staging ground_the agency of infrastructure

nearly finished

2011-12-10T16:03:00.000-08:00

a history lesson

2011-12-07T19:23:00.000-08:00

a new staging ground competition: thailand

2011-06-15T17:28:00.000-07:00

This past winter, a competition was held to envision a playground for a small school in Thailand. the brief requested that tires be a primary construction component. Staging Ground proposed a playful adaptation of "chutes and ladders".

The importance of usable open space has been well documented at various times and at various places throughout the world. For centuries small parks and playgrounds have functioned as vital social networking tools and places of reprieve from the city and home. When networked, these parks have the capability to provide and enhance transferences of the social ethos, strengthening bonds and establishing new ones. These peer-to-peer relationships, while often ignored, are a necessity to communities of any scale and location. Research has shown small open spaces to not only provide the infrastructural benefits, but also health benefits of lowering blood pressure, decreasing fear and anger and contributing to the education of children.

Given these benefits, this project develops a proposal for the Baan Tha Aj in Mae Sot School that is highly adaptable in terms of play and use, while establishing a new productive piece of infrastructure. The focal point of the design hinges around a specific typology of the playground that builds off of Aldo Van Eyck’s work in postwar Amsterdam. Van Eyck used the playground as a community node, recognizing its value, particularly in times of stress. Facilitating cross-generational interactions through multilayered programs allows for a more comprehensive daily use, engendering a social investment and care for this space. In the case of the Baan Tha Aj School these programs focus on active play, formal educational activities, gardening and shaded passive spaces.

The application of surfaces and elements into site, give the program physical form should be inventive and in some ways repetitive. Repeated elements take the base form of a raised tire, built from a stilt-work of bamboo poles. This element is repeated throughout the design and is manifested in 5 forms, varying in size and use. The simple structure may be used as a node of gardening and landscape or as a simple play structure, easily constructed and durable.

The surface is developed to both add interest, permitting a higher degree of creative play, and to create a sense of enclosure from the exterior of the site. Constructed with rammed earth technology, tires are integral to creating a stable and inexpensive retaining wall and elevation change. The displaced soil from the structure’s footing is used as fill to establish the amphitheater styles chutes. Through the overlay of the surfaces and elements a dynamic and adaptive play space is established, fostering spontaneous and creative play activities while allowing for an infusion of landscape and gardens.

Play spaces are not an extra item that can be ignored. As a part of the urban infrastructure, they are as essential as roads, bridges and utilities. As a part of the social fabric they are just as important as schools and hospitals, often providing similar functions.

a brief history of the south china sea from 1500-1800

2011-05-30T12:45:00.000-07:00

the agency of infrastructure goes international!

2011-03-19T10:30:00.000-07:00

a quick look at the south china sea

2011-02-19T12:40:00.000-08:00

the beginings of the thematic maps

2010-11-07T15:41:00.000-08:00

the beginnings of a ghost state timeline

2010-11-03T19:47:00.000-07:00

a model or two... three or four

2010-11-03T19:42:00.000-07:00

a few new old images from staging ground, thanks kim!

2010-11-03T19:29:00.001-07:00

2010-09-23T20:06:00.000-07:00

News agencies have upped their coverage on the tension between those countries surrounding the South and East China Seas as of late. The rising presence of China appears to be once again thrusting this region into the media spotlight.

In both the New York Times and CNN articles surfaced which pits China and Japan against eachother in a battle over the spattering of "islands" scattered throughout the area. Their attention to atolls, reefs and rocks, which have otherwise gone unnoticed sparks a fascinating discussion on the importance (for the fact that we are now reliant on them) of these small and sensitive landmasses.

The effort being expended in securing the political boundary of island groups like the Paracel's and Spratley's as well as their physical mass is impressive and soon occur on an industrial scale. What new forms of preservation will their future bring? Actions have ranged widely from the "ecological preserve" of the Dongsha Atoll to the titanium and concrete bunker of Okinotori-shima atoll. With the hope of protecting economic rights to a vast underground reserve of oil and natural gas, we may see the South China Sea emerging as new testing ground for the preservation of this second hand industrial ecology.

ghost states

2010-09-19T07:36:00.000-07:00

The South China Sea carries with it an increasingly critical array of islands and atolls whose seemingly insignificant landmass is emerging as a contentious player in the sino-global politic. Sea level rise and a growing environmental degradation of the region threaten an erasure of these small rocks and reefs. Their disappearance implies significant changes in economic zones and trade routes; for these reasons surrounding nation states have engaged in a massive military and political effort to secure these regions for their agency.

Structural fortifications have commenced to buffer against the growing threats of a rising sea level, taking forms ranging from titanium breakwaters and dams to tactical coral reef farms. The future of these projects will promise the fate of these new and possible ghost states. The advent of ecological infrastructure as a mode of practice provides a new and useful lens through which new possibilities might be hybridized securing the political and economic futures along with an ecological impetus.

staging ground continues

2010-08-10T18:40:00.000-07:00

a small note to the small reading group: i will be continuing this blog as a venue for on-going research on the south china sea, its islands and atolls and the social/political/economic implications in lieu of global sea rise.

i hope to provide a full post shortly, in the mean time, the name of the project will be "territories of emerging ghost states" and will eventually expand from the the south china sea into broader issues with remote island, focusing on guano island and submerging atolls. until then...

Staging Ground: The Agency of Infrastructure

2010-06-08T11:11:00.000-07:00

Updates to follow shortly

2010-06-06T14:39:00.001-07:00

a few early test renderings

2010-04-26T04:57:00.000-07:00

curating new ecologies

2010-04-17T05:40:00.001-07:00

oh yes, i am a landscape architect

2010-04-11T18:06:00.000-07:00

and it is taking shape, for the sake of the fish and fun.

From Chestnut to Cheetah

2010-04-10T18:52:00.000-07:00

A quick note:

A project, my colleague and friend, Sarah Thomas and I worked on with John Beardsley is on the student wall exhibit at the lobby of the GSD between 04/11 and 04/17. Check it out.

lebeus woods meets the asce

2010-04-07T13:10:00.000-07:00

this round of design development has proved to be challenging in striking a balance between an aesthetic and the operations of the infrastructure. not wanting to over-preference one or the other i've made an attempt to intertwine the recreational/active aspects of the infrastructure with its mechanical functions.

flooding senarios

2010-04-06T07:32:00.000-07:00

there you have it

2010-03-11T17:35:00.000-08:00

the countdown begins

2010-03-11T15:39:00.000-08:00

mid review will commence at 10am tomorrow, in portico 121.
the order is as such:

erik prince : ephemeral crossroads
dorothy tang : all that glitters is not gold
andrew tenbrink : staging ground
ryan shubin : tba

boards to be posted soon...

a teaser

2010-03-08T13:01:00.000-08:00

one last piece of research

2010-03-02T17:52:00.000-08:00

at last

2010-03-01T15:54:00.000-08:00

The last montage you'll see from me for a while.

the bonus level in golden eye

2010-02-25T18:52:00.000-08:00

model making in process...

a small portfolio update

2010-02-19T18:01:00.000-08:00

please find the document here

should you be interested in a slight diversion

2010-02-19T14:30:00.001-08:00

from Chestnut to Cheetah

and the ecosystems...

2010-02-12T17:55:00.001-08:00

rem vs farshid : context

2010-02-11T05:58:00.000-08:00

of the comments given at our first review christian and charles suggested i make an attempt to show a sense of the place more than i had. not wanting to show a series of "site photos" (in part because ... i have no site photos of my own and in part because i think the fastest way to bore an audience is showing site photo after site photo) i've decided to do a series of montages. three to be precise, one speaking toward the agricultural development of the area in leu of the water wars with southern california, one speaking to the tension between the estuary's ecosystem and the growth of infrastructure and finally one depicting the growth of the infrastructure itself.

enjoy v1.1

first review

2010-02-03T10:53:00.000-08:00

last friday was out first thesis review. the four of us presented our materials as if we would for the final review. the exercise was helpful but daunting in leu of the ULI Hines competition running concurrently. see above posting...

its about time again

2010-01-10T19:10:00.000-08:00

design portfolio available here

where next?

2009-12-29T10:21:00.000-08:00

thesis prep document

2009-12-14T11:17:00.000-08:00

The thesis prep document is now complete and with much trepidation... is ready for review.

thesis prep document blues

2009-12-11T06:40:00.000-08:00

in a few days the thesis prep document required of us will be due for submission. this has been the source of many woes in 518 and will continue to be for the next days. it will be posted shortly in some fashion.

networks : habitat

2009-12-11T06:38:00.000-08:00

networks : water flow

2009-12-06T14:00:00.000-08:00

The San Joaquin-Sacramento River Delta is a critical supplier of water to the region and state. The water supports an important agriculture industry, industrial manufacturing and municipal uses. The souther region of the delta is home to major water conveyance stations which pump the water into aqueducts which reach southern california's residents. The California Aqueduct is the largest of these.

networks : structure

2009-11-19T07:55:00.000-08:00

Beginning in the 1800's this delta system became appropriated for an agriculture industry, in turn requiring a transportation network to spur it on. The development of the current levee system has continued, resulting in the complex network that exists today. Seeing pressure from wear, environmental changes and new practices, the existing system is in a constant state of disrepair.

networks : trade + distribution

2009-11-14T11:24:00.000-08:00

The Sacramento - San Joaquin River Delta is home to five significant ports of entry for global trade. The Delta provides the region with a highly engineered agricultural economy amidst an expanding urban sector. The Port of West Sacramento is the smallest of these ports and is positioned primarily toward the agricultural industry. It is struggling to to maintain its identity in the context of a heavily trafficked port region.

networks : delta + ports

2009-11-07T19:46:00.000-08:00

This first series of mappings should set up the history of the ports interaction with ecologically sensitive regions. Without making judgements on this specific deployment of infrastructure, the goal is to document the interactions, setting the stage for this condition not being singular. The map also should illustrate generally the various trade networks there in and the extent to which there is connectivity.

The Agency of Infrastructure

2009-10-30T09:47:00.001-07:00

Introduction

Emerging practices in the field of landscape architecture have undergone a shift in their methods of engaging the site. This movement has begun to break through the qualities of the static master plan, altering and extending the relationship between the designer to the site, client and public. Infrastructure has established itself as the primary medium with which this shift has occurred. In a 2009 report by the American Society of Civil Engineers the nation’s infrastructures were concluded to be at a pivot point of failure, requiring more than $2 trillion to repair¹⁴. This call has intersected with the trends of a global financial crisis, allowing a new ground to be opened, where necessity demands that functionality overlap with emergent ecologies and robust social uses, promoting resiliency and longevity.

The Agency of Infrastructure

The works described here rarely fit into concrete categories; they are neither rural nor urban, either are they purely functional or formal, instead they postulate a constant state of hybridity and flux. They function through an anticipation of change rather than an antagonistic stance against it. Purposed toward an engagement of broader and increasingly complex ecological networks, diverse user groups, and processes, this body of work operates through the agency of infrastructure. This provides the opportunity for material to direct future development, rather than the traditional means of bureaucracy, liberating infrastructure to open up new possibilities of overlapping actions to be played over time.¹ It also frees infrastructure of a banal visual aesthetic², allowing the work to embrace the creative, which may perpetuate its longevity. The encapsulation this genre of work may be defined simply as a claim of precise and opportunistic staging³. Largely responding to an influx in public work projects⁴, these projects offers opportunities for greater degrees of resiliency⁵ and operation in the changing environment, where integration into systems of landscape ecology is more and more desired.

Infrastructure, however, is ambiguous at best in its relationship with landscape. Traditionally viewed as oppositional to systems that are more robust and self-perpetuating than itself, infrastructure is preferenced for its functionalism. One might look to distribution hubs, the interstate highway system or ports of entry for examples of this a cold rationalism. But there has been recent emphasis on expanding the influence of infrastructure in the fields of landscape architecture, architecture and engineering. This mode of practice has been articulated most clearly in three iterations, termed for these purposes as: “structural infrastructure”, “logistics infrastructure” and “ecological infrastructure”. Singularly they describe moments where infrastructure was retooled to meet the most pressing needs, collectively, however, a story unfolds where infrastructure itself becomes imbued with growing degrees of connection to what was previously outside of its sphere of influence.

Structural Infrastructure

Entering this discourse, Mohsen Mostafavi and Stan Allen have explored the abilities of infrastructure to hybridize itself with structure, serving functional roles along with roles of habitation, transportation, occupation and commerce. This line of thought has been expanded further to understand infrastructure not only as structure, but also as flows of material and service. Mostafavi makes reference to a genre of work, which “engages structures with a much wider set of programmatic and pragmatic concernts²”, citing the work of the Swiss engineer Jürg Conzett. Through his bridgework Conzett focuses our preconceptions of infrastructure in terms of its potential to incite a perception of the surrounding landscape², utilizing the structure as a staging ground for expanded and strengthened experiences. Infrastructure here intertwines its functionality with broader cultural and technical understandings, permitting resiliency through its multifarious positions.

Logistics Infrastructure

The combined works of Pierre Belanger, Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger discuss this through the lens of the post-industrial era in which decentralized modes of production have radically changed distribution systems, thereby requiring new infrastructural systems. The impact of this on the landscape is responsible for both the formulation of new hubs of dispersion and collection as well as the retooling of antiquated sites. The vision casted by this genre defines infrastructure as the networks of “distribution and delivery, consumption and convenience, and accommodation and disposal⁶” rather than the structural definitions made previously.

Ecological Infrastructure

These new and possible connections are the starting point for the relationship between infrastructure and ecology. Often utilizing models of ecological descriptions are formulated on organizational patterns of engagement and growth. Those most often referenced are Richard Foreman’s diagrams and concepts of landscape ecology⁷as well as Nina-Marie Lister’s formulation of adaptive ecological design⁵ and ecological resiliency⁵. Both Forman and Lister offer models of biotic matrices, webs, corridors and networks, these models have begun to be adapted to direct infrastructural and urban growth, notable extensions of what is traditionally thought of as infrastructure. The utility of these concepts in the realm of infrastructural form, function and deployment has begun to be articulated in part through the work of the architect Stan Allen. In allowing for a certain degree of flexibility Allen establishes an inexact organization of surfaces, movements, program, patch typologies and infrastructures. He models the aggregation of these five parts using concepts of landscape ecology: patches, corridors, and matrices, projecting their condition to be “architecturally specific yet programmatically indeterminate.¹” The resulting project is clearly defined as it meets the requirements for the current usage, while remaining open to subsequent and future changes. It is clear, however, in Allen’s work that although ecological processes are used to direct portions of the project, he does not actively engage ecological processes for more robust ecological purposes.

The potential of infrastructure to overlap its function with often wild ecologies⁸ remains a ripe topic. This cooperation is argued for most readily in the context of opening up economic opportunities, and it is here Chris Reed makes his strongest arguments for a new form of hybridized infrastructure. Opportunism is key to these projects’ longevity, lying in contrast to that of the master plan, a reliance on coordination⁹ remains paramount. In terms of boundary the delimitation of the project becomes less relevant and in fact is counterproductive. Organizationally often spectrums of user and interest groups are integrated in the unfolding futures, providing redundancy in the engaged parties. The Silresim Superfund Redevelopment Study in 2003¹⁰ describes explicitly the roles of the proposed infrastructures as remaining open for adaptation and unanticipated actions, providing resiliency for changing conditions. Giving form to this, networks of public and private groups were initiated to set in place temporary events while the physical re-imaging of the site was taking place. Concurrently integrating public recreation uses with construction infrastructures a remediative infrastructure was built, making visible the technology and involving the public in the creation of new spaces over time. Reed describes this technique of staging implementation as a capitalization on “minimal short-term interventions that yield significant long-term changes.”⁹ These build on flexibility by including staged events and tactical deployments in the first phases, establishing a cadre to spur the project forward. Reed calls for an understanding that “long term implementations may depend on short term initiatives,”¹¹ and this plays out often in his work through precise interventions that unfold responsively promoting renewal and regeneration.

Tactical and Strategic Deployment

A survey of the relationships between these projects and their territorialisation indicates two relational modes, one that is hierarchical, spatially bound and highly controlled, and another that operates through opportunities afforded to it by coincidental or forecasted intersections. These operations have been explained through Michel de Certeau’s work as strategies and tactics¹². He suggests the strategy indicates the territorialisation of a space over time, specifically in terms of allowing one to profit from acquisitions for the means of future territorial gain. This language lends itself to define projects that claim ground and are not so concerned with flows of material outside the site boundary. Through these means they create for themselves a steady state through control and rigid maintenance. Strategies do not stage, they seek to take over-they seek to conquer.

Certeau’s definition of tactic describes the operation as “a calculated action” made in the absence of a fixed location. Maintaining neither location nor boundary it is never autonomous; it must, as Certeau writes, “plan on and with a terrain imposed on it, organized by the law of a foreign power.”¹² Certeau constructs the power relationship of the tactic as an art of pulling tricks, taking advantage of opportunities as they are afforded. He suggests the genre of tactics juxtapose diverse elements¹² to suddenly shed new light, and while lacking place, they are limited by the possibilities of the moment. In other words “a tactic is determined by the absence of power just as a strategy is organized by the postulation of power.”¹² Tactics are resilient, gaining validity in relation to their persistence through time and finding opportunities at exact and possible intersections. Tactical then may be the adjective to describe the nature of the action of staging.

A grounding of these suggested operations is necessary in preventing the kind of ambiguity that de-saturates designed interventions. Rather than reducing itself to be available to every type of habitation and use, these types of infrastructure should have the capacity to increase the odds for specific events to occur. Longevity, then, is a measure of the ability to negotiate multiple constituencies and in fact act as a tie between the various actors. Writing on the situational overlaps and alliances that often occur in spontaneous cities, Roger Sherman offers a clarification of the term multi-functionality noting, “Although clearly reminiscent of Venturi's double-functioning element, here multi-functionality does not refer to the distinction between its symbolic pragmatic roles, but rather that it possesses different diagrams of pragmatic operation, each which attracts a different audience.¹³” Infrastructure then has the opportunity to offer not numerous specified uses, but rather a careful ability to stage events that might steer its occupation in a particular way while remaining open to points of change or even instability.

Further Adaptations

Further exploration into the ability of infrastructure to navigate the functional capabilities it is constantly required to perform as well as the intimate connections to particular ecologies it often lacks, is warranted. The resiliency of this hybridity is just recently being sought after in lue of a constricting economy where public funds must be stretched for public projects. Expanding the term is necessary if public infrastructure is to remain viable. This expansion may be found by reading the combined works of Conzett, Allen and Reed, where psychological connections to the landscape are staged through a bridging of technical and aesthetic elements². As Allen illustrates, the adoption ecological processes establishes new models for the structure itself, allowing for resilience in function and use¹. And as Reed advocates a precise connection to landscape may be established through a mediation of ongoing ecological processes with infrastructural requirements¹⁰.

The act of staging is critical to these operations. The infrastructural stage, when designed through this lens, provides a ripe framework for spurring social, ecological and functional resiliency. These types of interventions prove to be most critical at intersections of infrastructural decay¹⁴, points where underfunding or changes in use have allowed infrastructure to no longer perform as it should, and areas of ecological concern.

Summary

The emerging shift in the field of landscape has begun to make momentum toward a new hybridization with infrastructural projects. The agency of infrastructure retains the possibility to be intertwined with overlapping operations, staged for resiliency as disturbances are encountered. Exploration of this has occurred in several stages, primarily through Conzett’s expansion of the functionality of infrastructure to become an aesthetic display, which acts as a mediator between the structure and the landscape. Stan Allen has successfully built upon this through an exploration of the utility of models of landscape ecology as an organizational schema. Reed, however, begins to integrate real processes of ecology within the infrastructural project, often through the operation of remediation infrastructure becomes an agent of this. These deployments when deployed successfully are done so in a tactical manner, one that is opportunistically resilient and thus long-lived. Continued development of this genre of work is crucial as infrastructure, becomes a critical mode of practice.

Notes

1. Many of these thoughts were expressed directly and indirectly in Stan Allen’s Logistical Activities Zone, Barcelona project (73).

Allen references Foreman’s identification of patches as “non-linear surface areas” and corridors as “infrastructural pathways containing movement, services, and function.” (73) Stan Allen. “Points + Lines”. New York: Princeton Architectural Press, 1999.

2 Mostafavi adeptly gives reference to several architecture and engineering projects, which display an efficacy in establishing connections between technical, and design disciplines. Mohsen Mostafavi ed. “Structure as Space, Space as Structure.” Structure as Space. London: AA Publications, 2006. (8-9).

3. Staging here is defined at a root level by the Oxford Dictionary as, “a preparation of the conditions for the occurrence or beginning of something.” "Stage." The New Oxford English Dictionary. 2nd. ed. 2000.

4. Public works are defined here broadly through infrastructural projects that benefit a state’s larger economic base. Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius discussing the topic much more robustly in Mutations, “By infrastructure one refers to every aspect of the technology of rational administration that routinizes life, action and property with larger (ultimately global) organizations. Today, infrastructure can be argued to own a little part of everything.” Sanford Kwinter and Daniela Fabricius, “Urbanism: An Archivst’s Art?” in Rem Koolhaus, Stefano boeri, et al., eds., Mutations (Barcelona: Actar, 2001), 495-96.

5. The discussion around the utility of the ecological model for structural form and deployment might open up directions for infrastructural organization and program and structure to develop more robustly. Lister here defines the differences between ‘resiliency’ and ‘ecological resiliency’. Resiliency is first described as “…the ability of an ecosystem to withstand and absorb to some degree the effects of change, and following these change events, return to a recognizable steady state (or states).” (55) Viewing this from different direction she describes ecological resilience as “the measure of the amount of change or disruption that is required to move a system from one state to another, and thus, to a different state being maintained by a different set of functions and structures than the former.” (55) We might use this model to predict the types of change that will be likely to occur, and having catalogued this, we might design according to the prediction, rather than the traditional model, which seeks to mitigate the change all together.

Lister creates a comparison between designer ecology and ecological design. She first describes designer ecology as a “largely symbolic gesture provided by such parks’ designers to recall or represent nature in some capacity”. (36) Adaptive ecological design she describes as “the ability to recover from disturbance, to accommodate change, and to function in a state of health.”(36) Nina-Marie Lister. “Sustainable Large Parks: Ecological Design or Designer Ecology?” Large Parks. Ed. Julia Czerniak and George Hargreaves. New York: Princeton Architectural Press: 2007.

6. Charles Waldheim and Alan Berger. “Logistics Landscape.” Landscape Journal. Vol. 27, no. 2. 2008. pp. 224-237.

7. It is through Richard Forman’s formulations of the dynamics of landscape ecology that many designers have utilized as a jumping board for understanding complex urban issues. Models of corridors, patch dynamics and mosaics have severely altered the culture’s use of landscape ecology for architectural purposes. Richard T.T. Forman. “Landscape Mosaics.” Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995.

8. Kwinter offers a full discussion of the wildness of “packs, flocks, swarms, storms, quakes, abundance and extinctions”. He concludes “extremely intricate systems can most effectively be built up messily, in steps and layers, from approximate rather than finished and perfect parts, and incrementally over time, rather than in one fell swoop of assembly. Indirectness, it appears, is actually the secret to achieving a robust, adaptive, flexible, and evolving design… They are wild systems that range and explore and mine their environment, that capitalize on accidental successes, store them, and build upon them.” (187) Sanford Kwinter. “Wildness: Prolegomena to a New Urbanism).” Far from Equilibrium: Essays on Technology and Design Culture. Barcelona: Actar. 2008. pp. 186-193.

9. Chris Reed. “Performance Practices.” 306090 Architecture Journal. Aug. 2005: 83-91.

10. Chris Reed. “StossLU.” Seoul: C3 Publishing. 2007. pp. 157-167, 185-195.

11. Chris Reed. “Public Works Practice.” Landscape Urbanism Reader. Ed. Charles Waldheim. New York: Princeton Architectural Press. 2005. pp. 267-272.

12. Michel de Certeau. “The Practice of Everyday Life.” Berkeley: University of California Press. 1984. pp. 29-42.

13. Roger Sherman. “Counting (on) Change.” The Infrastructural City. Karzys Vernalis ed.. Actar: Barcelona: 2008.

14. One need only to survey the American Society of Civil Engineers 2009 Report Card for America’s Infrastructure where a cumulative grade of “D” is given. This reports analyses: aviation(D), bridges(C), damns(D), drinking water(D-), energy(D+), hazardous waste(D), inland waterways(D), levees(D-), public parks and recreation(C-), rail(C-), roads(D-), schools(D), transit(D) and wastewater(D-). The estimated repair cost for this is $US 2.2 Trillion.

The report card also offers key solutions for raising the nation’s rating:

-Increasing federal leadership in infrastructure

-Promoting sustainability and resilience

-Developing federal, state and regional infrastructure plans

-Addressing life-cycle coasts and ongoing maintenance

-Increasing and improving infrastructure investment from all stakeholders

“Report Card for America’s Infrastructure.” The American Society of Civil Engineers. 209. 27 Oct. 2009 .

a place to start

2009-10-23T06:37:00.000-07:00

"If there is to be a 'new urbanism' it will not be based on the twin fantasies of order and omnipotence; it will be the staging of uncertainty..."

Rem Koolhaas, ”What Ever Happened to Urbanism,” 1994