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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City

@thefoxandthecity.com

1.7K followers 300 following 3.7K posts

The world-famous urban theorist who…wait, this has to be honest‽ Independent Professional Urbanist and Writer, creating in-depth critiques of urban spaces, places, & systems. My work: thefoxandthecity.com Also ED @etany.org She/her

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · Aug 25

For all the attention urbanism has gotten in recent years, urbanism as a field of study has often languished.

In my latest essay, I seek to define urbanism, explore what makes it different, and correct misconceptions about what it's not.

thefoxandthecity.com/articles/urb...

Urbanism as a Field of Study | The Fox and the City

For all the attention urbanism has gotten over recent years, the study of cities for their own sake has often languished—and might even risk being defined out of existence. With apologies to Louis Wir...

tinyurl.com

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 6h

Print this and frame it on the wall with the title, "Why North American Transit Construction Costs are So High"

Ryan Packer @typewriteralley.bsky.social · 6h

I just can't get over the differences in scale between Ballard Link's Westlake Station as proposed and the original Westlake Station, off to the left.

Ballard Link's Westlake has two separate entrances underneath separate buildings, with one showing a long tunnel to get to the train guideway. They are at least five stories deeper than the original Westlake, which is tiny and only around 10-15% of the size

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 7h

A fear: that maybe one day I move to Toronto, only to be constantly surrounded by film productions dressing it up to be New York.

Shawn Micallef @shawnmicallef.bsky.social · 8h

It’s nyc in the maybe 1940s in little Italy. Big shoot.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 7h

Sadly not surprising. Still a large disappointment; it's not normally how public art works in the subway.

At least the complex now has more stores in it than I've ever seen before. Finally feels almost useful and nice.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 7h

Okay, I rescind some of my previous excitement.

I go out of my way only to later realize that it's only shown at the top of every hour for 2 minutes.

The other 58mins you get ads.

I know we have to pay for this $1.5B station, but that feels mighty chintzy in a city where we all have things to do.

Overlooking Fulton Center, the screens playing nothing but Snapchat ads.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 9h

"In other news, Connecticut closed its airspace to foreign nations today..."

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 9h

Oh wow, this looks stunning.

Kudos to the people at MTA for this concept.

Can't wait to get out there!

Two lines, "but, the 2 and the G never meet"

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 12h

I am also deeply fascinated by these residential edge cities.

It's such an inversion of traditional skyscraper logic (emphasis on the productive); we live in a very different urban environment.

Many other cities have secondary high-rise districts that are not particularly transit-accessible, the classic edge city as defined by Joel Garreau. In Garreau’s telling, these are primarily commercial hubs, but over the past thirty years more primarily residential edge cities have emerged. These are among the most maddening urban environments in America, with lots of density designed exclusively around travel by car.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 12h

I will say, the streetscapes it create can be a touch odd, going from single-family homes to towers with no in-between, but perhaps that's the price of years of suppressed development.

While it takes a moment, it works very well on the ground, IMO.

Besides, cities need not grow "rationally."

Low density smashes into high density in New Rochelle, and it works just fine.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 12h

Just got around to this thoughtful take by @benschneider.bsky.social on the "Missing Massive."

Living right near New Rochelle, can confirm that this type of development can pay massive dividends while improving both urban function and streetscape.

benjaminschneider.substack.com/p/missing-ma...

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 13h

This is why in the NY area I've learned to go for Uber for early AM airport rides. I've just found them far more reliable for scheduled things; I've been nearly stranded by "scheduled" Lyfts too many times...

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

My far too earnest for this question answer:

Like most sports fandoms, a lot of it runs in families. I was brought up a Yankees fan, when they weren't all that good.

And also, this is New York. It's home. The Bronx is in a lot of ways home.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

Man, whatever happens, first Thanksgiving next week is going to be awkward

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

Baseball!!!

By which I mean, of course, Aaron Judge!!!

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 6d

Baseball!!

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 7d

Baseball!

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

Yes, I have ridden the Pan Am shuttle, and I barely remember it.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

Holy crap, my brain wanted to believe that this had to be a retro ad, but no!

What a find!

Jeremy "Looking for Arrows" Zorek @jeremyzorek.bsky.social · 1d

Absolutely wild ad pull on an M3 today, I think car 9876?

Tattered Pan Am Shuttle ad stuck onto the back wall of a railcar with woodgrain paneling

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

OMNY is far from perfect, and has major issues in both design and implementation.

(eg a closed loop physical card that shows balances and confirms transfers would completely allay the first fear)

But it's very strange to see conspiracy theories born in real time...

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

I just popped onto Threads for a moment to come across a post with a huge number of likes arguing falsely that:

*OMNY doesn't have subway/bus transfers
*OMNY is owned by private equity (not Cubic, OMNY)
*OMNY is about the rich replacing the poor.

Hard not to feel our media environment is cooked...

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

I noticed that afterwards. Big oversight.

Chicagoland is definitely a direct lineage to Great Lakes, but also distinct enough to be it's own IMHO

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

This might just be the best version of this type of map that I've seen, and it certainly matches my experiences for the parts I know well.

For example, my family in Upstate New York's Southern Tier are clearly more "Northern Appalachia" than anything else.

William Hazen @williamhazen.bsky.social · 1d

This is the most accurate depiction of the Midwest to date. Wichita has always felt like the last Midwest city while also being the first plains city.

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

This... is not an Onion headline?

Will Yeates @wyeates.bsky.social · 1d

The British Transport Police (BTP) says it will not investigate bike thefts outside stations where the bicycle has been left for more than two hours.

Bike thefts at stations 'decriminalised'

Bike thefts at stations 'decriminalised'

The British Transport Police will not investigate many categories of bicycle theft, the BBC learns.

buff.ly

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 1d

"GLAMP in the middle of Historic Boston! 🤩💜"

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

"Oh no, we can't have any seats in the main concourse lest it mess up circulation"... but a piano is okay.

I'm not bitter.

A piano in Grand Central's Main Concourse behind ropes.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Microfracture metropoli.

Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

Good observation. 2707 almost killed Boeing and Seattle with it, and LA was lucky to have other industries.

What do you call an aerospace rust belt? Aluminum doesn't rust.

A boneyard belt?

#1 Shoup Fan @oneshoup.bsky.social · 2d

Yeah. The fact that Seattle and LA got lucky with other sector growth (and Big B survived better in Seattle than the other manufacturers in LA) hide that they are a sort of aerospace rust belt.

www.historylink.org/file/1287

Billboard reading "Will the Last Person Leaving SEATTLE -- Turn Out t

On April 16, 1971, real-estate agents Bob McDonald and Jim Youngren put the words, "Will the last person leaving SEATTLE -- Turn out the lights" on a billboard at S 167th Street and Pacific Highway S

www.historylink.org

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Blair Lorenzo / The Fox and the City @thefoxandthecity.com · 2d

That's the old IM Pei Sundrome, now long gone.