On urban life and all its permutations....culled from print sources (often thought too expensive to make reading them a habit).
Two books as references. "City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age," from Bloomsbury Publishers.
Relatively more recent, for Big Apple (NYC) fans: "Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas" edited by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. (The latter surname is fascinating to contemplate.) A treasure in handsome vertical binding, enclosing essays by writers of note (Solnit for one), published by the University of California in 2016. Almost defying a category this combination of graphics, maps, essays. Something to learn on every page and wonder at.
A common sense study out of Brandeis University based on 72,000 census tracts telling "how a child's neighborhood influences his/her opportunities over time." As reported in the Washington Post on Saturday 1/25/20. The focus was on 100 of America's largest Metro areas, said to be home to 67 percent of the country's children.
The New York Times' Business section on 1/27/20 tallying numbers to prove a rising number of older city dwellers - those people 'of a certain age' moving into urban settings. The implications are vast when demands for housing and services are taken into consideration since more of us are growing older in greater numbers than ever.
Ever onward with the Samaritan spirit, New York style, as caught by CBS-TV when a woman who got dragged under an SUV on a busy Broadway street recently was rescued at once by dozens of strangers coming together to lift the car high enough to free her. She was pictured immediately afterward, on her back using a cell phone. Calling an ambulance maybe?
A day or so later another woman sitting alone late morning in a subway car at a lower Manhattan station was assaulted by a man who grabbed the cellphone in her hand. and ran off. She followed, yelling , but to no avail. A passerby saw her and called 911 at once, without having to bother asking what had happened.
In Case You Missed It Department:
Though the subject applies to anyone driving any kind of vehicle on any road in these United States...from Smithsonian magazine for March 2020. How it happened that we Americans drive on the right side of the road with the steering wheel on the left when, in yesteryear before automobiles became a necessity and not an extravagance, the wheel was on the right-hand side (and drivers stayed on the right side of the road).
According to a curator of road transportation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (who would have thought such a title existed), the Ford Model T was responsible in 1909. The idea was to allow passengers better exit at the curb and give drivers better views of oncoming traffic. The history of what and why, says Roger White in the magazine's blurb upfront answering reader questions, goes back to pre-automobile era year 1792 when the new Pennsylvania turnpike required buggy or wagon drivers to keep right. Presumably for orderly behavior on public land. New York City only in the early 1900s is said to have instituted the world's (!) first traffic code. Kudos to historians who keep us duly informed!
Two books as references. "City: A Guidebook for the Urban Age," from Bloomsbury Publishers.
Relatively more recent, for Big Apple (NYC) fans: "Nonstop Metropolis: A New York City Atlas" edited by Rebecca Solnit and Joshua Jelly-Schapiro. (The latter surname is fascinating to contemplate.) A treasure in handsome vertical binding, enclosing essays by writers of note (Solnit for one), published by the University of California in 2016. Almost defying a category this combination of graphics, maps, essays. Something to learn on every page and wonder at.
A common sense study out of Brandeis University based on 72,000 census tracts telling "how a child's neighborhood influences his/her opportunities over time." As reported in the Washington Post on Saturday 1/25/20. The focus was on 100 of America's largest Metro areas, said to be home to 67 percent of the country's children.
The New York Times' Business section on 1/27/20 tallying numbers to prove a rising number of older city dwellers - those people 'of a certain age' moving into urban settings. The implications are vast when demands for housing and services are taken into consideration since more of us are growing older in greater numbers than ever.
Ever onward with the Samaritan spirit, New York style, as caught by CBS-TV when a woman who got dragged under an SUV on a busy Broadway street recently was rescued at once by dozens of strangers coming together to lift the car high enough to free her. She was pictured immediately afterward, on her back using a cell phone. Calling an ambulance maybe?
A day or so later another woman sitting alone late morning in a subway car at a lower Manhattan station was assaulted by a man who grabbed the cellphone in her hand. and ran off. She followed, yelling , but to no avail. A passerby saw her and called 911 at once, without having to bother asking what had happened.
In Case You Missed It Department:
Though the subject applies to anyone driving any kind of vehicle on any road in these United States...from Smithsonian magazine for March 2020. How it happened that we Americans drive on the right side of the road with the steering wheel on the left when, in yesteryear before automobiles became a necessity and not an extravagance, the wheel was on the right-hand side (and drivers stayed on the right side of the road).
According to a curator of road transportation at the Smithsonian's National Museum of American History (who would have thought such a title existed), the Ford Model T was responsible in 1909. The idea was to allow passengers better exit at the curb and give drivers better views of oncoming traffic. The history of what and why, says Roger White in the magazine's blurb upfront answering reader questions, goes back to pre-automobile era year 1792 when the new Pennsylvania turnpike required buggy or wagon drivers to keep right. Presumably for orderly behavior on public land. New York City only in the early 1900s is said to have instituted the world's (!) first traffic code. Kudos to historians who keep us duly informed!
No comments:
Post a Comment