City Planning & Design Representation

German Commuting Patterns — Of all German conurbations the Rhein-Main area shows the most interesting patterns. Although dominated Frankfurt as the main objective for commuters in the region. But cities like Mainz, Darmstadt or Aschaffenburg ensure that spread commuters evenly than elsewhere.

BART is nowhere near as extensive as it was first proposed to be (top)

Hurricane Katrina scenes overlaid

Reuters photographer Carlos Barria used the prints of photos he took in 2005, during the hurricane and ensuing floods, to find the same locations ten years later.

You may read a lot this month about the population of New Orleans and the communities around it. Ten years after Hurricane Katrina, the metropolitan area has nearly 90,000 fewer people than when the 2000 census was taken. Based on that number alone, it looks like the region is about halfway down a long road to recovering all its lost population.

But there’s another way of thinking about these numbers that’s equally important: rates of change. The rates of demographic change in New Orleans reveal something surprising about the future of the place: As the large-scale return of population to the New Orleans area has tapered, pre-existing trends have picked up where they left off.

In fact, the rates of population change in the New Orleans area in 2013 and 2014 are incredibly similar to those in the years leading up to the storm. It turns out that one of the biggest disasters in American history – and a decade of major reconstruction – had little effect on the long-term population trends shaping the region: minority migration to the suburbs, a growing Hispanic community and more diversity overall.

To be sure, the New Orleans of tomorrow will not look like the New Orleans before Katrina. There are painful, permanent changes. Understanding how the population is shifting today will not bring back what was lost when the levees broke. But it is still important. According to Brookings Institution demographer William Frey, understanding demographic changes is essential in order to plan for economic changes, tax policy and the number of children the city will need to educate.

Post-Katrina New Orleans Smaller, But Population Growth Rates Back On Track

Storytelling with Forms and Patterns: Prints and Textiles by Hannah Waldron

http://socks-studio.com/2015/08/04/storytelling-with-forms-and-patterns-prints-and-textiles-by-hannah-waldron/

Hannah Waldron is a British print and textile multi-disciplinary artist. Her works display an interesting array of patterns, architectural forms, interiors and surreal landscapes and seem to live in an uncertain territory between geometrical abstraction and storytelling. Following is a selection …

Read more on: http://socks-studio.com/2015/08/04/storytelling-with-forms-and-patterns-prints-and-textiles-by-hannah-waldron/

Cities Without Ground: A Hong Kong Guidebook by Adam Frampton, Jonathan D Solomon and Clara Wong.

Axonometric maps revealing Hong Kong’s multi-layered elevated walkways, ramps, elevators and infrastructure interchanges. Definitely enbiggen.

xinjian’s city stream expresses urban fabric as intricate paintings shanghai no.6, all images courtesy of lu xinjian