Bringing density back in to city making has been back in vogue for awhile with the reintroduction of the 'Transit Oriented District'. This hasn't been without its disappointments.

It is a place where successive generations layer their city building atop what their predecessors built. Old buildings and infrastructure are honored and preserved, but are kept alive by new adaptations within the preserved structures.The character and history of the place are realized everywhere you look. Yet the hand of the current generation of designers is also everywhere. The past is honored and preserved, and yet the excitement of the new is also clearly at hand.

The High Line in New York is a public way, a kind of a street. By no means does it replace the street at grade, in function, nor in its full relationship with the surrounding buildings. The original trestles and freight rails did respond to a particular 'need' that the surrounding buildings had, that is, the movement of goods to and between them. Over the years this need faded away; eventually it was creatively repurposed to fill the need for new York's inhabitants to move around on foot, in an outdoor and public space that provided a calming antidote to the bustling city life. So in claiming public access, providing up-and-over connectivity, and in continuing (albeit in a different way from the trestles) a relationship with the surrounding buildings, the High Line becomes a substitute street.

If a city is filled with all of the varying things of commerce and amenities, but can't offer it's inhabitants a complete experience- with transportation, and places to live, work, and recreate in reasonable proximity, it is not functioning as a complete and whole city. If the shape and form of the city are not a pleasure and inspiration to move through, then it isn't a fully formed city. The visitor judges a city, and determines if it provides a whole experience. But the people who inhabit a place need the same things, if it is going to be a place that we truly love and can function in.

"Which is what walking in America has become: An act dwelling in the margins, an almost hidden narrative running beneath the main vehicular text. Indeed, the semantics of the term pedestrian would be a mere curiosity, but for one fact: America is a country that has forgotten how to walk."

Busses are not good urban citizens. They do carry a lot of people at a relatively low cost, but there are a lot of things they don't do well: they don't play well with other vehicles, they are a menace to pedestrians, they don't maneuver very well, they are a visual blight. They serve a specific need in public transportation, but over the years as transportation agencies have tried to control costs, buses have turned into hissing, grunting leviathans.

"Beneath the trail the city [Chicago] has been busy assembling a series of parks at grade that are to become access points, including one in the Logan Square neighborhood that opened on June 4. Eventually, the trail will have an access point every quarter to a half of a mile. “We really think of this as an archipelago of green space,” said [Ben] Helphand [board president of Friends of the Bloomingdale Trail]. In addition to Logan, some existing parks will also be incorporated, such as Churchill Field Park and Walsh Park, which will expand north as part of the plan. A park at Milwaukee Avenue is being greened. Other parks will be at Kimball Avenue and at the terminus at the McCormick Y. Other access points will be at Maplewood and Mozart avenues but there will not be parks."

I'm attracted to alternate circulation systems in cities; a means of getting around on foot that circumvents the normal street grid, normally to solve of grade changes, or for getting around impermeable infrastructure. These alternative structures, if done well, transform how a local neighborhood works, while actually helping the urban street grid work.

Going home. Two very evocative words. We usually think of this phrase as applying to a return to a lost place we left long ago in a place far away. The words have a longing attached to them, evoking a deep desire to return to the nurturing fundamentals of life.

Naturally, I had to push a button to cross the intersection. In Southern California, the traffic engineers have decreed that pedestrians need to register their presence in order to cross a street. Otherwise no light will come on telling me that it is safe to cross. I, being the dutiful citizen that I am, pushed the button…

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.