Ending is better than mending “We always throw away old clothes. Ending is better than mending, ending is better than mending, ending is better…” Aldous Huxley, Brave New World noveltyrepairtrashwastemelancholyending
Cyberspace as a global dump If we think that cyberspace is a public space, then let's think of the oceans. They used to be as much of a world resource as anybody could think of but didn't belong to anybody. So everybody put their garbage into them. The potential of cyberspace as a global dump is quite substantial. Ursula M. Franklin, Every Tool Shapes the Task naturetrash
The Poop Press Project (In the run-up to the law, I myself had undertaken the “Poop Press Project,” which had entailed fixing a star-shaped cookie mold to the end of a stick to transform the noisome waste into street art, an attempt only intermittently effective.) Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan trash
The mirror-image economy When we enter the world of refuse and waste, we cross over into a mirror-image economy. In the "normal" world, we pay to acquire things; on the other side of the looking glass, we pay to get rid of them. Junk isn't merely worthless; it has negative value. A chemical engineer once told me about a recent improvement in a manufacturing process; by fine-tuning a chemical synthesis he had increased the yield of a certain commodity from 98 percent to 99 percent. I congratulated him, but I couldn't help remarking that this seemed like a rather paltry improvement. "Ah, you miss the important point," he said. "The amount of waste goes from 2 percent down to 1 percent. It's cut in half. We save tremendously on disposal costs." Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape wasterecyclingtrashefficiencyeconomics
NIMBY, BANANA, NOPE Waste-disposal facilities of all kinds—landfills, incinerators, even transfer stations—are sure bets for generating the NIMBY response: not in my backyard. In its most cynical form, NIMBY is the attitude of citizens who acknowledge the need for a facility, somewhere, but who oppose a plan for building it simply because the selected site is too close to their own property. But opposition to landfills and many other kinds of development goes well beyond cynical NIMBY. Another catch phrase for this phenomenon is BANANA: build absolutely nothing anywhere near anybody. Or else it's NOPE: not on planet earth. Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape urbanismcommunitytrash
Towers in the Village An Essay by Alfred Twu alfredtwu.medium.com Since tall buildings have been around, there have been many ways they’ve fit into cities: towers in downtown, towers in the park, and most recently, towers on a whole-block development. Let’s look at a 4th way, the Tower in the Village. Unlike the others, the Tower in the Village does not aim to be the center of attention. Instead, the upper floors are hidden behind a low front that fits in with the rest of the block. It faces a village green instead of a busy road. Why highrise infill? Growing cities have two choices: 1) Redevelop a lot of sites to medium density, or 2) Redevelop a small number of sites to very high density. Highrise infill requires less demolition and can get more homes built faster. Soft city principlesDrawing pictures of cities urbanismcities