Portage

New York, We could do alot better at protecting Farmland. Image current 0107.

2 from the Times. As farmland is lost to development, and CSA's are booked in advance. And then Cappelli, everybodys Catskill Vegas boner, gets some good ink on just how much he respects Planning Commissions. Look at this 'farmers' car park roof. Gentleman farming is good when the gentlemen realizes how many farmers a gentlemen needs to farm.

It you havent ever checked out Wharton Esherick, you should here.

My dream country property right now (and has been). Give me bucks Buddy, I'll make it hum. This NYC designer is building a real piece of modern country on a hill in Columbia County, and bloggin it. It gives pause to remind folks that they can get an agricultural tax write off on their property taxes if they let the land get worked. Stumbled on this CT styled blog, Rural Intelligence, along with this mahattanized gardner, Away to Garden, both give a cobble hill like odor. Somebody was cruising Columbia County taking great shots of old buildings, on flickr. How many can you place? Hudson SHOUT @!#% YEA. Hits Hudson NY! tag.

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Shaker Mill last summer

“The number of farms nationwide declined by 1% between 1987 and 1997, while the land in farms declined by 4.3%. During the same period, Columbia County saw an 18% decrease in the number of farms and a 14% decrease in the amount of acreage being farmed.” ... "Between 1999 and 2005, Columbia County lost 85 of its 560 farms along with 2,500 acres of farmland." ... "Median size farm in the Hudson Valley is 87 acres."

Interesting report on Land Trusts and Agricultural Land (pdf) from the Glynwood Center.

Columbia Hudson Partnership announces their commitment, in a press release, to shepherd empire zone monies into strengthening Columbia Counties agbiz. Lets us live in hope.

A lovely Soil Protection write up from Little Seed Gardens, and Here. An organic 97-acre farm family farm in Chatam New York.

Roxbury Farm, July 14 Newsletter.

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The last photos I took with my Leica before I lost it the next day, deep in the beltway, Jan 08. I just got an old old digi sent out from Florida. Following this post the old bastard I used to document much of the Anti-Sit will be getting some face time.

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The Times revisits the idea of "tower farms", a very New York version of allotments. One insight, from the chair of the Lincoln Institute, came shining thru, “Would a tomato in lower Manhattan be able to outbid an investment banker for space in a high-rise? My bet is that the investment banker will pay more.” Never the less, it makes for some great renderings, of impossible dreams. London's famous allotment program has been suffering wildly under the pressures of development, the city documents from which the below image was lifted.

These types of proposals have a certain history within the imagination of architecture & planning, much like the helicopter commute, wildly exciting and amazingly rendered, but hopelessly unhinged from the economic realities of land-use patterns. Don't get me wrong, I'm more than excited at the idea of moving food production & consumption within blocks of each other, but the decimation of even hi-functioning manufacturing (garment district) from the city core demonstrates how that principle does not translate when folks are willing to shell out $8,000/sqft for a condo. Again, the chair of the Lincoln Institute, "“There’s embodied energy in the concrete and steel and in construction,” which off-sets much of the carbon reduction. May I draw us back into more regionally appropriate solutions, whereas opportunities for transport (Hudson River), production (Dutchess/Columbia) and distribution (5boros) are already established, if even the smallest amount of leadership would make a committed effort to address food distribution patterns and their relationship to 'greening a city' we would be having a conversation that would engage reality, and make changes in the near-term. I'm not waiting for the Jetsons, because if we do, we'll be living like the Flinstones before long.

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We need farmland protection and investment. "We lose 2 acres everyday to development, whereas 84% of farmland borders the urban periphery"-> The American Farmland Trust is doing good things. Folks, it has to be local farms, regional food, efficiently integrated, distributed. Our over-industrialized waste stream is finally being put in check. Lets do this mid & upper hudson valley, for the local food revolution, for our fertile hillocks and fens. Because the NYC Metro could show the world a new agricultural paradigm. Don't just advocate open space, advocate for organic farming. The Times always has a way of making the yuppies resurgent interest, totally repugnant.

They f'ing approved the tax deal with Cappelli! Welcome a casino, Sullivan county. Blah. Bit - So... Cappelli's history of partnering with trump to build glassed grave markers in westchester brick towns sure qualifys him I guess. Not the right thing for the catskills, but we're glad its in sullivan county - where they roll like that. The big heads are looking up here with big shouldered clunkers, culdesacs and condos. Yikes. I'll hit the slots - that IT! Save our top soil.

Ang Lee's new woodstock film, looking for these particular scene shots. Interesting where this might be. Lastly, from the Historic Hudson website, Plumb_Bronson house, elevations by A.J. Davis. Somehow I missed this. Fantastic.

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The famous english henge is bluestone. The Catskills have some of the largest bluestone deposits in the world. 380 million year old sediment left by a massive delta formed on the western edge of the Acadian mountains in the Devonian Period. A working landscape, still working.

Times piece on the boom, from which the image above came. NYC preservation laws on bluestone sidewalks. And of course Opus 40 - in Saugerties. Brownstone care, the soft sedimentary cousin.

I had no idea that Regina Kellerman died this past May, bless her. An architectural historian of no compare.

And I never got to link this before. Hudson, yea we so happy! Welcome Marina.

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Love my mom, amma, & afa; as well as our ancestral farm Úlfsstaðir, on this June 17th: Iceland National Day. The homestead below.

Mom in front of the ancestral church

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The Times Magazine gave us a lovely & quite glossy look at contemporary thinking on cities and architecture, planning and development. But more importantly, hidden in the Asia Pacific section, we get a real glimpse of our urban future if we continue to triumph surface over substance. Perhaps we can hear less about all the sexy projects and more about the vapid politics of our urban future. Fuck Dubai. Fuck manufactured realities. These are people.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/09/world/asia/09gated.html?hp

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upstate new york, photo tour from one of our faves back in the city, massengale.

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some photographs I took of the astounding domestic architecture of savannah ga. couth & understated, savannah is the humbler colonial city of the confederacy.

... next is the other, larger slaver's paradise, charleston.

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In an amazing (and all too rare) alignment of preservationists & housing advocates today's city council meeting was momentarily shut down in New Orleans. They were slated to approve the demolition (which they eventually did) of perfectly suitable, with minimal investment, historically & architecturally important public housing. The latest move in a continued ethnic cleansing of New Orleans in a ghastly post Katrina state of war against NO. Two weeks prior the City Council voted to evict the homeless, many of whom are working homeless, from a park across from City Hall. This also comes at a time when FEMA has just given notice to most of its trailer parks within New Orleans proper, that residents need to relocate on the first of the year. Merry Fucking Christmas New Orleans. Affordable housing, much less habitable housing, is an Extreme shortage, beyond even the most paranoid calculations. So it is with no surprise that todays meeting ended in hostilities, and it shouldn't be a shock that continuing dissolution in New Orleans demands resistance, calling on Preservationists, Architectural Historians, and Land Use Planners to align themselves not with Bullshit new urbanist drafts, but with those who have made that City one of America's most unique urban cultures. No Justice, No Peace. Related articles on the situation linked below.

NYT article on razing, with audio slideshow. AP coverage of today's events, as well as JusticeforNewOrleans.org, facts and myths on the demolitions. NYTimes video.

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Many familiar with the planning & architecture online community know the infallible documentarian of the rowhouse form, herodotus. I thought it appropriate to share his photo gallery here, this is only a smattering of his exhaustive snapshot study of the American rowhouse, from the which the below photo is taken. Enjoy! click here.

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Another hopeful article on the power of broadband to revitalize the countryside, without bulldozing its bucolic splendor as a path towards revitalization Financial Times.

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"A tornado hit Brooklyn, there's floods in Queens, and now all of a sudden there's sharks in Rockaway. It's very odd," said beachgoer Dot Di Lorenzo.

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welcome back to the links of note, I'm your host, French Trapper.

Global
City report on São Paulo from frieze. Save the Casbah. Bearish condo Crash craze in Miami, of course. The Guardians damning 'English Heritage' look at skyscraper development in London. Well, its true anyways, the walkie Talkie is especially ingratiating. The Battersea Powerstation of London gets some hired hands. Photog imbed IRAQ. The brutality. the Necessity for Ruins blog and radical deterioration of fine colonial architecture. Upscale shopping malls banning City Buses.

Local
Hudson Valley forest music. This years Tide & Taxi trip, Tugboat 13. Mumford Center at University Albany. The building of Albany's Empire State Plaza, an appropriately bitter version. Great deal in Hudson, New York. Another Gem of a Deal. A dream renovation on Stockport Creek. For news in Ulster, Greene, Columbia, and Dutchess County click Daily Freeman & The Independent

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