than the stark white modernism of the Guggenheim, perhaps this is the difference for this architect between presenting art to the public in a sterile environment, and encouraging private connoisseurs to bring a piece back into their home.

Nature in the Boroughs

2008-07-10T19:03:00.000-07:00

Greenery taking over the boundary of sidewalk and street in Brooklyn.

A whole row of street trees have began to swallow the chainlink fence.

Black-eyed Susans growing behind chainlink - the old entrance to McCarren Park Pool has overgrown, adding interest to an otherwise stark building.

Abandoned asphalt paver graveyard.

Jellyfish off Manhattan

2008-06-29T19:11:00.000-07:00

Who knew? We saw no less than 8 floating (and alive!) near the shore between the Maritime Building and the Staten Island Ferry..

Music from infrastructure

2008-06-29T19:02:00.000-07:00

Briefly back to architecture and the infrastructure of a building - David Byrne has taken over part of the Battery Maritime Building, converting a space into a music hall that is an instrument of itself. I was a little underwhelmed with the actual product - after reading reviews about the conversion of the building's existing systems into this 'organ', I would like to have seen less modification to the space, but the building and resulting environment was pretty impressive.

Seeing sustainability on Governor's Island

2008-06-29T18:33:00.000-07:00

I finally made it out to Governor's Island this weekend, after being completely inspired by seeing the presentation Adriaan Geuze made months ago - starting it off by riding a bicycle into the lecture hall. The threat of rain prevented a long bike ride around the island, but a leisurely walk through showed the beginnings of this island's life as a public center for recreation and sustainability education.

Every trash can in Governor's Island was flanked by a recyling bin - a sight seldom seen in New York.

Armory building turned prision is now turning.. into an unlikely home for vegetation.

A bicycle rental program has been established and these four person bike 'surreys' seem to be convincing many families to pedal rather than drive (it helps that most of the island is car-free at the moment).

A completely volunteer run art fair was going on, many exhibitions of which were geared to teach children about sustainbility. Children could learn to garden in the middle of the street 'Lettuce Lane' or add to insulating the wooden structure with reused, planted plastic bottles. The structure will eventually be completely enclosed with these hanging terrariums.

Olafur Eliasson's four waterfalls were visible from the ferry, and this one at Governor's Island itself. The jury is still out on whether these pieces are wasting energy and materials in the name of art, or if the recycling of rain/river water and creating current is truly helpful to the ecosystem of the East River, but there is something to be said for publicly accessible art.

Speaking of publicly accessible art... This was priceless.

Curbs..

2008-06-24T18:12:00.001-07:00

..maybe we're using them wrong?

Weeds in Queens

2008-06-24T16:38:00.000-07:00

My life takes place amidst a world of hard surfaces. Masonry building meets concrete sidewalk meets asphalt street. Steel grates and concrete tunnels direct water in routes that must transverse windy miles underground before arriving at a treatment facility, and perhaps eventually rejoining the river - the only natural part of the water system remaining here. Trees are suffocated in tree pits, where poor maintenance pairs with an aggressive environment to drive out all but the heartiest of species. There is an utter lack of connection to what lies beneath the urban surfaces - I couldn't tell you the natural color or quality of the soil in New York - but somehow, once in a while nature finds its way through the cracks and 'thrives'. Thrives at least until acted upon in the name of 'maintenance' - some of this was first brought to my attention when I saw my Super scraping vegetation from expansion joints in front of my building, no doubt part of some local law requiring it to preserve the concrete. I wonder how different the city would be if we made the attempt to preserve the vegetation and the (somehow active) ecosystem it represents and spared the energies wasted with pavement.

Sometimes the weeds seem to have a mission of their own...

In Red Hook, Brooklyn someone is trying hard to make room for vegetation...

Rivers and Roads

2008-06-08T18:31:00.000-07:00

Travelling by bus up to Boston this past weekend, I was lead again to think about travel and the infrastructure surrounding transportation. I've always been fascinated with the idea of roads as long lines connecting destinations with a multitude of various options. It is impressive to me that you can possibly get between most any two points on one body of land without leaving a continuous strip of planned pavement. I find it so interesting to identify with a road or piece of highway on an every day, local level and then expand your perspective of it as you travel distances into other neighborhoods or states, witnessing changes of the highway's surroundings.

I attended a wedding reception located on the 16th floor of a building upstream and across the Charles River from Boston. The view was truly spectacular and no one had been aware before that a public place with this view existed, although for many years I would bring visitors to the same (Cambridge) side of the river to look back on Boston from esplanade level.

The bus ride back through Connecticut encountered the crossing of several other rivers and I began thinking about the relationship between place, street, and river. I realized that I know sections of rivers in relation to the city that was founded on them. There is the Charles River I associate first with Boston, the Hudson I associate first with Manhattan, and then some small towns like Beacon that I've stopped on. Not being a boater, it's more difficult for me to see the larger context of the river as a linear element connecting places. The bus crossed a broad river opening just south of Stamford, which I've crossed plenty of times on the same route, but it occured to me just today that it may very well originate around the same area as the Hudson, which I'm so much more familiar with.

I realize that I am typically viewing rivers from this 90 degree angle, either crossing them or standing at a bank - rarely getting a longer picture than a typical cone of vision. It seems ironic that I can know and understand the places founded on the banks of a river without understanding or knowing the river. The rivers have been here so much longer than the cities, and were at some point, the primary means of discovering places (and later of transportation and shipping). In the time of the Europeans exploring the Hudson, it was not the river that runs by New York, but instead it was a route banked by the wild and the unknown. I realize that it's not so long ago that it was the river that connected mapped points over long distances, not a man made highway.

Humble Beginnings

2008-05-27T17:16:00.001-07:00

Last weekend I returned to North Carolina after almost three years of absence. It was the first time going back 'home' purely as a visitor - I no longer have the roots to this place which most who know me don't believe in the first place.

From the airport I picked up a rental, which turned out to be a Prius. Driving down the highway with open windows, there was soon the smell of organically fertilized fields and Alabama's old hit "Song of the South" came on the radio. I smiled to myself reveling in the very appropriate disjunction of the super digital hybrid car in this slow changing, fuel dependent place.

Many people have dispositions about the south and the slow, seemingly backwards lives people there lead. Looking back however, throughout this trip I came to understand how some aspects of North Carolina likely influenced me and have stayed with me through the years. First, I saw that NC is a truly beautiful and quite lush part of the country. A four hour drive east to the coast showed many functional ecosystems, along with the thriving agricultural state. Seeing these scenes as an outsider changed my perspective - it was certainly the first time I wasn't immediately angry upon encountering a tractor pulling hay down the road I grew up on (moving around 5mph down a 55mph windy country road).

I started to think about the people's link to the land, because in areas it is still strong and apparent there. Highways in NC are very rarely bordered by concrete or pavement, most medians and virtually all roads are bounded by broad vegetated ditches - the very same phenomena I now study from my New York architecture office as sustainable design implementations for stormwater called 'bioswales'. I find it a pity that common sense didn't out-sway land greed to lead the planners of most American cities to retain a bit of green space for natural drainage.

Sustainability happens in places like North Carolina in this way - it's a matter of common sense rather than science. I remember my step father building a roof over our west facing porch to shade the facade until the trees filled in. He took great care to plant trees specifically across the east and west facades - my step father did not need 6 years of college education to talk about sun shading and solar heat gain.

My best friend growing up there lived beside of her grandfather, who had moved down from the coal country hills of West Virginia. He would burn their trash regularly in metal barrels rather than hauling it to the landfill. This always seemed an odd practice growing up, but looking back I realize that I still have yet to meet a family that takes more care in recycling and the separation of trash. The concept of taking care of waste locally lead them to meticulously sorting items as well as composting food waste for their garden.

Despite NC's current status towards the bottom of the environmentally thoughtful states in this country, I find some hope in the small practices that persist there. I still met people of various education levels who have an understanding of the natural beauty much of the state possesses, and a sense of heritage towards it. I heard few concerned conversations about the environment, but plenty about the cost of fuel. Overgrown fields in areas previously over-manicured show a start for dealing with and consideration of the rising oil prices. Hopefully North Carolina won't forget its traditions and relationship to the land and manage instead to sustain and preserve itself.

Streets of Barcelona

2008-05-20T20:41:00.000-07:00

Barcelona has an amazing network of bike lanes, promenades, and automobile infrastructure. They are clearly dealing with a high volume of car traffic, but it looks like popularity of biking, and implements such as separated lanes and point to point commuter bike rentals are spreading quickly through the city.

Water - Drainage, Storage, and Aesthetic

2008-05-11T13:55:00.000-07:00

In southern Spain, the dry and warm climate is alleviated in developed areas by centuries of water management legacy. The Arabic influence brings much of these water focused implementations to the surface as aesthetic elements and it was wonderful to see both old and new takes on the ideas throughout Granada, Cordoba, and particularly in the 10th Century Moorish Alcazaba complex of Almeria. The images of water and fountains have loaded religious significance, but also work environmentally to aid the air quality (and perceived environment) by cooling and providing additional moisture to the air.

The areas around natural waterways in Andalusia were always bounded by particularly lush strips of green, standing out in contrast to the abundance of stone and gray sandy soils.

New street drainage vs. old street drainage in Granada.

Of course, then there is the Alhambra - at various levels of restoration/preservation.

The plaza in front of Cordoba's Mezquita seems to have integrated some type of irrigation/drainage overflow system for the treepits.

More shots from Cordoba.

A series of long channels run through Almeria's Alcazaba, often with a fountain at the lowest point. The complex had various information about the Moorish systems of storing water in cisterns.

Most of Almeria is not as quaint as Granada or Cordoba in their modern water infrastructure, but their town symbol appears on sewer grates.

Along highways, I saw many of these built masonry channels in the sides of embankments, directing water run off which has been naturally eroding through the stone walls. A concrete culvert in the median and several other pieces in the landscape by fields make me curious if the area farms are able to collect the run off water to aid in the olive, onion, and wheat farming that abounds. (On a side note, amidst the deeply agricultural parts of Andalusia, we passed an impressively large alternative energy production area between Granada and Almeria, complete with acres of large wind turbines and acres upon acres of solar arrays under installation.)

By Train

2008-05-06T17:41:00.000-07:00

Our second night in Spain was spent on a train between Barcelona and Granada. I woke up just before dawn, somewhere in the middle of rolling hills (I believe just north of the Sierra Morena) to an amazing landscape formed from scattered tree silhouettes in front of a glowing deep blue sky. It was a disorienting experience, as the last daylit views from my window the night before had shown seemingly endless populated coastal suburbs of Barcelona. I have always been impressed by how train travel connects drastically different snapshots of a place, reinforcing how much there is between destinations that we don't always see.

The pictures I have don't do justice (between the low light, speed of the train, and the three layers of tinted glass), but that morning I saw the likely inspiration behind Dali's surrealist landscapes. Between this and the progression into the mountains it made the most beautiful sunrise I've encountered.