My fascination with history and place is no secret. While i am intrigued with urban history in many forms, there's always a desire for a connection with the place you inhabit. Typically this fascination comes via maps, which have been well documented, but the timeline of the past 150 years plus of Portland is worth a bit of investment. For folks on the go, there's also an app that highlights historical site - prepared by the Architectural Heritage Center. Also a new site, WhatWasThere, is a crowd-sourced version that allows folks to upload history photos of their places.
In addition, there are a number of other sources that augmented by a number of great resources that are provided by city and other historical society archives. Each has some overlap but occupies a unique and often personal niche for the blogger and site owner - to scratch their particular history itch, and all make for some great information.
A veritable decoupage of historical imagery awaits at Portland History - a no-frills site that organizes images, postcards, and a few words - sorted into categories like streets, amusement parks, A good shortcut is to go the site map, which gives some links to the categories - but just randomly moving around the site isn't a bad idea either.
Council Crest, the Dreamland of Portland, Oregon
Lost Oregon is a great example of an engaging history tour, albeit typically focused on architecture and riddled with some really bad theme ideas like this one. The site is simple and delves into some more details about some of the areas, buildings, and locations - which augments what is somewhat visually based on other sites.
A spinoff of Lost Oregon writer is PDX: Then/Now which juxtaposes historic and current photos of buildings and places. Some show destruction or evolution, and some, such as the Union Bank Building in Downtown, are eerily similar over 40 years later.
Vintage Portland is another site 'exploring portland's past', through "...photographs, postcards, illustrations, advertisements, etc. ... It’s not a history lesson, it’s not an architectural critique. It’s a
forum for displaying photos of the city’s past, to show how we lived,
what we’ve lost (for good or bad) through progress and just to enjoy
some wonderful camera work."
I particularly appreciate the 'mystery' posts - which show a building, corner, streetscape - with a question to help find where the site is. Sometimes it's to fill in a missing link to an archival photo, but other times it becomes more of a game. The context over time is fascinating evolution - and really highlights the impermanence/permanence of the urban realm. This shot of MLK @ Ainsworth from the north - replace Texaco with Starbucks (old fuel/new fuel?) and Gilmore with Popeyes (old grease/new grease?).
Cafe Unknown is a new one for
me, but author Dan Haneckow pulls you in with compelling history (more
text than other sites) along with some good images. A recent post on Mark Twain in Portland is a good read, and some of the trivial pursuits are great - like Will- vs. Wall- for our fair river (which subsequently ended up 'Willamette') are nuggets of pure gold. Haneckow is a true historical writer - with the requisite head shots of historical figures quoted... along with some really solid writing and research. These walking tour images were pretty interesting finds - along with the story of a missing sculpture found. This stuff is priceless - and firmly about our place.
Check all of these resources out - It is true - you will be sucked in for a few hours/days/weeks - and might come out forever changed. I feel like a landscape or at least urbanism oriented history site wouldn't be a bad endeavor - if someone is inclined to collaborate - look me up. But the caveat on these sites, and historical maps, photos, and primary materials - it's addictive. Don't say i didn't warn you.
Arsenal
Moving along with the Shrinking Cities readings, the first part of 'Origins of the Urban Crisis' by Segrue recounts the development of the City of Detroit around WWII as the 'Arsenal of Democracy' which made it one of the highest paying blue-collar cities in the US. In the words of Segrue, "Mid-twentieth-century Detroit embodied the melding of human labor and technology that together had made the United States the apotheosis of world capitalism." (p.19) This height of Fordist production makes the inevitable fall even more extreme.
:: 'Criss Crossed Conveyors' from the Ford River Rouge Plant - Charles Sheeler (1927) image via Art History Archive
As mentioned, the visitors of today's Detroit marvel at the industrial ruins and disaster porn, but at the time, people flocked to the city to see the massive technologies and industrial might at work, and mostly "they stood rapt as the twentieth century's premier consumer object, the automobile, rolled off the assembly lines by the dozens an hour." (p.19) It is hard to think of the spectacular model of modernity that Detroit once embodied, one that reshaped the city with a new form of 'industrial geography' which tied factories to suppliers and workers to homes with unprecedented efficiency.
The traces of grand boulevards from Woodward's L'Enfant-inspired plan of 1807
remained - fanning out in a radial pattern of wide avenues from the city center, which added to
the idea of speed and efficiency that has characterized Detroit, and the
automobile industry for decades. Much like Los Angeles being the embodiment of the auto-centric city, Detroit is the perfect model of Fordist urbanism at work - not just in the factories - driven by mass-production along with high union wages, and the accessibility of the blue-collar worker to live in a single-family house of their own - with a dearth of any sort of apartment of multi-family housing to accommodate lower-income or those not wealthy enough, or white enough, to buy houses.
The focus on single-family houses led to perpetual housing shortages - particularly when combined with a history of official and unofficial policies that prevented blacks from obtaining housing. Unlike many of the eastern cities where the geography was a patchwork of ethnic enclaves, Detroit was much more literally black and white, as Segrue mentions, "class and race became more important that ethnicity as a guide to the city's residential geography." (p.22) While it was understood as a "City of Homes" for most, the influx of black workers from the South, who came in the 'Great Migration', were met with a consistent range of discrimination and violence, as existing residents perceived in-migration as a threat to their community, starting in the 1920s and continuing all the way through the 1970s. As mentioned in Segrue:
"White neighborhoods, especially enclaves of working-class homeowners, interpreted the influx of blacks as a threat and began to defend themselves against the newcomers, first by refusing to see to blacks, then by using force and threats of violence, and finally establishing restrictive covenants to assure the homogeneity of neighborhoods." (p.24)
There were some inroads to employment in good jobs around WWII, driven by a tightening labor market, the coalitions of unions and civil rights groups, and some federal policies, which made sure that "blacks made significant gains in Detroit's industrial economy during the war." (p.27) There was still an undercurrent of racial tension, which played out in housing and employment, a continual topic that Segrue alludes to being a 'structural' racism that played out in Detroit, and were displayed in significant riots and other violence throughout the years, but that this didn't stop the influx of blacks coming into the city, leaving the Jim Crow south for something better. It's debatable if Detroit was much better.
The Time Bomb
The availability and quality of housing was poor for blacks - driven by a number of social and policy factors. While the New Deal had instilled a new ideology of opportunity for blacks - it had also instilled an ideology for current residents that the government would protect their property and the status quo. Thus the competing ideals of opportunity and protection played out in Detroit, and although, as seen previously, some gains were made - the majority of the wins came in maintenance of the status quo and protection from the new waves of poor, black residents.
As seen in the map below, there were very specific segregated neighborhoods that were predominately populated by blacks - in particularly the original Paradise Valley and West Side Neighborhoods (which had been an areas for wealthy blacks that had deteriorated), along with the wealthier blacks in Conant Gardens and the more distant Eight Mile-Wyoming area, where they had land for gardens to grow food, which became for some pioneering blacks, "their one opportunity, as they saw it, to own their own homes and rear their families." (p.39)
The geography of race was perpetuated by the real estate community as well, who were actively involved in the exclusion of blacks from housing. Another aspect was construction, with new houses rarely being built for blacks or in a price range that was suitable. As Segrue mentions, in "1951, on 1.15 percent of the new homes constructed in the metropolitan Detroit area were available to blacks." (p.43). Another major issue that shaped this geography in Detroit, and many other cities around the United States, was the concept of redlining. Maps were produced by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, informed by local real estate brokers and lenders, to rate the neighborhoods in cities according to a scale from A (green) to D (red). While ostensibly a methodology for determining investment risk, the process became a de facto method for exclusion, disenfranchisement, and continued disinvestment in the minority areas.
Black neighborhoods, even those with a small percentage of black residents, were given a rating of 'D', which was deemed hazardous and colored red (as seen in the unfortunately fuzzy map above, which shows significant portions of the downtown). I haven't been able to track down maps from Detroit - although they do exist for a number of cities - and tell as pretty sad tale of federally aided racism. The ratings kept out new loans for new construction or home repairs, furthering a cycle of disinvestment, as outlined by Segrue:
"Residents in areas rate 'C' and 'D' were unlikely to qualify for mortgages and home loans. Builders and developers, likewise, could expect little or no financial backing if they chose to building in such risky neighborhoods." (p.44)
When you factor in restrictive covenants (the actual and implied), and the work of redlining along with real-estate industry maintenance of status quo, it equated to an impossible position for the largest growing population of residents in Detroit to get adequate housing, which further fueled tensions. For a bit more context, here's a video about the Race Riots from Detroit 2020 offers a concise history on the topic:
The final element of the oppression of poor minority residents in Detroit came, as it did in many areas, through the disguise of urban renewal, in particular the construction of highways through 'slums' that cleared out substandard housing without replacing it with enough to handle what was lost, much less house the large numbers of new residents. From Segrue: "The most obvious problem with slum clearance was that it forced the households with the least resources to move at a time when the city's tight housing market could not accommodate them." (p.50)
This was exacerbated with landlords charging more rent (up to 35% more) for blacks for less housing, which, coupled with the lower wages and job opportunities, forced many to live in great numbers, and not have anything left over for maintenance. This further degraded already deteriorating stock, which further declined, and continued the narrative that some whites believed - that blacks would destroy neighborhoods. The cycle continued. Unlike some areas that built robust (if often misguided) public housing, the next chapter showed that Detroit, city of 'homes' had some similar issues with density, and a new-found Nimbyism which led to a slow provision of subsidized housing, which may have aided in softening some of the myriad impacts of the 1950s and 1960s.
Public Housing
The promise of the New Deal, in post-WWII era, was predicated on government intervention to solve the problems of the city. One of those things was to provide adequate housing for the poor, whether this be true building of community and opportunity, or the more commonly wielded tool of 'social engineering' to make better citizens. Through a number of acts, the US developed policy and funding for many types of affordable housing, complementing the already robust subsidies of single family home construction and highway building.
The trend toward 'modernist' totalitarian schemes emerged from this process of social engineering, embodied by the work of a group of professionals called the Citizens' Housing and Planning Council (CPHC), which took a mission of "improvement of the environmental conditions of Detroit's slums through the elimination of crowded, dirty, and substandard housing, and the construction of sanitary, well-lit, and well-ventilated public housing in its place." (p.61) This type of rhetoric smacks of much of public housing projects of the era, which provides housing, as Segrue mentions, that has "ameliorative effects on living conditions and would modify the behavior and character of urban residents... Public housing would also uplift the 'morale' of urban dwellers," which could happen through "social and individual improvement through orderly planning and urban redevelopment." (p.62)
The problem in Detroit, was that nobody seemed to want public housing, as it was fought almost everywhere by both whites, unions, real estate agents, developers and even some established black residents. The adjacency of even some black areas was problematic, and developers had to make deals with the FHA, such as the 1 foot thick, 6 foot high wall that separated the new development from the old - remnants of which still exist. This sort of approach reinforced the FHA's official policy, not of true equality, but as mentioned by Segrue, even with some of the more enlightened bureaucrats, "a separate but equal philosophy." (p.67)
:: Wall Separating Black from White - remnant - image via Detroit Fly
The official ideology of racial segregation couched in urban renewal also bled into the policies of the City Plan Commission (CPC), which continued the rhetoric of "an emerging program to create a totally planned metropolis, combining public housing with strictly regulated private development..." and the group began using zoning to start "composing a master plan to guide city and regional growth... for the 'reconstruction of Detroit's 'blighted' neighborhoods'..." (p.68) The use of condemnation and slum removal, and strategic placement of black neighborhoods aimed to 'clean up' areas and protect others from deterioration, but more often than not led to housing shortages for those most in need.
The contention over public housing locations was intense, with everyone agreeing that there was a chronic shortage, but no area wanting to be the location for housing to be built. It is understandable, as the inclusion of black neighborhoods, even those Federally-funded, would place these areas in danger of redlining, meaning that value for those living nearby would degrade, and their access to money for improvements and new construction would be significantly decreased. Many planned projects, such as the Sojourner-Truth housing project in Northeast Detroit, which was a planned 200 unit development opposed by whites as well as existing, establish blacks. The overt racism was sometimes couched in a patriotic fervor, "couched in the language of Americanism," as seen in the flags atop the blatant message below but also came with a hint of threatened violence, all with an aim, in the words of existing homeowners, to "preserve the racial and architectural homogeneity of their neighborhood." (p.78)
The Federal government flip-flopped multiple times on location and type of housing - at one point within a two week period switching from black to white, and back to black. The New Deal dichotomy of rights vs. existing protection was at play in many of these conversations as well, as mentioned by Segrue, while: "Acknowledging the 'moral and legal right' of blacks to adequate housing..." existing residents countered that they "had established a prior right to a neighborhood which we have built up through the years - a neighborhood which is entirely white and which we want kept white." (p.80) The government, with pressure from residents, unions, and other groups, implied redlining from real-estate agents, and continued white flight to the suburbs, often acquiesced to these demands, further creating a tension of high rent and little opportunity that continued to flare up in violence.
The venue of public housing debate became a political touchstone as well - with mayoral elections being decided not by the traditional means of party affiliation and union membership, but by black and white, specifically a candidates views of public housing. This conflict, as Segrue mentions, of "politics of home" versus the "politics of the workplace" was another interesting institutional element that made Detroit a large city with very little public housing compared to many other US cities.
As we shall see in subsequent chapters, the racial and social strife had already taken a toll on Detroit, even before deindustrialization, and that loss of industrial might that made the city the Arsenal of Democracy, will continue to play out in racial division, housing, and employment.
A class this term at Portland State involves a reading and conference on 'Shrinking Cities'. Led by professor Ellen Bassett, a group of a dozen students from PhD and Masters in Urban Studies and Urban and Regional Planning reading and discussing four diverse texts, along with a range of other writings on the subject.
:: Detroit Race Riots - 1967 - image via Brittanica
Our first book is "The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit" by Thomas Segrue. Originally published in 1996, this book has won a number of awards for history, and continues to provide an overview of the connections between racial and economic inequality as played out in the post-WWII urban landscape of Detroit.
This is By no means a comprehensive overview of the subject, but the aim of the group is to discuss the social, economic, political, and spatial phenomena at work in a number of US Shrinking Cities, to better understand this issue. Stay tuned for some thoughts over coming weeks, and if you have suggested readings to include, that would be very welcome.
As an example, King mentions the Sierra Pacific Megapolitan Area, seen below as a large geographical area that extends from the San Francisco Bay area all the way into Western Nevada, around Reno. The region includes 27 counties and includes over 12.4 million people, and its expected to grow substantially in the next 30 years.
As mentioned in the article, the significance of the concept of megapolitan areas is to look more broadly at a larger scale, King, quoting Nelson, mentions that "regions can be more proactive in everything from transportation planning to economic strategies... to have people look at things a little differently, the whole rather than the parts."
While explicitly not a model for mega-regional government, there are some possibilities of what this might mean for regions by looking at larger areas. As mentioned by King, "It's too early to say whether the concept of megapolitan areas will catch on as a framework for government policy, much less in terms of how regular people define where they live."
The significant of megapolitan areas, thus is undetermined.
The overall ambiguity of the defining characteristics of a 'city' has led to a lot of questions related to city centers, sprawl, and other hybrid urban agglomerations like edge cities, exurbs, and the shift from urban area to metropolitan statistical areas (MSAs). This leads to a lot of diversity in definition (outlined in the SF Gate article) - including the largest megapolitan area (NY-Phil 33.9 million people) to the smallest, fastest growing (Las Vegas 2.4 million). While Vegas booms, the Steel Corridor of wester PA is creeping along slowly. In terms of diversity, not surprisingly, the Southern California region has the largest percentage of minorities (62.7%) and the Twin-Cities are the least diverse with 15.5% of minorities.
The terms megaregion, megalopolis, megapolitan area, while similar in nature, are somewhat different historically, spatially, and statistically, so it is worth a look at some of the designations. A map of megaregions shows the eleven areas in the United States as determined by the Regional Plan Association.
This differs somewhat from a more recent version of Megapolitan areas from a recent essay by Lang and Nelson on Places from Design Observer) They identify 10 megapolitan clusters that exist in 23 megapolitan areas that are similar but slightly different from those above.
The different terms, definitions, and geographical extents makes the concepts a bit difficult to parse, but in general terms, the areas are defined by a population of more than 10 million people that exist within a 'clustered network of cities' typically delineated through transportation corridors.
The new interpretation of Megapolitan area builds on earlier concepts to describe a more general 'transmetropolitan geography' which is typically thought of more commonly in larger, global areas such as China, Japan, Brazil - which include megaregions of 120 million (Hong Kong, Shenzen-Guangzhou), 60 million (Nagoya-Osaka-Kyoto-Kobe) and 43 million (Rio de Janeiro-Sao Paulo). While the concepts are similar, the scale of these new global areas are immense in comparison to the US.
Interestingly enough, the term has been used since the 1820s, and the conceptual usage of the concept of Megalopolis as a grouping of urban areas within a region dates back almost 100 years. This includes references by Oswald Spengler in The Decline of the West (1918) and Lewis Mumford in The Culture of Cities (1938). The most popularized recent usage was from 1950s and 60s, in the book on the Northeast United States by Jean Gottmann entitled 'Megalopolis' (1961).
More on this in subsequent posts, specifically additional information on Lang and Nelson's longer essay in Places, and a closer look at the book. Stay tuned.
A follow-up on new mapping tools from the author of 'The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban Invisibles' (read a review of this great book here). Nadia Amoroso alerted me to a new endeavor called Data Appeal, which provides tools for visualization of data through mapping in order to engage people in new ways.
London - Economic activity w/ Green Space
Ms. Amoroso sent me some information to give a snapshot of this new tool, which she describes as: "...a new way of geo-data visualization.
This web-based application takes
geo-referenced data files and generates beautifully designed 3D and animated maps. The
application is ideal for anyone
interested in transforming their data into powerful, communicative,
and visually appealing messages."
Toronto - Green Space in Neighborhoods
As you can see, the aesthetic variations allow users to choose from many options of shapes and graphic tweaks such as color and transparency to fine-tune the end result. This flexibility gives option for a number of different iterations to provide more lively 'datascapes' which will hopefully engage users in new ways. A variation includes colors and different symbology, as seen below:
Ranking of Los Angeles Restaurants
More from the site: "This application merges analytics, modeling and
art into a new data visualization tool.
In essence, it is a simplified GIS, and visual
geo-analytics tool. The team at DataAppeal wanted to create an application in which individuals can analyze
their data visually and at the same time
have fun with their information, by designing it in a way that expresses the subject, and by
transforming numbers in an artful way."
Chicago Green Space - alternative view angle
The exciting aspect of the service currently is that it is available free, at least for now. In the future, a premium version with advanced
features, analytic options and more data-design options will be available. As Amoroso mentions, there has been lots of interest in the site from government
agencies, municipalities, environmental agencies, universities, research groups, geography associations, market
analysis research companies, news
agencies, media groups, national defence agencies, healthcare institutions, social enterprise,
telecommunication companies, cultural
institutes, real estate agencies are typical users groups.
This tool has been
created through a collaboration of GIS specialists and artists to ensure that data is displayed
in a more visually appealing manner to
create a stronger response to information.
The tool builds on the dialogue from Amoroso and collaborators in her book, while providing a shared platform, easy data interface, and access to robust tools for customization and creation of maps for many uses.
Map with dashboard for customization
Stay tuned, as I plan to interview Nadia to get some additional information on the development and future plans for Data Appeal and how it can continue to expand our ability to generate innovative map-landscapes. For now, check out the site, and peruse some of the features and demos to more - particularly some interactive sites related to New York City Population and Toronto Bars and Restaurant Ratings - where you can visit the map, data, and other pieces that go into the map creation and visualization.
An interesting aspect of the European journey was the ability not to stay in hostels or hotels, but to live in some of the places that people actually inhabit in these cities. This was done courtesy of crashing on my sisters couch in London, and utilizing the fabulous air.bnb for finding amazing flats to stay at along the way (highly recommended btw).
This yielded an interesting experience in understanding cities not as a tourist, but in the words of Rick Steves - as a "temporary local". More on some of these home bases and the ways in which one connects with a certain neighborhood, but for now, I found it interesting, via Google Earth, to look at the locations in comparison of urban form - each one at approximately the same scale - with a yellow dot on where we lived.
Brilliant study of the meshing of urbanization and gold mining in Johannesburg, South Africa by Dorothy Tang and Andrew Watkins (on Design Observer). As mentioned in the article and accompanying photo essay; " In particular, the 80-kilometer mining belt between the two cities is riddled by deep-shaft mines, where companies built an extensive network of underground tunnels and moved large amounts of earth to the surface. These operations have weakened geological strata, disrupted natural drainage patterns and altered ecological habitat. The original semi-arid grasslands ecology is now converted to an urban forest, and sediment from mining waste has blocked natural waterways, unexpectedly creating wetlands with rich bird habitat."
While mining and urban areas is not necessarily a different scenario (the many sand and gravel pits around cities have a similar pattern) - the cyanide-extraction method of gold mines makes them especially toxic neighbors - especially when coupled with adjacent areas of poverty. The overall urban pattern that emerges pairs the informal settlements with gold mining particularly on the fringes of the urban area.
Some of the diagrams show the processes of mining on a macro and site specific scale - which is helpful for understanding the complexities of the process.
In addition to analysis, there is thought of opportunities and solutions that take advantage of these new ecologies that have emerged - as Tang & Watkins propose: "While Johannesburg and Ekurhuleni face grave environmental challenges, including contaminated soils, acid mine drainage, undermined land and scarce water resources, it is also important to recognize the possibilities found in the existing regional infrastructure of pipelines and the large quantities of land being released for use. Currently operating gold mining companies recognize the environmental challenges they face and are actively pursuing more sustainable mining practices. Informal settlements are finding productive political strategies and are maintaining a positive entrepreneurial nature. The scarce water resources of the Witwatersrand are a critical entry point for landscape interventions, especially in relation to the provision of sanitation and the remediation of acid mine drainage. Can gold mining and informal settlements, two seemingly disparate players in the region, provide solutions for the future development of the “Ridge of White Waters”?
A few selected cities such as New York (top) and Berlin (bottom) - click to enlarge images:
And a closeup of the two panels from Paris - to see some more detail:
As mentioned, "Caron strips cities of their spatial context. Roads and rivers become irrelevant, districts and parks disappear. The relationship between built-up areas and empty spaces is obliterated." See more on Armelle Caron's website
Always a fan of explorations of lost rivers, this one is takes the existing urban pattern and erases the former route of the Fleet River in London (via the Londonist)
"As most readers will know (and we’ve seen first hand), the river is now entirely underground and used as a sewer, but you can still pick out its course in the sloping streets of its former banks and, occasionally, a telltale street name. Reader Simon Dovar is one of many to be intrigued by this vanished river, and has put together a map of its route: " I did a bit of research to trace the path of the lost River Fleet as it meanders under the streets of London. As you can see the map is completely hand drawn in pencil as well as the street indicators. The river is indicated by the rubbed out streets." Nice touch – a vanished watercourse marked out in erased pencil lead."
The ease of online mapmaking leads to a democratization of the dissemination of all forms of information. In the spirit of Greenmaps, Italian firm Urban Architecture Project presents Zappata Romana, a simple, icon-based mapping of community-run green spaces on underused and abandoned areas in Rome.
Some additional information about the project: "About 50 community-run green areas mapped: little urban gardens, play yards, edible gardens and areas for walking, resting, or simply talking. Citizens and associations acting together to reclaim the abandoned areas in Rome. More than 100 sites together with the 65 spontaneous gardens registered by the Rome municipality. Urban farms too and other interesting experiences such as Partecipation Houses, “Punti Verdi Qualità ” and green areas maintained by established associations."
Imagine the growing potential, using shared geographical data from a global resource (in this case, the ubiquitous Google Map) - how the layering of information has grown, and will continue to do so, due to tools that are easy to manipulate with little technical expertise and little to no cost. For a similar project, check out my Beta version of the PDX Greenmap - which aims to feature a range of sustainable sites and strategies around Portland (more info here).
I previously featured a video from the online video series "The City Concealed" produced by Thirteen, a project of New York station WNET. The series offers glimpses into some of the terrain vague of the metropolis by: "...exploring the unseen corners of New York. Visit the places you don’t know exist, locations you can’t get into, or maybe don’t even want to. Each installment unearths New York’s rich history in the city’s hidden remains and overlooked spaces."
The alerted me to a recent video on the Staten Island Greenbelt, which is 2,800 acres of passive natural area and more traditional parkland, a short distance from Manhattan.
A bit of context from a location map shows the full extent of this agglomerated green zone slicing through the center of the island.
A close up shows some of the detail of the connected areas and the juxtaposition of the active and passive elements.
The proximity to Fresh Kills Park is obviously not lost on the potential for expanded greenbelt potential, connecting the southwestern portions to the new park, extending to the western shore of the island.
A quick tour of the recent videos has some great finds, including this one exploring the abandoned Hincliffe Stadium in Paterson, New Jersey and how it is slowly being enveloped by vegetation, and efforts to save this historic resource.
The City Concealed video series explores historical locations around New York City that are either off-limits to the general public, or are otherwise difficult or impossible to see. The City Concealed, now in its third season, is part of THIRTEEN.ORG’s original online video offerings for New Yorkers.
Destinations of the nine upcoming episodes include New York's last Greek Synagogue in the LES; the decommissioned Ridgewood Reservoir; the abandoned Ft. Tilden in The Rockaways; the closed-off High Bridge, plus a few more.
THIRTEEN is owned by the New York public media company WNET.ORG.
It's intriguing that Google Earth 6 has started populating the virtual 'planet' with 3-Dimensional trees, which together with buildings and terrain offer the opportunity for some reasonable representation of exterior sites. Right now, only a few cities have been added in selected cities and natural areas:
"I think we can all agree that our planet without trees would be a pretty desolate place. Besides the ever-important task of providing us with the oxygen we breathe, trees are an integral part of the landscape around us. In Google Earth, while we and our users have been busy populating the globe with many thousands of 3D building models, trees have been rather hard to come by. All that is changing with Google Earth 6, which includes beautifully detailed, 3D models for dozens of species of trees, from the Japanese Maple to the East African Cordia to my personal favorite, the cacao tree. While we’ve just gotten started planting trees in Google Earth, we already have more than 80 million trees in places such as Athens, Berlin, Chicago, New York City, San Francisco and Tokyo. Through our Google Earth Outreach program, we’ve also been working with organizations including the Green Belt Movement in Africa, the Amazon Conservation Team in Brazil and CONABIO in Mexico to model our planet’s threatened forests."
A short video from Google, particularly regarding their concept for showing specific species of trees to promote understanding and great conservation.
The problem, of course, is the rendering of trees, which is so often problematic in digital formats as to be more distracting than useful. The trees are somewhat abstracted, due to the need to provide simple shapes lower memory usage. (UPDATE: the images previously shown were from the old version of Google Earth - so I have no provided a comparison with these and a city that has the new Google Earth 6 Trees - thanks to Damian @ World Landscape Architect for the heads up on this). All images are exports from the Pro version.
Digital Trees (A Comparison)
A contextual overview is somewhat interesting, for instance, Central Park in New York City (which does not have the new trees yet) looks surprisingly robust with the old trees.
Central Park
The new trees - in this case from San Francisco's Golden Gate Park, show a more homogenous and subtle patterning of the canopy, a bit more realistic in the inability to see separate trees, and the lack of repetition.
Golden Gate Park
The distant views at eye level are interesting to provide context for the adjacent buildings, something missing in the sterility of the 3D google earth buildings. From a flattened view, the Central Park trees do provide a foreground to the adjacent urban edges.
Central Park
Standing in a similar field looking outward, there seems to be a bit more depth in the new 3D trees, and the rendering of individual tree components is more noticeable (maybe it's just the lighter trunks?). There's obviously less density surrounding Golden Gate park, but the foreground/background relationship of the distant hillside is pretty effective (now when is the Weather on Google Earth going to be perceptible on the ground-level view, which might make the sky look a bit more real).
Golden Gate Park
The whole thing falls apart for the old trees, similar to many other attempted representations of vegetation, at a close-up scale. You can see the X-shaped geometry of the trees (a common way of providing lo-res 3D vegetation) start to give up their individual facets and look a bit strange.
Central Park
While the new 3D trees are an improvement, as you can see a better approximation of the trunk and canopy as well as a distinction between varieties of species. As anyone that's worked in Sketchup knows, the search for good approximations of trees is a difficult task to find good representations of trees to match diversity of real vegetation. I think some Google Earth to actual photo matching shots would be interesting to show the differences and see how close these have come to true representation.
Golden Gate Park
An interesting first attempt (check out all of the cities with trees here), but one that still needs a lot of work. Talking with folks that do a lot of 3D rendering, landscape is always a difficult aspect for a couple of reasons. The overall complexity of a tree, for instance, is immense - even when compared to a building (which is typically more uniform in shape and is covered with 'flat' materials.
The Problems of Rendering Trees.
Thinking of a tree as a complex system - there's a infinite branching system of components - trunk, branch, stem, leaf, bud, flower - radiating in 3 dimensions in an ordered, yet flexible paths. A beautifully rendered tree is a masterpiece, but one that takes a lot of time and memory to accomplish and is a mere snapshot in time of one species, of a certain age, and at a certain time of year.
Even with the perfect specimen, there are many other factors at work - which in essence requires each one to be slightly different, as well as the ability to capture form at different ages. Take into account a changing canopy over the 4 seasons - often representing with spring leaf out, coloration, summer full foliage, fall color and leaf drop, and winter branching - and that adds another complex variable to the equation. A bit simpler for evergreen species, but just think of the number of species of trees that exist in any particular city. Thus attempts to simplify often create trees which are somewhat cartoony approximations of the real thing. It boggles the mind - just think what it does to the CPU.
Finally, trees are but one aspect of the landscape - and unless you are living in a park from the picturesque era, most are juxtaposed with a layered structure from overstory, understory, shrubs, and groundcover - especially when viewed from a close-in site scale. There are programs available that will allow for this complexity - but how many project budgets do you think have this built in, or how many firms have the technological capabilities and personnel to do this type of work. This dilemma becomes evident in the eventual jump from the 3D to more 2D forms of rendering (predominately Photoshop) which allows a snapshot to take on a much richer palette, with less time and expertise - to more accurately render vegetation. These are relegated to a one-shot image, and lose the potential for fly-throughs and other 3D tools for representation. The search, alas, continues - for the perfect set of tools.
Explorations in landscape architecture and urbanism, with a focus on aligning theory with practice.
Jason King is a landscape architect and Principal of TERRA.fluxus in Portland, Oregon, and currently is in the doctoral program at Portland State University in Urban Studies.
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