But what Cruz, Carlson and others are conveniently ignoring is the fact that many of America’s highways were built during the height of segregation and repeatedly used to separate predominantly minority neighborhoods from white communities. The new highways created hard, often impassible barriers between these communities, sometimes separating neighborhoods from their churches, schools, and businesses. These lines were often drawn in a direct response to requests by white community members, who didn’t want the highways disrupting their own neighborhoods. Many homes in the path of a proposed highway, typically owned by Black and brown people, were seized by eminent domain.

Bloomberg offers one striking example in the form of St. Paul, Minnesota’s Rondo neighborhood, writing: “In the first half of the 20th century it was home to most of St. Paul’s African American residents. The neighborhood’s center was Rondo Avenue, a thriving corridor for Black-owned business and wealth. Grocery stores, barber shops, drug stores, tailors, carpenters, and car shops lined Rondo Avenue, providing spaces to do business, meet, shop, and socialize during segregation and the Jim Crow era.”

By the 60s, that business core was gone, replaced by the new Interstate 94. Homes that used to be a short walk from the shops were now up against the busy six-lane highway, and the neighborhood was split in two. A nonprofit called Reconnect Rondo aims to fix that with a land bridge that reconnects both sides while creating up to 22 acres of commercial, residential, and park space. This example illustrates how the funds from the new public works program, called “Reconnecting Communities,” can help reconnect other neighborhoods cut off by historic investments.

Other places where highways were built right through historically Black and brown communities include Miami, New Orleans, Houston, Chattanooga, Cincinnati, and Detroit, among many more. When communities were walled off by highways, they had fewer access to resources, jobs, and desirable community amenities like green spaces that were still enjoyed by the white neighborhoods on the other side of the highways. The impact was devastating, especially to once-vibrant neighborhoods that previously enjoyed economic and cultural prosperity.

Many of these highways built in the 1950s and 60s are nearing the end of their lifespans. The Biden Administration has proposed tearing down viaducts and replacing them with boulevards, burying highways beneath new tracts of affordable housing, or elevating new highways above neighborhoods for minimal disruption.

No action taken today can redress the historic harm that was done to these communities (though direct financial compensation would be a start). And, inevitably, figuring out exactly how to rebuild these highways without negatively impacting new communities will be tricky. But dismantling highways built with racist intent can be one small, crucial part of the process of dismantling systemic racism in this country.

The post Will Biden’s Infrastructure Help Remedy America’s Racist Highways? first appeared on Dornob.

Photographer John Margolies (1940-2016), was known for capturing images of the quirky, unique, and offbeat architecture along America’s roads. His Roadside America Photograph Archive contains thousands of images, cataloging the changing landscape of America over four transformative decades. Following his death, the Library of Congress purchased his collection for posterity, and they recently released it to the public domain without restrictions.

The collection of 11,710 pictures is far more than a trove of random images. It’s one of the most comprehensive chronicles of vernacular architecture, quirky businesses, and weird sculptures ever assembled.

Many of the slides were published in books with personal annotations from Margolies. Now, for the first time, everyone can access every image in the collection on the Library of Congress site.

Compiled over countless back road journeys from 1969 to 2008, this treasure trove delivers a time capsule in each frame. Margolies chronicled the changes happening to his country with loving precision and a playful eye.

In the early days of automotive travel, roadside architecture started popping up everywhere as a draw for tourists. Gas stations were no longer simply a pump—to attract expanding business, entrepreneurial owners started incorporating whimsical eye-catchers like pagodas, bomber planes, teepees, or giant cowboy gear into their designs.

In the era of Sunday drives and road trip vacations, car journeys often included pit stops at one-of-a-kind attractions like the world’s largest buffalo, pecan, or bureau.

Margolies spent most of his shutter time in California, Florida, Michigan, New Jersey, New York, South Carolina, and Texas. About half the photos in this collection were taken in one of those areas, but all 48 contiguous American states make an appearance.

Margolies saw these roadside treats for what they were—part of a passing trend that would one day vanish from cultural memory unless lovingly preserved. With his trusty Canons, he chronicled the development and eventual demise of the early routes and roads that spread across the country, bringing industry and opportunity to post-WWII America.

With the continued advancement of the automobile, infrastructure evolved, creating highways to cater to the increasing number of cars. Along with that development came a faster pace of travel, and the decline of roadside extravagance.

People began zipping between cities rather than tootling the back roads, largely abandoning the curios of Roadside America. Many of the kooky attractions at gas stations, concept restaurants, and wacky businesses signs that Margolies photographed live on solely through his visionary work.

Each of the 11,710 original 33 mm slides have been digitized in high definition, and the originals are kept in cold storage for preservation. The title, date, and subject attached were provided by Margolies, but the subject and geographical headings were added by staff at the Library of Congress.

This treasured collection tells the story of a country transforming in pace, scope, and social focus. It’s also the story of a man with a rambling, adventurous spirit, a healthy respect for whimsy and kitsch, and a historian’s impulse to chronicle a rapidly changing world.

The post Library of Congress Releases John Margolies’ “Roadside America Series” first appeared on Dornob.

The project, which Mt. Lemmon Holdings (an investment firm associated with Gates) has already poured $80 million into, will take advantage of a new highway in the area, the Interstate 11. The highway is slated to run through the purchased property, connecting the Arizona capital to Las Vegas and automatically turning Belmont into a hotbed for construction. Located near the suburban development of Buckeye, this land of subdivisions and agricultural plots has seen its population grow tenfold since the 1990s, when the first plans for the expanding the local settlements were unveiled.

Rumors have been circulating about Gates’ involvement with the project, with many people attaching the billionaire directly to Belmont’s development. Others have speculated that it’s merely being done by a subsidiary company of his — which deals with lower-profile projects such as agricultural equipment manufacturing and waste refuse processing — as a way to increase and diversify its own portfolio and that it has little to do with Gates himself, despite multiple sources having tied him personally to the project.

While much has been made of the development, including a statement by Belmont Partners that reads: “comparable in square miles and projected population to Tempe, Arizona, Belmont will transform a raw, blank slate into a purpose-built edge city built around a flexible infrastructure model. Belmont will create a forward-thinking community with a communication and infrastructure spine that embraces cutting-edge technology, designed around high-speed digital networks, data centers, new manufacturing technologies and distribution models, autonomous vehicles, and autonomous logistics hubs,” there’s not a whole lot of evidence to suggest that the city will offer anything revolutionary in the way of a futuristic smart utopia. Technological buzzwords like “urban community,” “driverless cars,” “high-speed internet,” and “connected infrastructure” have all surrounded the project, but many of these elements are just facets of contemporary life in the 21st century.

Details of the development have yet to be revealed, but so far it’s been reported that office and retail spaces will be created on approximately 3,800 acres of the land. Another 500 acres will be dedicated to educational facilities like public schools, which will aim to serve the estimated population of 182,000 people living in Belmont’s 80,000 residences. An official timeline for the project has not yet been announced, but be sure to check back with us for any updates.

The post Bill Gates Unveils Plans for “Smart City” first appeared on Dornob.

Recently, visionary Dutch architecture and design firm MVRDV unveiled a new urban walkway covered with lights and greenery in Seoul, South Korea. The project is called Seoullo 7017 Skygarden and takes its name from both the year of its original construction, 1970, and the year of its reopening, 2017. The word “Seoullo” translates to “Seoul Road,” or “Road to Seoul.” The new path is situated on an old elevated highway and spans nearly a kilometer in length. Located next to the city’s main railway station, Seoullo 7017 transforms a former piece of industrial infrastructure into almost 10,000 square meters of public space that connects to various shops, hotels, and parklands throughout the city center.

In creating the Skygarden, MVRDV hoped to improve the public perception of the South Korean capital and to make it — often thought of as inhospitable city due to its dense, urban nature and population of 10 million — more navigable for everyone. The linear park assumes the form of a collection of miniature gardens, each of which is passed through as the visitors continue along the walkway. Different kinds of plants have been grouped together in different areas to create isolated oases whose compositions, layouts, and identities are distinct from those of their neighbors. Nonetheless, all of the plants featured in Seoullo 7017 are native to South Korea. The spectacular array of perfumes and colors featured in each mini garden will undoubtedly change with the seasons, and the inhabitants of this bustling metropolis will be able to enjoy a living slice of nature without having to venture out of Seoul. Many of the Skygarden’s flowers, plants, shrubs, and trees vary in maturity, meaning they will blossom and die at different times. Consequently, growth and change will always play important parts in the urban park.

In total, over 24,000 plants are featured in this new vision for downtown Seoul. The park’s greenery, which consists of 228 unique species and sub-species, is arranged according to the Korean alphabet, making Seoullo 7017 a life-sized encyclopedia of Korea’s plant-life. When the sun sets in the evening, the entire Skygarden is lit up by a series of vibrant blue lights. Blue has not only been proven to be beneficial for plant growth but is also bright enough to make a good indicator for the walkway’s new stair and elevator access points. These lights give the park a unique nighttime character and help it seamlessly integrate itself into the ultramodern city.

Since winning the competition for the project in 2015, MVRDV has worked closely with local NGOs, the city council, landscape architects, and municipal advisors. All of this collaboration seems to have paid off, as the result of everyone’s efforts is nothing less than a nuanced, visually-stimulating, and fitting recreation of the old intercity highway.

The post MVRDV Designs Korea’s Answer to The High Line first appeared on Dornob.

And not just any part of the world: Los Angeles, the most infamous car-infested, traffic-clogged metropolis on the planet – delicately adjusted through digital editing tools until it is completely devoid of all vehicles (as well as pedestrians).

This is not the end of the world, and certainly anything but apocalyptic in its aesthetics. Without cars, buses, bikes and people on foot to get in the way, it is simply a bright, sunny, well-manicured LA like no one has ever imagined.

From the roads and sidewalks to streets and highways, everything becomes crystal clear as the viewer is able to pierce the omnipresent layer of activity that always acts as an overlay to the architecture and landmarks of a city.

Student Tom Baker began this as a class project, but it has since become something of an internet sensation – his photography shows a world we can barely picture on our own and still hardly believe even when we see it.

The post Wonderful! Our World Without Traffic [Full-Color Photos] first appeared on Dornob.

Everyone has seen some of those offbeat recycled home designs created from odds and ends: plastic bottles, beer cans, rubber tires and other assorted typical trash or even shipping container houses. This house takes material reuse to a new level, effectively recycling an entire section of highway in the construction of its core structural center. “It’s kind of like Junkyard Wars meets Habitat for Humanity.” 

Over 600,000 pounds of recycled materials went into making this massive concrete, glass and metal home that, at first, seems like any other luxurious ultramodern home from a distance. Giant steel beams and girders, however, start to show as one gets a closer look.

The Big Dig was a massive undertaking in Boston that cost billions of dollars and displaced tons upon tons of amazing prefabricated concrete and steel elements – ones that while useless to another industrial application are significantly overbuilt for simple light-weight residential.

The reality is: without this house being built the materials would have been discarded as storing them would have been too expensive. This is one of those cases where one man’s trash truly is another man’s treasure – to the Big Dig builders it was useless, to a house it was priceless.

From Treehugger:

“When people residing in and around the Boston area hear the words “The Big Dig” they either laugh or shudder. The $14.6 billion dollar project was first proposed in the 1980s and with the groundbreaking in 1991, the goal was to change Boston’s downtown roadways to make it easier for traffic to get in and out of the city. Now, 15 years later, the project is finally coming to an end and we have to say the new roads are definitely more convenient. Paul Pedini worked for 11 years as vice president of Modern Continental Construction, one of the project’s principal contractors. He now lives in a 4,300 square foot home he refers to as The Big Dig House that was completed this past March. “

The post House Made of a Salvaged Highway first appeared on Dornob.