Mapes on Maps

Chicago Poetry Tour

2009-08-20T21:02:00.000-07:00

As I prepare the class I'm teaching on Los Angeles, I find not that nothing has been written on Los Angeles, but not nearly enough, and not with such passion as Chicago or New York. Why is there nothing like this Chicago Poetry Tour on Los Angeles. I'd love to put something like this together.

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"And the junk stood up into skyscrapers and asked: Who am I? Am I a city? And if I am, what is my name?" (Carl Sandburg)

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Love it!

Buffalo and the beauty of neglect

2009-08-11T15:53:00.000-07:00

In the end I did get to see the High Line in New York City, but in the end the highlight of my trip to New York State was my final stop, in Buffalo. I knew there were Louis Sullivan buildings in Chicago and thought I'd see if there were any in this other Rust Belt City. I found Louis Sullivan through the wonderful film Lost Buildings, produced as a This American Life NPR premium. It's a story about a boy who becomes obsessed with the architect's buildings. And who can blame him? They are intricate and beautiful ... and many of them were torn down in the 1960s with a rush to modernize. But in Buffalo, one, the Guaranty Building, remains.

I also managed to see the interior of the old Buffalo train station, which was equally amazing. Some of my favorite places are those that have been neglected, and revived onlywhen their true value is seen.

Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York

2009-07-26T12:28:00.000-07:00

Still searching for things to do in my NYC 5 hours. Why is it so hard to find a Jane Jacobs walking tour? But I did find this, a great website that tries to combine the multiple community plans and ideas about what people see as "the greatest threat to the New York that you love." It reminds me of the plan I worked on in Northwest Colorado that asked what the community most values and sees as most threatened.

Five hours in NYC

2009-07-12T14:46:00.000-07:00

Thanks to a travel miscalculation, I've got 5 extra hours in NYC between flying into JFK and taking Metro North upstate. I've decided my destination will be The High Line, a new public park built on a defunct elevated rail line. I'm particularly looking forward to The River that Flows Both Ways, an public art piece that includes 700 panes of glass matched to the color of the Hudson in 700 photos taken once a minute. I'm thinking, too, of paying a visit to my grandparents' old apartment at 22 Cornelia Street in Greenwich Village.

Below is the view from 22 Cornelia Street in the late 1940s:

My Geog Blog

2009-07-11T14:16:00.000-07:00

Why "Mapes on Maps"? Well, Geog Blog was taken, many times over. This blog is not so much to offer daily opinions and an overview of my comings and goings, but instead to post new links without having to update the html of my website constantly. We'll see how this goes.