Spotted while enjoying a day at the beach last weekend on the Oregon Coast.

What does a city with twice the density of New York City do when there is simply no more space on the ground for pedestrians? The city of Mumbai has come up with the idea to create a skywalk network for those on foot trying to get from one place to another while getting them out of the way of the dangers from being forced to walk in the streets due to overcrowding from street vendors, squatters, vehicular traffic and also the lack of sidewalks.

It’s an unfortunate situation when the solution is to pull the people out of the streets and give them a sort of pedestrian super highway to bypass the streetlife. The idea may seem like a nice one at first, providing pedestrians the ability to stroll leisurely from the train station for up to two miles to their ultimate destination through a covered walkway with fresh air and views out over the city but at the same time, what is to happen with the streets and what will keep the skywalks free from the problems that brought on the construction of the skywalks in the first place? Are the streets of Mumbai simply beyond repair? Is creating a network of skywalks really the best thing for Mumbai in the long term or is it like giving up on the city streets and seeking the easy way out?

From the Wall Street Journal:

“The fate of the city’s foot soldiers is crucial because close to 60% of the trips made here are on foot. That makes this one of the most pedestrian-powered metropolises in the world. Until now, however, pedestrians have been largely ignored. Some Mumbaikars, as citizens are known, aren’t happy. Retailers say they are losing business while residents say skywalks block views, allow pedestrians to peek into private homes and are just as likely to be taken over by homeless families and shopless vendors as the sidewalks.”

“Still, something had to be done, city planners say. The road under the Yellow Caterpillar (the first skywalk built which is bright yellow, thus nicknamed by the locals), like station roads across the city, is an obstacle course through a minefield. Commuters spill down the Bandra Station steps and into a knot of three-wheeled auto rickshaws, buses and trucks on the street below. The closest thing to a sidewalk here is a patch of dirt next to a crud-filled creek. Hundreds of commuters walk in the street, dodging vehicles as they go.”

“On the way to the nearby business park—home of Citigroup’s main India office and the National Stock Exchange—they pass through a slum. The roadside is occupied by small shops, families living in plastic-tarp homes, parked motorcycles and goats rooting through garbage. The tiny stretch of sidewalk that eventually emerges about five blocks from the station is cut short by the fence of a small neighborhood police station built directly on top of it. Then pedestrians have to find their way across an off-ramp of Mumbai’s busiest highway. There is a functioning traffic signal and even a policeman at the corner, but drivers often ignore both.”

“The obvious solution of widening the sidewalks just isn’t an option. Mumbai, formerly known as Bombay, is a thin spit of land bound on three sides by the Arabian Sea. Moving buildings to widen roads is next to impossible thanks to tough tenancy laws. Courts and politicians sensitive to the needs of the micro-entrepreneur make it difficult to move illegal street vendors.”

“Skywalks are quick to build, relatively inexpensive and only require land the city already controls. The projected bill for the 50-plus skywalks is around $300 million. The city expects to recover most of that cost by selling advertising space on them.”

“Building the perfect skywalk, however, hasn’t been easy. While the walkways run over government roads, there still often isn’t space on the ground to plant enough supporting columns. Longer stretches between columns mean the city has to spend more on stronger, lighter materials and thicker columns. Commuters found the early skywalks too boxy and bright, so new ones use curved roofs, dark colors and chrome.”

“When engineers started digging to build the foundations, they found the chaos on the street continues underground. A few feet down, they ran into uncharted water, electricity and phone lines as well as sewers, forcing them to redesign whole skywalks. Trying to get the city water authorities or state-run telephone company to shift infrastructure would take too long.”

“Engineering difficulties and neighborhood opposition have blocked six planned skywalks and could stop more, city planners say. But they will continue building them because the streets are getting worse everyday. The city has hired armed guards to keep skywalks clear and the response from commuters has been largely positive.”

Depsite the controversy of the skywalks and what the future holds for the street level, the people of Mumbai who use the skywalks are enjoying them because it cuts down their commute times, offers a stress free walk to work and even provides an enjoyable setting for a walk on one’s day off. In a crowded city where walking in the street is not only stressful but dangerous, Mumbai has come up with a solution that seems to be working for some pedestrians, at least temporarily. But what will come of the life in the street? Is there a creative solution that can work for everyone and doesn’t just take the pedestrians out of the equation altogether?

A video below from the Wall Street Journal:

images via Wall Street Journal

Growing Vine Street is an inspirational concept developed back in the ’90’s by a group of Belltown neighborhood residents in downtown Seattle that revolves around expanding the Belltown P-Patch and merging it with the idea of turning the 8 blocks of Vine Street into a green street that would provide public access to the waterfront. These blocks are intended to act as an example for urban greening, to provide a desireable setting for pedestrians within the streetscape while capturing and treating stormwater through biofiltration and enhancing natural habitat.

The plan, via growinvinestreet.org:

“Central to the Growing Vine Street concept is the runnel, an urban stream running the street’s entire eight-block length surrounded by native greenery. Storm runoff from the roofs of buildings bordering Vine will be collected in large cisterns in each block to supply the water for the stream. As the water flows through the plantings lining the watercourse, it will be treated through the process of biofiltration, which will remove many of its impurities so that it will be clean enough to be released directly into Elliott Bay-without passing through the City’s overworked water treatment facilities.”

“Between Fifth Avenue and First Avenue, Vine Street is relatively level. In this section, the public right-of-way will be reconfigured so that one side is narrow (with a sidewalk and narrow planting strip) and the other is wide. The runnel will meander through the wide side of the street, surrounded by as much greenery as developers and residents can manage. These wide segments will form a refreshing linear park, a setting for creative public art as well as nature.”

“At First Avenue, Vine Street slopes to Elliott Avenue, where it again levels out. Here the street right-of-way will be reconfigured in a switchback alignment to allow for more dramatic water features. One such project is the Cistern Steps adjacent to the Belltown P-Patch. The Cistern Steps is planned as a series of terraced planting areas stepping down the slope. Water from the runnel will flow into the top garden, overflow into the next, and continue to a small pool at Elliott Avenue.”

The entire length of Vine Street was not intended to be built all at once but rather incrementally as new development occurs with each segment connecting into the larger plan over time. So far, two of the planned projects have been completed, the first was the Beckoning Cistern in 2003 which went in as part of the development of The 81 Vine Building. This is the first of what is planned as at least one large cistern for every block to collect rooftop runoff. The next project to follow was the Cistern Steps in 2004, the cascading water feature that runs alongside a flowing set of stairs along the edge of the Belltown P-Patch. Eventhough the entire plan has not yet been completed, the project is seen as a success, has brought about a great deal of praise and is looked upon as one of the pioneer projects of the Seattle green streets.

Beckoning Cistern
The first project to emerge from the plan, the streetscape and artwork of the Beckoning Cistern were constructed along with work at The 81 Vine Building. Local designer Buster Simpson saw inspiration from Michelangelo’s painting on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel. Like Adam reaching out to touch the hand of God, the 10-foot tall cistern is designed like a hand that reaches out over the sidewalk from a shirt sleeve and towards the downspout which leans out from the building.

The connection from the downspout to the index finger allows some of the rooftop runoff to run into the cistern with the rest cascading over and down into the water garden and series of stepped pools that run along the sidewalk along with native vegetation. A smaller vertical pipe garden also runs up the side of the building.

The Cistern Steps
The steps are an extension of the Beckoning Cistern that flow the two blocks from it’s base and alongside the Belltown P-Patch down towards the waterfront. Seattle-based firm SvR Design, an integrated group of civil engineers, landscape architects and planners provided the streetscape and stormwater design for this dramatic cascade of stormwater terraces and pedestrian steps.

“The Cistern Steps consists of a series of three terraced concrete planters tapering from a wide plaza at the alley to the narrow sidewalk right-of-way at the intersection of Vine Street and Elliott Avenue. The runnel will flow from planter to planter, ending in a pool formed from a large, rough-hewn piece of Northwest jade at the foot of the slope. In this segment of Vine Street, there is no adjacent building to feed the runnel, so water will be received from the newly constructed Vine Building across the street, which was designed with a special collection system for roof runoff just to supply the runnel.”

“Like the Beckoning Cistern, the Cistern Steps has been designed to delight pedestrians as well as to process and use roof runoff in an ecological manner. The water gardens of the planters will echo the lush greenery of the adjacent Belltown P-Patch. Even more color will be added with inlaid tile signage on the plaza walls at the alley and on the risers of the steps in the sidewalk passing between the P-Patch and the Cistern Steps. Even the stair railings will be works of art forged by Belltown’s own Black Dog Forge.”

photos (c) Lisa Town, concept graphics via growingvinestreet.org

SvR Design is also the firm responsible for the Thornton Creek Water Quality Channel previously posted about here and with an update after a rain event with pictures here.

Growing up on a farm as a child, I was fairly well connected to the idea of food, place and time but of course didn’t think about it much back then. In 2008, while working in Germany and sitting next to a girl from Colombia, I made a comment one day about the fruit bowl she kept on her desk and the amazing amount of apples that she ate. Every single day she would be happily crunching away on an apple, a fruit of great abundance in the area of southern Germany where I lived which was surrounded by countless orchards. She told me that she grew up with the kinds of fruit I would consider exotic like mangos and papayas but the only apples they could grow were very small and not as flavorful. When she arrived in Germany she was in heaven being surrounded by all the delicious and fresh local apples. It sort of stopped me because I had moved from a place in the US that had a great abundance of apples so to me it was of little difference that I could buy apples at the market. I began thinking more and more about how fruit can define place, not just what is cultivated but what can grow naturally just out in the open. I thought back to my childhood again and realized that a lot of what defined that time and place in my mind had to do with fruit, like wild huckleberries. I remember strategically choosing a favorite sitting spot in a tree because it was within reach of the little red berries that I would sit and snack on.

Awhile ago I came across a great group that followed along this line of thinking, using the fruit as their lense to investigate the ecologicial, social and political issues surrounding food and land use as well as to inspire community building. They are called, Fallen Fruit, an art collaboration created by David Burns, Matias Viegener and Austin Young that began six years ago.

The trio first began in their own stomping grounds of the Silver Lake area of Los Angeles by mapping out “public fruit” which included the creation of street-by-street diagrams of fruit trees that grew on public land. They were especially interested in the use of this public fruit and expanding on the idea of a city planting with the goal of helping to support their populace through something of a planned urban orchard.

The groups website describes what they are about:

“Fallen Fruit investigates urban space, ideas of neighborhood and new forms of located citizenship and community. From protests to proposals for new urban green spaces, we aim to reconfigure the relation between those who have resources and those who do not, to examine the nature of & in the city, and to investigate new, shared forms of land use and property. Fallen Fruit is an art collaboration that began with creating maps of public fruit: the fruit trees growing on or over public property in Los Angeles.”

“Over time our interests have expanded from mapping public fruit to include Public Fruit Jams in which we invite the citizens to bring homegrown or public fruit and join in communal jam-making; Nocturnal Fruit Forages, nighttime neighborhood fruit tours; Community Fruit Tree Plantings on the margins of private property and in community gardens; Public Fruit Park proposals in Hollywood, Los Feliz and downtown LA; and Neighborhood Infusions, taking the fruit found on one street and infusing it in alcohol to capture the spirit of the place.”

The trio doesn’t just stop at Los Angeles, or even the United States but finds inspiration in whatever part of the world that calls to them. They have followed activites around the world that have interested them in regards to the social aspect of food from documenting the harvest of isolated, wild berries in Norway to following a boy in Copenhagen all the way to Colombia to research and study the activities surrounding the banana.

While all of their projects are interesting in their own way, I was especially drawn to a project titled Public Fruit Jam that made its first appearance in 2006 and is ongoing. They say everyone has a fruit story and I have many but one thing that I always recall with great fondness, even from my very early childhood years, the days I’d spend making jam with my grandparents from the fruit we picked together on their farm. Making jam is so easy a child can participate and there is little concentration involved so during the time it is an incredible opportunity for socializing. This event is especially interestined because by attending and bringing fruit, each person from the community shows up with a story as well as an interest in the topic and together people can explore their connections through the fruit they gathered in their own neighborhood and walk away with something they made through shared resources and effort, adding layers to the story they began with. A description of the project from the site:

“Fallen Fruit invites the public to bring home-grown or street picked fruit and collaborate with us in making a collective fruit jams. Working without recipes, we ask people to sit with others they do not already know and negotiate what kind of jam to make: if I have lemons and you have figs, we’d make lemon fig jam (with lavender). Usually held in a gallery or museum, this event highlights the social and public nature of Fallen Fruit’s work, and we consider it a collaboration with the public as well as each other.”

Their latest project, called EATLACMA, will be held at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art beginning this month and will run through November. A video below provides a teaser of the project and the LACMA website describes the project:

“EATLACMA is a year-long investigation into food, art, culture and politics. Fusing the richness of LACMA’s permanent collection with the ephemerality of food and the natural growth cycle, EATLACMA’s projects consider food as a common ground that explores the social role of art and ritual in community and human relationships. EATLACMA unfolds seasonally, with artist’s gardens planted and harvested on the museum campus, hands-on public events, and a concurrent exhibition, Fallen Fruit Presents The Fruit of LACMA (June 27-November 7, 2010). It culminates in a day-long event (November 7, 2010) in which over fifty artists and collectives will activate, intervene, and re-imagine the entire museum’s campus and galleries.”

images via Fallen Fruit

Chicago-based political artist Michael Rakowitz has been working on a project called paraSITE since 1998 that tackles the issue of homelessness that is an unfortunate reality of all urban areas. His inventive approach seeks to reuse warm air that leaves buildings through outtake vents for portable and personal temporary homeless shelters. He has built and disbursed over 30 different designs through different urban sites in New York City, Boston, Cambridge and Baltimore. All shelters were constructed using temporary materials that were readily available on the streets. The image above was constructed out of clear trash bags, ZipLoc bags and clear waterproof packing tape on a budget of $5.00.

The artist chose to name the project after the parasitic organism due to it’s place in the environment as something that exploits the energy of it’s host, like these temporary structures do by using the warm air that leaves a building from its heating, ventillation and HVAC systems for both inflation and heat.

The most interesting thing about this project is not just the general idea but the fact that it is not only site specific but person specific in that each shelter uses materials found on-site and are used to construct a shelter that responds to the specific needs and concerns of each individual like security, privacy, space and even laws.

The image below, which is from New York City, is especially interesting because it was specifically designed like a sleeping bag to get around the anti-tent law which states that any structure on city property that is 3 1/2 feet or taller would be considered an illegal encampment. The man was even confronted by police officers on several occassions but then left him alone after measuring the shelter and finding that it did indeed conform to the law.

Given that the situation of homelessness in our cities is on the rise, acts like this fuel the debate of what to do and what the future might be for our urban spaces as it relates to these people constantly seeking refuge amongst the buildings. From the project site,

“While these shelters were being used, they functioned not only as a temporary place of retreat, but also as a station of dissent and empowerment; many of the homeless users regarded their shelters as a protest device, and would even shout slogans like ‘We beat you Uncle Sam!’ The shelters communicated a refusal to surrender, and made more visible the unacceptable circumstances of homeless life within the city.”

“For the pedestrian, paraSITE functioned as an agitational device. The visibly parasitic relationship of these devices to the buildings, appropriating a readily available situation with readily available materials elicited immediate speculation as to the future of the city: would these things completely take over, given the enormous number of homeless in our society? Could we wake up one morning to find these encampments engulfing buildings like ivy?”

The artist doesn’t propose this as a solution for this very large and global problem but simply wishes to assist in furthering the discussion.

Its point of departure is to present a symbolic strategy of survival for homeless existence within the city, amplifying the problematic relationship between those who have homes and those who do not have homes.”

Sometimes human behavior will provide hints on what people want or need. Other times people make downright obvious, like painting on their own sidewalk in an area where pedestrians feel unsafe with the current situation. This may be the work of someone who has had a few too many drinks thus prohibiting their ability to make a straight line but nonetheless, they were well intentioned. One thing to note is that this spot in Portland at the intersection of East Burnside and Northeast 8th Street is already slated to receive a stop light in the near future.

This image was spotted over at bikeportland.org and was taken by the City’s own Vice-Chair of the Pedestrian Advisory Committee, Doug Kolz.

During a recent excursion to Seattle I made a stop in Tacoma, Washington to check out the living wall by Patrick Blanc on the new Goodwill-Milgard Work Opportunity Center, designed by BCRA Architects. The installation measures 20 x 40 feet and was completed in September of last year. Like a piece of art there is prime space on the new building dedicated to the vegitated piece and it sits perfectly in line with the walkway up to the front door as well as being visible from the busy nearby street.

The wall sits just a couple feet off the ground so anyone can easily walk right up to it, in fact the sidewalk even encourages it. The wall is still new and therefore the plants are small so the fabric that covers the wall can plainly be seen. The fabric has been completely covered by a slimy green algae that in some places has been taken over by moss, much in the same way a typical rock face might look in a nearby forest or on the edge of a waterfall. This allows the wall to completely mimic those natural conditions that plants native to those types vertical surfaces would be accustomed to, and to provide a natural-like situation for those plants that don’t typically grow up in the air. The nutrient rich water that seeps down through the system to keep the fabric thoroughly saturated and feed the plant material is dispersed through a drip line along the top and middle of the wall. The excess water then simply drips from the bottom onto the gravel below.

The ability to walk right up to the wall allows for an easy close examination of the system involved. Even though I am quite familiar with the construction technique used in this style of living wall, it still continues to amaze me how little plants require for survival in a vertical system and how thin each layer really is. The roots are stripped of their potting soil from the nursery and inserted bare into the pockets that have been slit into 1/2 inch thick fabric layer and stapled into place.

With 96 different varieties of plants running in bands across the wall, it’s no surprise that a couple of them aren’t yet loving their new home but overall, it’s looking pretty good both from a distance and up close. What will really be interesting is to see how the wall continues to take shape when spring rolls around and how it grows together over the years and works itself out among the difference species. While I was wandering around, taking pictures and examing the system, an employee came up to talk to me. He was excited that I was so interested in the wall and told me that they are very proud of it, like the way it looks and look forward to watching it grow in the years to come. It was cool to hear the thoughts from someone who looks at this wall on a daily basis.

While the most visible edge of the wall is completely wrapped in fabric, the edge tucked into the corner of the building is open, revealing the metal structure that attaches the wall to the side of the building. This is the most interesting part in being able to walk right up to a vegetated wall, the ability to take a peek behind the scenes.

The lightweight metal structure holds the vegetated wall out about 6 inches from the building face, making the living wall a completely independant system and keeping any roots or water away from the architecture. On top of the metal structure is a plastic sheet, a layer of fabric mesh and then the fabric which holds the plants. The system in it’s entirety is about less than 1 inch thick. Staples can even be seen poking through the back of the plastic sheet. You can bet that I’ll definitely make more stops in the future to document the progress of this wall.

images (c) Lisa Town

One of my favorite urban art collectives, Luz Interruptus of Madrid, Spain, recently did a lovely installation called Recuerdos Enjaulados or Caged Memories that included their first ever public participation. Typically their installations are more of the guerilla nature.

On a sunday in the Plaza de Ministriles in Madrid where the collection would be installed, the art collective invited te neighborhood out to participate by bringing little mementos which would be placed inside the cages to be hung in the plaza. Many people joined in the festivities with music, dancing and a warm breakfast in the middle of a community street that was closed down for 5 hours during the event. In the end over 300 items were collected ranging from the spontaneous to the emotional that would act as a representation of the community as a whole, helping to bring these people together and instill a personal atsmophere into the space.

The items were each individually placed in golden cages and hung over the plaza like strings of lights. At night they would be illuminated to convert the previously gray plaza into a beautiful place where people could gather under the light and enjoy the warmth and the sentimental nature of the space. The cages were scheduled to be hung for 20 days, half at the end of 2009 and the other half into the beginning of the new year.

An unusual thing happened after the installation was complete, it snowed a great deal and covered the plaza with a blanket of white and filled the cages. The look was beautiful. But unfortunately, the weight of snow caused a few of the cages to fall. The installation had to be taken down and reinstalled once the snow disappeared. Above are some photos of the beautiful snow-filled plaza on the night of the first snowfall and below are images of the completed installation as looks lit at night after being reinstalled.

images via Luz Interruptus

According to the NY Times today, Mayor Bloomberg has announced that the 8-month long experiment of pedestrian plazas in the heart of Times Square, which caused parts of Broadway to be closed to vehicular traffic, will remain open to pedestrians permanently.

Despite traffic flow not being improved, the decision came from the positive feedback from tourists, merchants and workers in the area. From the NY Times, “An extensive survey of local businesses found that more than two-thirds of the area’s retail outfits wanted the project to become permanent. About 75 percent of New Yorkers surveyed by the Times Square Alliance, an area business group, said they were happy with the new plazas and that they had improved the aesthetic experience of Times Square.”

I’m a big fan of the pedestrianization of this space, as seen in previous entries here, here and here and am excited thar New York City has decided to make this committment for the health of the city and its inhabitants. This is a great example for others American cities. If New York City can take a congested area and give it to pedestrians, any city can do it.

images via berk2804

Update: Streetsblog has written on this topic today as well, including some information from today’s press conference. From Streetsblog, “Sadik-Khan, who called the observed improvements ‘an example of the results we want to deliver on the streets of New York citywide,’ said DOT would ‘move immediately to transform the plazas into iconic spaces worthy of their iconic setting.’ The permanent design of the plazas will incorporate new pavements, new seating, and event spaces.”

As far as the debate about the traffic issue as it relates to Times Square, the Time Square Alliance President Tim Tompkins pointed out that “the overwhelming majority of people who come to Times Square are not driving.” For this reason, the Broadway areas that have been closed to vehicular traffic are successful because it caters to this majority, something that other areas of NYC find desireable. According to Mayor Bloomberg, “There are other parts of the city where we are getting lots of calls from merchants who want the same kind of thing.”

Lately I’ve seen a lot of imagery about various ways to inject some green into train stations around the world from large pots on the platforms to planted cars that travel along with the train but the Meadow Fresh milk company in New Zealand decided to take it a step further and lay out an entire carpet of green to tranform a station into a meadow with grass and even buttercups.

On July 12th of 2009, Britomart Station in Aukland was covered with 1,250 square meters of turf grass. The grass had been rolled out and setup throughout the night before, ready and waiting for the first trains to arrive at 7 a.m. I love the idea of these people rolling into the station with no idea that the grass is there, with cameras ready to capture the genuine reactions of the passengers as they step off into the grass, taking off their shoes and being handed little cartons of milk with straws. The station looks like it’s been transformed into a park complete with kids playing around with soccer balls. For one day this station wasn’t just a sea of concrete where people passed through on the way to or from somewhere, but they actually stopped to enjoy the moment.

images via craigsydnz

After a full day of covering the concrete floors of the train station, the sod was then rolled up and transported to a local school where it would carpet the areas between new classrooms being built.

And of course, I had to track down the actual commercial that was shot. The music is perfect, captures that child-like spirit that seems to be brought out in people as they see the surprise awaiting them at the platform. This just continues to show that a little bit of green can do wonders for people.

spotted via thisblogrules