The 1916 Zoning Resolution Architecturally, what is striking about the 1916 legislation is that it sought to articulate a logical formula for achieving a public good in the absence of a specific vision of exactly what would actually be produced. Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan regulationsconstraints
The air doesn't know about zoning boundaries Work uses suggest another bugaboo: reeking smokestacks and flying ash. Of course reeking smokestacks and flying ash are harmful, but it does not follow that intensive city manufacturing (most of which produces no such nasty by-products) or other work uses must be segregated from dwellings. Indeed, the notion that reek or fumes are to be combated by zoning and land-sorting classifications at all is ridiculous. The air doesn’t know about zoning boundaries. Regulations specifically aimed at the smoke or the reek itself are to the point. Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities zoningregulationsseparation
The source code for SimCity Local Code was Sorkin’s attempt to design a whole city from scratch—with one big twist. The whole thing had been written as if it were the byzantine, nearly impossible to follow codes and regulations for an entire, hypothetical metropolis. The effect is like stumbling upon the source code for SimCity. Sorkin’s exhaustively made point was that, if you know everything about a given metropolis, from its plumbing standards to its parking requirements, its sewer capacity to the borders of its school districts, then you could more or less accurately imagine the future form of that city from the ground up. Geoff Manaugh, A Burglar's Guide to the City Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42º N Latitude rulesregulations
Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42º N Latitude A Book by Michael Sorkin www.goodreads.com The source code for SimCityLocal Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design & The Nature of Cities regulationslawcities
How Websites Die An Article by Wesley Aptekar-Cassels notebook.wesleyac.com I recently started compiling a list of defunct blogging platforms. It’s been interesting to see how websites die — from domain parking pages to timeouts to blank pages to outdated TLS cipher errors, there are a multitude of different ways. It leaves no sign of its past self behindThis obsession with permanence
It leaves no sign of its past self behind When buildings are torn down and rebuilt, the ghost of the old building is often visible in the new one — strangely angled walls and rooms, which make sense only in the context of the space as a living organism. On the web, there are no such restrictions: when a website dies, it leaves no sign of its past self behind. deathwwwarchitecturebuilding
This obsession with permanence I think a lot about the lifecycle of websites. I’m frustrated by so much of the short-term thinking I see in the world today, and the way we think about websites is a part of that: it’s “normal” for them to just go up in smoke as soon as their authors stop paying attention. People switch platforms and providers and break links without a second thought. It pains me to see people build websites with no feeling of obligation to them — when you put something out into the world, it is your responsibility to care for it. At the same time, I wonder if this obsession with permanence is misplaced. care