December 2010
5 posts
4 tags
Season's Congestions
Holiday season at Paris CDG (via npr.com)
I don’t really mind crowds per se, because ultimately it is people that make places interesting. But as the holidays once again remind us, moving people around the world (or country, or city) is not always easy. Most people have some experience with the rush hour. When congestion is normative, everyday, and requiring quiet submission, it’s...
2 tags
The Christmas Markets Parade
The main Christmas market in Helsinki. (photo by Seppo Laakso)
I think everyone in Finland is brought up believing that they live in the official Christmas country. But as we grow up, it becomes obvious that there certainly is far more visible Christmas hoopla going on in many other places. This of course has to do with the fact that Finland never was a very urban country in the first place....
7 tags
The Age of Innocence... Communism & Malls
Winter Park Mall, Florida (photo via Malls of America)
The dead mall is certainly a well known term nowadays. In the current economy, the old-school mall is having a hard time to survive, at least in the Western world. I recently heard sociologist Annette Baldauf giving introduction to the phenomenon. Her research on the American malls is also made into a documentary. Part of the research...
3 tags
A Workers' City
(photo by Thomas Lee, via wired.com)
I recently read that Foxconn, the Taiwanese electronics company that manufactures most of our well liked consumer gadgets, now has over one million employees. If your think about the average size cities and the kind of physical infrastructures and networks of social operations that happen in them alone, that’s quite a lot of people, almost like a...
4 tags
New Old News, New York
New York Magazine - Issue 1, 1968, p. 32 (by books.google.com)
One of my favourite passtime activities is skimming through some good old magazines. There’s something really modern about the photos and stories of the new wave-beat era mags and their excitement and the innocent visions of the future. It’s obvious that the graphic design of today is moodboarding things from those...