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105 articles

National Cathedral: sublime building, serene grounds. But how about those sidewalk storm drains?

April 24, 2025 6 Comments

Washington National Cathedral, among the highest-profile religious institutions in the country and certainly in the capital city, has long attracted visitors (pilgrims?) not just for its harrowing Neo-Gothic architecture, or its frequently filmed interior (the site of many presidential funerals), but also for the celebrated green space, which together occupy a hilltop plot measuring 57

Bike boulevards in the Capital Region: do they work? Do people know they exist?

December 9, 2024 15 Comments

Not so long ago, near a prominent intersection in Arlington County, I stumbled across my first confirmed example of bike boulevards.  The concept has existed for a while, and though I’ve been familiar with term for over a decade, frankly I’m a little behind-the-times in encountering one just now.  Then again, if this is what

Squat building squeeze: in megacities with huge land costs, how do tiny buildings survive?

November 23, 2024 6 Comments

As if it weren’t obvious already, I’m fascinated by architectural oddities—aesthetic efforts that don’t quite come together as intended, or fail to mesh with their surroundings.  Plenty of people feel much the same, as evidenced by the numerous blogging initiatives on the subject, though many bloggers are more vituperative than I intend to be.  (Then

GoatScape: no need for pruning shears. Incisors will do just fine!

October 12, 2024 16 Comments

Biking along the Great Allegheny Passage (GAP) in the final days of summer yielded some unexpected opportunities for leaf-peeping.  The GAP, a massive rail-trail conversion linking downtown Pittsburgh to Cumberland, Maryland, allows uninterrupted bike/pedestrian access from the Steel City to Washington DC, by means of a transfer onto the Chesapeake and Ohio (C&O) Canal Towpath

Multi-user path in suburbia: are they biking too close to the sun?

September 19, 2024 26 Comments

As a person who loves bicycling, I am hardly one to cavil when a municipality installs new bike-friendly infrastructure.  Quite the opposite, in fact.  As a general rule, most places in the US are still less bike-friendly than they could be.  And while we have witnessed visible improvement over the last two decades, and I

Blue-collar prosperity: a quick survey of Perth Amboy’s thriving downtown.

July 31, 2024 8 Comments

I’m not exactly making bold a proposition when I assert that, if a community experiences an overall decline in its income levels (and a growth in poverty rate), the economic health of its primary retail nodes is likely to deteriorate concurrently.  Such a statement isn’t exactly going out on a limb.  Any significant change, in

Defensive urbanism: homeless face hard, heavy new hurdles. Jersey style.

June 23, 2024 5 Comments

It’s been almost two years exactly since I featured various metal rods, rings, and ridges carefully positioned at select locations in various parks and civic plazas in Oakland and San Francisco.  Aside from alliteration, these rods, rings, and ridges shared one ambition: to prevent people from engaging in certain undesirable activities at these public gathering

Blank wall bravado: a trendy neighborhood’s supermarket is more and less than meets the eye.

June 9, 2024 9 Comments

This article represents an interesting first.  Frankly, I’m surprised it’s taken this long—15 years of blogging!—for someone to approach me about this while I was out snapping pics for my blog.  Given that I have over 20,000 photos consisting primarily of mailboxes, parking meters, cracked curbs, lonely utility poles, labelscars, and miscellany that would only