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On the site today, you’ll find Metropolis’s annual special product issue. After the jump, senior editor Kristi Cameron explains this year’s theme in the latest installment of our “Metropolis Minute” video series. Read more…

Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read her previous posts.

I’ve suddenly developed a mild case of urban envy of…Washington, D.C. That’s right, as of today the not-exactly-progressive town has something New York is sorely lacking: a bike station. Funded by the District and the U.S. Department of Transportation and built by Mobis/Bikestation, the 1,600-square-foot facility offers secure parking for 130 bikes, a changing room, lockers, rentals, and repairs. An annual membership costs $100, or you can buy a daily pass for a buck. Cities like Seattle, Santa Barbara, and Long Beach, California, (where Mobis/Bikestation is based) have already had success with these facilities, but the D.C. station is the first of its kind on the East Coast. Which raises an important question: How useful is a bike station sans showers during warm, humid eastern summers? Perhaps I should reserve my jealousy for Chicago, whose McDonald’s Cycle Center offers showers and towel service. I could get used to the name.

For all you tennis fans cursing the four-month gap between the U.S. and Australian Opens, here’s a little something to tide you over. (That’s a nice way of glossing over the fact that this post is about an event that ended two weeks ago, no?)

Olympus, which sponsors the U.S. Open, invited a group of journalists (myself included) for a behind-the-scenes tour, during which we would test out the company’s new 12.3-megapixel E-P1 camera, also known as the PEN. When it comes to photography, I’m an enthusiastic amateur. In tennis terms, I’m a hacker. I long ago gave up my 35mm SLR for a digital point-and-shoot that stays on auto. So it was no surprise that most of my journalist peers, who by and large cover gadgets and technology, had far more technical inquiries than I did. But since the PEN aims to bring some of the capabilities of an SLR, such as interchangeable lenses, to a point-and-shoot model, I was arguably the perfect guinea pig. I kept my test camera on auto all day. Read more…

Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read her previous posts.

Most of the public-space projects I’ve blogged about involve encouraging developments for all residents of New York, but the urbanSHED competition should be particularly exciting to architects. Prior to now, I didn’t even know what a sidewalk shed was by name, though I am plenty familiar with the plywood-and-steel-tube hoods that so often frame stretches of my walk. At best they are an invisible part of the city’s noisy background; at worst, an eyesore. I was certainly happy to hear the city was soliciting a redesign (note: the competition is not restricted to locals), but it wasn’t until I listened to buildings commissioner Robert LiMandri talk at the Center for Architecture last week that I truly got inspired. Not only will his department produce construction documents for the new standard, but the winning design will definitely be built at the end of the process. The city wants something that delivers more natural light to the sidewalk below, is safer, and, of course, looks better than the current shed. There are 689 miles of this stuff in New York—just imagine what a difference a more beautiful version of it will make. Read more…

Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read previous posts in this series.

As a volunteer at Summer Streets this past Saturday, my responsibilities were little more than to hold up a stop sign while standing in front of a working traffic light. Yes, I felt a bit redundant, but it was a great vantage point from which to witness the event. Last year I strolled along Brooklyn’s Bedford Avenue when it was first closed to cars, marveling at the disproportionate pleasure of a little extra elbow room, but I never made it out to Park Avenue, the spine of New York’s street-closing events. While Bedford takes on the vaguely Parisian flair of a street market, Park Avenue is more like an exercise highway with cyclists, rollerbladers, and runners far outnumbering any casual strollers. (The flaneurs seemed to stick to the sidewalks, save for a few forays into the road just to get a taste of the experience). Read more…

Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read previous posts in this series.

Before I moved to New York, I told people I wanted to live here so that I could walk to the corner for the newspaper and an aspirin. Twelve years later, my priorities have changed: now I want to be able to walk to the corner to throw out a bag of dog poop. Half of the residents in my eight-unit East Williamsburg building have dogs, and we routinely complain about the lack of trash receptacles in the neighborhood. I went to a community-board meeting to ask for additional bins, and while they seemed to think the request was reasonable, none ever appeared. In fact, a passing comment from a fellow attendee should have alerted me that resources aren’t so easy to come by. “Yassky doesn’t even know that’s a residential area,” she said about my semi-industrial street.

I decided to document the situation by creating a Google map, so I spent several days noting the number of trash cans at every intersection I pass through in my thrice-daily rounds. Much to my surprise, the map makes it look like there is fairly reasonable coverage. That’s when I realized that, to members of the planning and sanitation departments, there probably doesn’t appear to be a problem. The two main arteries, Graham Avenue (pedestrian) and Metropolitan Avenue (vehicular), have bins every block or two. But there is nearly as much foot traffic on the side streets, and we dog walkers tend to choose the scenic routes, comfortably far away from the sonic rattle of trucks on Metropolitan. Read more…

Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read previous posts in this series.

Perhaps it’s the fact that people in California spend so much time outdoors, but whatever the reason, the streets I strolled on a recent trip to the Golden State were a lot friendlier than the ones I’d left behind in New York. In San Diego, for instance, there were pedestrian crossing buttons at every intersection and all were in working order. (A fair percentage of the ones I find in New York are permanently depressed, and I have to wonder what kind of signals they are submitting to the network.) And each public park I entered, from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, had a bin of emergency poop bags for dog owners left high and dry. It finally occurred to me to take a few pictures of these amenities, so here goes: Read more…

Photos: Eric Laignel/courtesy Tihany Design

“Everybody remembers La Fonda del Sol, but nobody remembers eating there. Believe me, I’ve asked.” Over lunch at the latest iteration of the famous restaurant, opened by Patina Restaurant Group earlier this year, Adam D. Tihany’s bon mots nearly outshine the space he designed. But, he might argue, that’s the point. Read more…

Starting today, Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, will be contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. For her first post—or maybe it’s her second one?—Kristi checks in with our friends in Copenhagen.

Sundry scenes of Denmark’s superior bicyclists making Americans look bad, as usual. Photos: courtesy the Cycling Embassy of Denmark

Well, it’s official. Copenhagen has long been a model for other cities when it comes to bicycles and transportation planning. Representatives from Chicago and New York, for instance, took pilgrimages there before getting serious about improving their own streets. But in May the Danish capitol launched a Cycling Embassy. When I heard this, I pictured a fleet of ambassadors—fair-haired ladies and gentlemen spreading the word on two wheels, a kind of cross between Angelina Jolie and the Church of the Latter-day Saints. Turns out, the city is simply institutionalizing the leadership role it has already assumed. But the Cycling Embassy is not just a group of Copenhagen city planners. In addition to public space guru Jan Gehl, it comprises manufacturers, infrastructure engineers, and the cities of Aarhus, Frederiksburg, and Odense. It’s a one-stop shop for all things bike-related. I’m not usually one for proselytizing, but in this case, bring it on.

I’ll admit that I’m often guilty of writing off women’s lives before the 1960s as little more than marriage and childbirth, save for the rare anomaly. How bracing then to learn that anomalies were the norm at Frank Lloyd Wright’s studio, starting in 1895 when he hired Marion Mahony as his first associate (she subsequently became the world’s first officially licensed female architect). Mahoney and five of the 100 women that worked with Wright are the subject of the short film A Girl is a Fellow Here (a phrase Wright is known to have used), which premiered last night at the Guggenheim. The film’s genesis was the moment when the director, Beverly Willis, discovered that Isabella Roberts, who has always been listed as a bookkeeper for the Imperial Hotel, in Tokyo, was actually an architect. It quickly became apparent that Frank Lloyd Wright, whose personal relationships with women were famously rather scandalous, was a progressive employer. Read more…