The Technological Disobedience of Ernesto Oroza

...nion, artist Ernesto Oroza was just graduating with a degree in industrial design in a country with no industry or use for his skills. Almost all the engineers had abandoned Cuba forty years earlier during the revolution, so even before the “Special Period” of the early 1990s people had to improvise their own technology with cast-off parts. Oroza and a fellow artist Diango Hernandez collected these improvised objects: things like TV antennas made...

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Saturday Tweets: Lost in Translation

...ZqcIgDW — Yasha Levine (@yashalevine) April 6, 2019 Two ways to design the urban form of a corner lot – where would you rather spend your time? pic.twitter.com/ZG3sHozeFz — CreateStreetsAmerica (@CStreetsAmerica) April 5, 2019 Meanwhile in Silicon Valley… pic.twitter.com/XrEMg8j7cG — Best of Nextdoor (@bestofnextdoor) April 6, 2019 “If the feds gave state DOTs a free & easy hand to build highways for the past 60 years, they can finally do the same...

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Scooters? Not a New Idea

...8 · New York Herald (New York, New York) · Newspapers.com It turns out the urban scooter craze isn’t a new idea. From a story in an October 8, 1916 newspaper, “Skidding Through Fact and Fancy on an Autoped: Solo Devil Wagon Taken Up in a Serious Way Might Add New Terrors to City Life” is a description of motorized scooter not all that different than the ones we see today: You stand on the cute platform and get your feet neatly fitted on the rubber...

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For the Locals . . .

...that foot sign Alissa Walker, one of my favorite journalists, covers urban design here in Los Angeles. She wrote a great piece on our nieghborhood’s iconic podiatrist sign. Walker agrees with me that we need much more than kitschy signs to mark our neighborhoods. She concludes, We need more reminders of what history predates our presence. We need more streets that are designed to connect us instead of being fast-forwarded through in cars. We need...

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Saturday Linkages: New Format!

...structure by David A. Banks Spritz Cookie Gravestone Man Spends 30 Years Regenerating NZ Farmland into Amazing Forest Democrats’ Climate Plans Lack Vision for City Transit Study Finds Urban Runoff Is a Toxic Soup Containing Dozens of Pesticides and Other Industrial Chemicals The shady politics of urban greening Surprise dip!...

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