Il fallait s'attendre au jeu de mot quand même, au moins un peu. On a profité d'une journée de congé pour faire un aller-retour dans le Luxembourg. On ne savait pas trop à quoi s'attendre, on n'avait pas trop fait de recherches avant de partir, autre que de comment s'y rendre et déjà en arrivant c'était un tout petit choc culturel en voyant une autre langue d'affichée partout. Le luxembourgeois est un peu à l'allemand ce que le flamand est au néerlandais. C'est juste assez différent pour pas qu'ils se comprennent entre eux.
Côté pratique ceci dit, à peu près tout le monde parle français dans cette ville perchée sur les rochers en raison de la proximité avec la France et la Belgique. On a commencé à marcher le long de la falaise et tout autour des anciennes fortifications. C'est que la ville repose en fait sur un rocher qui a été acheté par un Seigneur cherchant à construire une forteresse aux balbutiements du Moyen Âge. Il y a creusé son château à même le roc et s'est établi sur son flanc. La haute-ville est d'ailleurs aujourd'hui reliée par un ascenseur creusé dans le roc.
Le rocher dans lequel le château est creusé
La vue sur la basse-ville avec la haute ville perchée sur la falaise
C'est aussi le premier voyage où on a eu un problème avec les trains belges. En partant de Bruxelles, le conducteur du train manquait à l'appel (ça s'est traduit par 25 minutes de retard) et en revenant on nous a fait part d'un problème mécanique avec la locomotive, on a donc carrément dû changer de train à l'arrêt suivant!
Portland's years-long experiment with parking requirements ends in 2018.
“Portland’s years-long experiment with parking requirements ends in 2018.
A little more than three years after Portland City Council troubled smart-growth advocates by forcing apartment or condo buildings of more than 30 units to provide some amount of off-street parking to residents, a somewhat chastened council voted to undo the change.
“I made a mistake,” City Commissioner Steve Novick said of his vote to enact parking requirements in the spring of 2013. “Only Commissioner [Dan] Saltzman did the right thing at that time and opposed that proposal.”
“I voted for it, and I think it was a mistake,” added Mayor Charlie Hales.
Now, effective January 2018, the policy should be a thing of the past. It had been a consistent target of density advocates since its inception.
“We are proud to have moved the conversation in just three years to a place where the discussion is about how to get rid of parking minimums rather than how to require more parking,” says Tony Jordan, who spearheaded the “progressive parking” group Portlanders for Parking Reform, and was a central foe of the parking policy.
the parking minimums issue was brought to light with news in 2013 of a few housing developments, particular one on SE Division/37th that would not build any car parking.
“Today, of course, the city’s most urgent issue is housing affordability. Building parking is expensive, and Hales has argued that getting rid of the requirements would make projects cheaper, and perhaps therefore provide for lower rents. Even if that doesn’t happen right away, other advocates have said that doing away with the parking requirements could result in larger buildings, taking pressure off of the city’s tight market and (eventually) lowering rents.
A majority of commissioners agreed with the sentiment, but they weren’t willing to simply scrap parking requirements. Instead, the council enacted a change that provides an exemption to the city’s parking rules as long as developers include affordable housing. In practice, though, it’s likely that will amount to the same thing as undoing the rules altogether.
That’s because Portland is almost certain to adopt an “inclusionary housing” policy that was allowed by the state legislature earlier this year. Under the policy, the city could require affordable housing in buildings of 20 or more units. Those mandatory affordable units would automatically waive parking requirements.
“The change made today basically eliminates off-street parking requirements from buildings subject to inclusionary housing,” Eric Engstrom, a principal planner at the city, told the Mercury on Tuesday.
If for any reason the inclusionary housing proposal fell through—say, via a legal challenge—the city would still be able to waive parking requirements in return for developers offering affordable units.
read more: portlandmercury, 23.11.16.
WHAT WHAT??! PORTLAND WILL ADOPT INCLUSIONARY ZONING??
the running joke—What do Oregon and Texas have in common? NO inclusionary zoning.—will be a thing of the past.
Denmark’s capital has reached a milestone in its journey to become a cycling city – there are now more bikes than cars on the streets. Can other cities follow?
From a Distance: Federico Winer Views of Earth Below
The vision of the distance has always been captivating for man. Seeing the horizon from the top of a mountain or from the seaside, raising our heads and look to the sky and stars. The technical intermediums expanded the possibilities of the vision: air balloons, planes and satellites as intermediums of distance; lens, cameras and screens as intermediums of proximity. But the enormity of that distance was supported by mankind long before by another surprising gimmick: maps. From Babylonian clay tablets to the amazing Google Earth, maps are the way we deal with the distances in our world. Maps are ways of seeing, interpret and read the world. Watching a map is like watching a picture, a way to start travelling. But the maps, as human creations, can’t escape from the bright side of it inherent humanity, as a representations of the earth made by man maps can show its beauty. Maps are a form of art.
From that experience emerges ULTRADISTANCIA by Federico Winer. Endless travels, permitted by the satellite imagery of Google Earth, over the earth geography to the encounter of forms and architectures, topographies and contrasts. Natural and human creations and the crossbreed of both. Cities, airports, roads and mountains. Lakes, parks and crops. Kaleidoscopes of shapes, colors and geometries. Although sometimes the distance does not allow us to see us down there, we know we are there.
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