“I have always imagined that Paradise will be a kind of library” – Jorge Luis Borges

Urbanists are apt to decry the loss of “public space” and by “public space they tend to mean sidewalks, plazas, pocket parks, etc. and they are right to oppose these things. Yet I seldom see urban planners or urbanists get up in arms over the dwindling numbers of public libraries. Those are inside, I suppose, and not Of The Streetscape, which I think renders library beneath the attention of most urban advocates. Yet many libraries are public spaces, spaces where anybody can go and read a book. Benjamin Franklin’s vision of the library was a worthy one.

I suppose for my younger readers, the Web has supplanted the library. A pity. Because while the web can be a commons, it is not a place where anybody can sit and take comfort. Those are, indeed, becoming rare–unless you buy a $4 latte.

Odee’s list of 20 “Most Beautiful Libraries” inspired me to thinking about this. To the above right here is the George Peabody library in Baltimore (I believe of the same Peabody’s that yielded Mrs. Barbara Bush; it must be rough).

My first library was in Lamont, IA. It was decidedly more modest. But I was hooked for life; it was a democratic place, even if dirty books were discretely kept from little hands, and I will be forever grateful. Nothing, absolutely nothing, is as restful to me as browsing in a library, or settling into one of the chairs to read. It is one of the fundamental pleasures of urban life—a shared common place, where ideas are about you.

Some incredible artwork of San Francisco done by Jeremy Mann. His web page, from whence this image came, is here and contains a list of his upcoming shows.

A new, fantastically fun book was recently published by Simon and Schuster:The City Out My Window. It is a collection of Matteo Pericoli’s line illustrations of the views enjoyed by wealthy and famous New Yorkers (like David Byrne) and….wait for it…normal New Yorkers, too.

HT to If It’s Hip, It’s Here.

Charlie Hoehn writes:

And therein lies the best career advice I could possibly dispense: just DO things. Chase after the things that interest you and make you happy. Stop acting like you have a set path, because you don’t. No one does. You shouldn’t be trying to check off the boxes of life; they aren’t real and they were created by other people, not you. There is no explicit path I’m following, and I’m not walking in anyone else’s footsteps. I’m making it up as I go.

Go read the whole thing here.

See here for the write-up of Dr. Yan Xiao’s bridge in the Hunan province. It is made of bamboo AND it is strong enough to withstand truck traffic. Here’s a write-up in Go!

SPPD’s own Elizabeth Currid appeared in today’s LA Times. Read it here.

When we drove by the Expo Line construction on Flower St about last year this time, I said to one of my colleagues that I didn’t think there was any way the Expo Line was going to get done on schedule. He said “oh no, they’ll be done” perhaps forgetting that I used to consult on these types of projects and know the difference between “we broke up the streetscape to make it look like we are working” and “we’re actually working.”

The LA Times ran this story yesterday by Ari Bloomekatz. The cost estimate for the Expo Line went from $640 million to $862 million, and they are going to build less than they had costed out. The $862 million line will only go to Crenshaw instead of to Culver City. The original estimate per mile was just under $75 million. Depending on where they stop, the new estimate per mile hits at just under $90 million. It could be less–I don’t have the actual end reported on the revised project.

If we use these numbers to cost out HSR from LA to Fresno, the estimate comes out at $38 billion. Of if you use the original cost per mile figures, you get $32 billion. The California HSR authority’s cost estimate is $34 billion for HSR.

So something here isn’t right. Either we pay way too much to build light rail, a much lower-quality service than HSR, or the HSR cost estimates are whack, or both.

From Metrans, a USC research center, comes a new podcast on transportation:

Here it is. I suck on tv.

From Tales of Mere Existence