Strip Malls & Shopping Sprawls

After spending way too much money on a degree I have found little use for, I discovered an interest in urban planning and the built environment. This is my way of sorting out my discoveries and thoughts on the subject. Think of me as a poor man's Jane Jacobs.

[jimrenzi-blog]

Neglection

My Tumblr has seriously been neglected lately. But on the bright side I've still been productive.

My band Skylight Stereo has our first single out 'Put Up or Shut up' and you can download it for FREE to help us enter Hard Rock Cafe's Battle of the Bands. Click the link!

http://www.reverbnation.com/contests/1507/artist/3082541

[gregador]

This photo spread is incredible.  Mouse over the image to change from historical images to present day photos.

[gregador]

Closeup of the Bethlehem Steel North Office Building, taken in June.

[fuckyeahbuffalony]

Walmart, which has been rumored to be looking for a North Buffalo location for years, apparently is close to buying properties at the northwest corner of Hertel and Elmwood avenues for a new store.  A commercial real estate insider says the retail giant is said to be buying a string of properties “from the donut shop to the Home Depot plaza.”

-Buffalo Rising

Walmart on Hertel and Elmwood, good idea or bad idea?

[rustbeltliving]

A Walmart anywhere is bad. They were bad at Tonawanda/Amherst. They won’t help Buffalo.

[morally-corrupt-faye-resnick]

Go home sign you are drunk

[thebreathingtree-blog]

On 12.21.12, we are releasing our new “Traveller EP” through www.noisetrade.com. The EP will be available to you at any cost you see fit and ALL profits made within the fist week of release will be directly donated to the Buffalo City Mission. Please help our community, and get rad music while doing it! Also, reblog and spread the word!

THANK YOU THE BREATHING TREE 

[robsonian]

[jimrenzi-blog]

Last time I blamed my lack of Tumblr-ing on the time and effort I've been putting in on my web series By the Book. This time I'm blaming the time and effort I'm putting into my band Skylight Stereo and we have just emerged from GCR studios in Buffalo with an EP releasing shortly. Check us out here. Or else be sad that you didn't. 

In more urban planning related news I have passed my NYS Real Estate Salesperson exam. Hire me.

[secondsminuteshours]

Anthony Burrill - spotted on the fantastic Holiday Matinee.

… projects, living, travel, whatever. Just start and let the rest happen.

[jimrenzi-blog]

I find it's finishing that is the hard part.

[jimrenzi-blog]

Somehow the best way to provide safety in Buffalo's Chippewa district is through Iran-like security measure's. Gotta love prison watch towers, it's the only way to live. 

Maybe, just maybe this entertainment district could be safer through much more reasonable alcohol laws, a society less dependent on cars and proper urban density. Maybe we wouldn't need law enforcement reminiscent of a authoritarian police state? 

[humanscalecities]

Why is the car of the worst mode of transportation in a dense urban city? How far can you travel on 1 ton of carbon dioxide?

Published byAsianDevelopmentBank

[kaseyklimes]

Europeans visiting the Northeastern United States – and many parts of the East Coast — can show their children what Europe’s infrastructure looked like during the 1960s.

Brutally honest but true; I can’t help but feel there is something of a time warp of infrastructure when I cross the Atlantic. Balanced insight by Uwe E. Reinhardt .

[dataurbanism]

The Evolution of Urban Planning in 10 Diagrams Note: The significance of these diagrams are described in the source article

Le Corbusier’s plan may not have had such power if he hadn’t put it on paper. The French modernist architect wanted to reform the polluted industrial city by building “towers in a park” where workers might live high above the streets, surrounded by green space and far from their factories. His idea was radical for the 1930s, and it was his diagrams of it that really captured the imagination.

Le Corbusier’s iconic plan for his “Ville Radieuse” was an obvious choice when Grant and SPUR began to curate a new exhibition, “Grand Reductions: Ten diagrams that changed urban planning.” Le Corbusier’s tidy scheme for “towers in a park,” drawn as if on a blank slate, would influence planners for decades to come. Some of the other diagrams in this survey are a bit more surprising.

The exhibition’s title – Grand Reductions – suggests the simple illustration’s power to encapsulate complex ideas. And for that reason the medium has always been suited to the city, an intricate organism that has been re-imagined (with satellite towns! in rural grids! in megaregions!) by generations of architects, planners and idealists. In the urban context, diagrams can be powerful precisely because they make weighty questions of land use and design digestible in a single sweep of the eye. But as Le Corbusier’s plan illustrates, they can also seductively oversimplify the problems of cities. These 10 diagrams have been tremendously influential – not always for the good.

“The diagram can cut both ways: It can either be a distillation in the best sense of really taking a very complex set of issues and providing us with a very elegant communication of the solution,” Grant says. “Or it can artificially simplify something that actually needs to be complex.”

Over the years, some of these drawings have perhaps been taken too literally, while others likely lie behind some of your favorite spots in your city. “Even if you don’t know the diagram,” Grant says, “you might know the places that the diagram inspired.”

[Source] The Atlantic Cities, The Evolution of Urban Planning in 10 Diagrams

[jimrenzi-blog]

I haven't posted in awhile, I have been too busy working on a comedy web series. Check out the promo spot and like it on Facebook! http://www.facebook.com/bythebookseries <end shameless self promotion>

[fuckyeahurbandesign]

“Detroit is largely composed, today, of seemingly endless square miles of low-density failure.” - Jane Jacobs

[whatsnewbuffalo]

People & Places: Buffalo Cash Mob

What is a Cash Mob? Originating in Buffalo a Cash Mob is when many people coordinate through social media to help a specific local business through mass purchases on a single day. The idea is so popular it has been replicated across North America and Europe.

[detroiting]

Kind of excited for another winter in Detroit. Hopefully we’ll get some snow this year. Happy November everyone!

[jimrenzi-blog]

Feeling the same way about Buffalo!