Golden Gate ~ Building This Epic Infrastructure!

Arguably the most amazing piece of civil engineering infrastructure -- or certainly a Top 10 together with Roman aqueducts, the Suez & Panama Canals, various Chunnels, transcontinental railroads, the Hoover Dam, and more -- is surely building the Golden Gate Bridge as documented here... And look at those dimensions! Huge!

Waterfront Cities ~ Blending Beauty & Business!

Waterfront Cities series, starting with Singapore... Copenhagen... San Francisco... Boston... Melbourne... Tokyo... Bangkok... Vancouver...

Strip the City ~ Urban Tech Underneath & Inside!

Cool Discovery show Strip the City! Here's Dubai... San Francisco... New York... Sydney... London...

SF Transit Patterns ~ Schema's Timelapse Map

Urban Diagrams ~ Power of Pictures in Planning

Thanks to The Guardian's Oliver Wainwright for spotting Grand plans: how the simple planning diagram has shaped our cities about the exhibit Grand Reductions: 10 Diagrams That Changed City Planning orchestrated by the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research association (SPUR)...

"Many of the ideas that most influenced the design of cities were first expressed through diagrams. These simple visual statements have become iconic distillations of values, policy agendas and ideologies -- touchstones in the visual lexicon of urban planning and design. Grand Reductions investigates the visual culture and iconography of city planning and the impact, for better or worse, of these ideas on the shape of communities in the United States."

Just a few examples...

More Greenroofs ~ Focus on Building Biomes...

Time for another dose of greenroof design delighters!

Reclaiming Streets ~ Streetfilms on SF Solutions

Very nice little Streetfilm about San Francisco: Reclaiming Streets With Innovative Solutions...

"...the recent livable streets achievements in San Francisco [are] "tactical urbanism" -- using low-cost materials like paint and bollards to reclaim street space. [...] Perhaps the city's most exciting new development has been the parklet program, which converts parking spaces into public space complete with tables, chairs, art, and greenery. [...] San Francisco has also seen an impressive 71 percent increase in bicycling in the past five years. [Finally] The city has also taken the lead on innovative parking management with the SFPark program, which uses new technology to help manage public parking in several pilot neighborhoods. It aims to make it easier to find a parking spot by adjusting prices according to demand, helping to reduce pollution, traffic, and frustrations for drivers, pedestrians, and cyclists."

Spot Pricing ~ SF's Dynamic Parking Meters...

Michael Cooper and Jo Craven McGinty write in the NYTimes of A Meter So Expensive, It Creates Parking Spots...

"San Francisco is trying to shorten the hunt with an ambitious experiment that aims to make sure that there is always at least one empty parking spot available on every block that has meters. The program, which uses new technology and the law of supply and demand, raises the price of parking on the city’s most crowded blocks and lowers it on its emptiest blocks."

Nice! Here's the initial coverage...

Blueseed ~ Visa-Free Floating Startup Hubship!

Fascinating to read about Blueseed, the visa-free floating startup and tech incubator ship planned off Silicon Valley, CA...

"Because of the United States' current immigration and regulatory regime, bold and creative entrepreneurs from around the world aren’t given the chance to come to Silicon Valley and develop the technologies that could be creating jobs and propelling the economy forward. Blueseed aims to solve this problem so that Silicon Valley remains the world’s center for innovation. Our team, backed by Paypal founder Peter Thiel, is creating a high-tech visa-free entrepreneurship and technology incubator on an ocean vessel in international waters. Our facilities will be a short ferry ride away from Silicon Valley so that great ideas and talent from around the world can live, work, and play while having convenient access to the San Francisco Bay Area. We will provide a customized environment centered around smart, proven, cost-effective legal best practices, and modern living and work accommodations."

So far multiple vessel concepts have been floated... Be sure to also read Tafline Laylin's interview of the Blueseed founders on Inhabitat.

San Francisco in Ruins ~ 1906 Kite Aerial Photo!

Given the great work here at MIT Civic Media by Jeffrey Warren and colleagues on Grassroots Mapping and the recent C3 Technologies acquisition by Apple, I was fascinated to run across more about Kite Aerial Photography and especially the backstory to this amazing San Francisco in Ruins photograph from 1906 taken by George Lawrence with a kite-borne camera -- a.k.a. his "captive airship". Simon Baker writes about this history and about the less well-known parts of the story!

The Hub ~ Epicenter of Innovation and Universe

I'm sitting in this Hoffman talk listening to people going on about how things happen in "the Valley" -- meaning Silicon Valley, SF Bay Area, California, USA. Just "The Valley". What do we call things coming out of the Boston-metro area? This used to be Route 128 and the Massachusetts Miracle, and then for a horrific nanosecond, the dot.Commonwealth, but no compelling moniker seems to have stuck. But why do we actually need to reinvent this?

We have been and simply are "The Hub" -- the epicenter of invention, venturing, innovation, and the Universe!-)

Parklets ~ 120 sq-ft Public Park(ing) Greenspaces!

Here's a lovely idea highlighted by jstephens at the California Planning & Development Report, ‘Parklets’ Create Public Space, 120 Square Feet at a Time...

"The typical parklet consists of a platform that occupies between two or three curbside parking spaces. Typically made of wood and stylistically reminiscent of Scandinavian saunas, platforms sit flush with the sidewalk and usually includes seating and sometimes greenery. Parklets thus serve as outdoor rooms where passers-by can linger without contending with vehicles or pedestrian through-traffic. Parklets can also serve as outdoor dining areas for cafes and even landscaping features to introduce greenery into a streetscape."

Penthouse Palace ~ Top of St Regis San Fran

Forbes promos St Regis San Francisco topfloor Penthouse Palace...