Cabspotting

Sleepy City

As the native of an industrial, rustbelt city on the decline since the rise of the deindustrialization of the 1970s, I always feel a twinge of nostalgia for Web sites with a mission like this one:

Sleepy City is photographically deconstructing the urban environment. Underground tunnels, derelict industrial sites and urban ruins are where I like to play. Discarded by society, these forgotten nooks and crannies wait quietly for the occasional urban explorer. Grab a torch and have a wander; you might be surprised how little of your city you have ever appreciated."

Visualizing Manhattan

The Lost Year

Dan Baum has an excellent article about the reconstruction of New Orleans in a recent issue of the New Yorker. Two points of the article are interesting from an urban communnication perspective; first the architectural, cultural, and density factors that lead to the creation of an especially meaningful, tight knit community in the Lower Nine and second how "facts" like flood depth change meaning as the context shifts among scientists, developers, federal administrators, and residents of different communities.