Writing about cities
Frat houses on ASU campus take the space of former motels.
Much has been written about repurposing dead malls into community centers or student services buildings, or Wal-Marts and other big box stores into churches or indoor go-kart tracks.
But what about turning motels into fraternity houses near college campuses?
I hope you got a camera for Christmas, and if you didn’t I hope you buy yourself one. Let 2010 be the year you share more photos. Write detailed descriptions so others can learn. Photos are how we travel to places around the world we can’t afford or can’t work into our schedules. Be your own National Geographic and we’ll subscribe to your photostream or blog.
In downtown Tempe, Arizona, you’ll find the Islamic Community Center mosque (or masjid).
Photograph as much as you can and know as much as you can. By knowing we can know to change, and change, we can share.
I carry my pocketable digital camera with me every time I leave my house, because I never know what I can capture and I don’t want to miss the chance. I share nearly all of it online and sometimes in this blog.
I started uploading photos yesterday from my recent trip to Arizona. I’m glad I was able to visit downtown Phoenix, wonderful Tucson, and downtown Tempe, including the ASU campus. I made sure to visit places I missed last year.
The City of Tempe built Tempe Town Lake in the 1990s. The lake, along with the city’s good efforts, has attracted a lot of good development, and gives residents a great recreational asset. The Arizona State University rowing team train on the lake. The Hayden Ferry Lakeside condos and Class A offices (above) overlook the lake.
I’ve got a new and faster photo process. I’ve got a GPS device that automatically geotags all my photos (with the help of HoudahGeo software).
The Valley Metro light rail system shares a parking lot with the apartment complex. Valley Metro provides free parking in its Park & Ride lots. I believe this is to attract people to use the train. I hope someday the train becomes so popular that they can charge for parking.
UPDATE: View overhead photos of all of the bicycling treatments on Jefferson and Washington streets (the one-way couplet) between 7th and 24th Streets in Phoenix, Arizona, courtesy of the Coalition of Arizona Bicyclists.
My dad and I rode our bikes in the inside left-hand bike lane on eastbound, one-way, Washington Street in Phoenix, Arizona (purely to take this video).
The left-hand travel lane is for home and business access while the one-way light rail track (and its stations) run in the middle of the street. The lane is here so that there aren’t gobs of driveways and track crossings – it’s a safety feature. I think the bike lane is here instead of on the right side of the street (and next to the curb) because less traffic drives here. Also, there are few opportunities for right turns in front of the bicyclists.
Eventually, though, going east, the bike lane moves over to the right side through the use of a “perpendicular bike lane” adjacent to a crosswalk in a signalized intersection. The perpendicular bike lane looks like a bike box. This happens at 24th Street because the left-hand access lane disappears and Jefferson Street merges into Washington Street, between 25th and 27th Streets, which becomes a two-way street with the light rail tracks dividing the travel directions. (I would add links to Google Maps, but the imagery is outdated and doesn’t show the 1-year old train line; it does show some construction.)
I would call all of these features innovative designs and good solutions. I think tomorrow I will ride the area again (probably alone) to get a better feel for how it works and how safe bicyclists would perceive the design.
The video is sped up by 20% to be less droll. The audio drops out a few times because I was talking (giving my dad directions like a movie producer), but you can still hear the electronic sounds of the train as it approaches and departs the station. I didn’t have my camera’s bike mount so I held it in my hand. I want to come back to take photos instead of video. It was fun to make this video!