Near the soon to be opened and fantastic Park at the Yards, there’s a lot of new low-impact development infrastructure. These bioretention areas should be a great example of the new kind of both urban and environmentally sustainable infrastructure can be.
These are not ordinary tree boxes. Instead of draining into a standard storm sewer, these
Continue reading Low impact development near the Navy Yard
Back in March, the New York Times featured DC WASA’s (now DC Water) new director, George Hawkins, talking about the challenges of dealing with aging water and sewer infrastructure in American cities. The piece lays out the challenges facing most American cities, currently resting on our laurels of the investments from previous generations:
For decades, these
Continue reading Where the water comes from
Soccer in the Circle, from M.V. Jantzen
The World Cup is underway.
England in Roo-ins: The cup means large gatherings of fans and sweet commercials (even the older ones).
Infrastructure: Jarrett Walker takes a look at some of the transit improvements for South Africa, building off the notion that large scale events like the World Cup can
Continue reading Weekend Reading – The Group Stage
Mammoth’s excellent series of posts covering any and all topics on The Infrastructural City recently touched on chapter 5 – Blocking All Lanes, the first of the book’s section on the fabric of this city of networked infrastructure. Mammoth notes a couple of big themes from the chapter, each with profound implications for how cities
Continue reading Hacking the city
Courtesy of Infrastructurist, Rachel Maddow takes a tour of New York’s Second Ave Subway construction site, seeing a tunnel boring machine and other fun stuff:
Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about
Continue reading Rachel Maddow Digs Deep
CC image from nathansnider
The Infrastructural City – Something I’m eagerly anticipating is a sort of on-line book club discussion of the infrastructural city, spearheaded by mammoth.
Over the course of the next several months, mammoth will be coordinating an online discussion of The Infrastructural City: Networked Ecologies in Los Angeles (edited by Kazys Varnelis
Continue reading Infrastructural and industrial spaces
Via Matt Yglesias, a great chart from the recent Gold Medal hockey game between Canada and the US in Vancouver. When 2/3rds of the entire country is watching, you know it’s a big deal.
This chart looks at the water consumption in Edmonton, Alberta over the course of the game – comparing it to the day
Continue reading Water Conservation
WaPo infographic on NATM for Dulles Metro
Curious about the tunnel progress for the Dulles Metro line? I ran across a WaPo infographic on the Dulles Metro line’s tunnel under the intersection of Routes 123 and 7 in Tysons Corner. This tunnel is being completed via the New Austrian Tunneling Method – the graphic explains
Continue reading Links – burrowing, tunneling
Spirit of Detroit, from Maia C
…and I’m not just talking about salt, even though the Eastern Seaboard could use a lot of extra road salt right about now.
There are a couple of very interesting bits up on the net recently about Detroit and the lessons it has for the rest of America, for our
Continue reading Things we can take from Detroit
Ever wonder where all that road salt comes from? A question that’s quite topical today. Mammoth has a post up on an operating salt mine beneath the city of Detroit.
Detroit Salt Mine
John Nystuen has a discussion of the legal implications, acquiring mineral rights for salt 1,000 feet below the surface of an active city.
Continue reading Salt and infrastructure beneath the city

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