Paris, as much as I love Paris, feels to me as...

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Paris, as much as I love Paris, feels to me as though it’s long since been “cooked.” Its brand consists of what it is, and that can be embellished but not changed. A lack of availability of inexpensive shop-rentals is one very easily read warning sign of overcooking. I wish Manhattan condo towers could be required to have street frontage consisting of capsule micro-shops. The affordable retail slots would guarantee the rich folks upstairs interesting things to buy, interesting services, interesting food and drink, and constant market-driven turnover of same, while keeping the streetscape vital and allowing the city to do so many of the things cities do best.

William Gibson on branding of major cities, Cities in Fact and Fiction: An Interview with William Gibson, Scientific American (via designtumblelog)

re: Gibson’s bit on China, I don’t think too much will be abandoned b/c of outgrowing cities (villages, maybe, since the commerce isn’t going there and probably won’t in the very near future); I think the almost total lack of maintaining old infrastructure (and perhaps of designing the new stuff well) is going to be a big practical hurdle. Not that I didn’t see lots of people living in things that were broken down, no glass in the windows, etc. when I was in China, so you know. I’m not worried in that sense for the buildings, but obviously I am for the people. Just watching and waiting to see where TPTB decide to prioritize.

(Reblogged from minimoonstar)

raise the red lantern

I like pretty things.

Notes