Sacred Heart Neighborhood
Posted by Kevin Kastner in Neighborhoods on Nov 24th, 2010 | 3 comments
Sacred Heart Neighborhood on the near South Side has seen a renewed interest, due in large part to the promotions of a concert venue at the Vollrath Tavern. Can a bar revitalize a neighborhood? I’m not sure, but attracting people from around the city to a little-known street with a boatload of potential is a win in my book. The street in question is Palmer Street:
The neighborhood is a photographer’s dream, ranging from gritty graffiti:
to the sublime spires of Sacred Heart Church:
To a great panorama view of downtown:
to the fantastic entrance of the Vollrath...
Lafayette Square livability
Posted by Jim in Neighborhoods on Nov 23rd, 2010 | 1 comment
As part its annual A Monumental Affair program, Keep Indianapolis Beautiful hosted a charette on Nov. 5 with the goal of cooking up innovative ideas for improving the Lafayette Square area. Local architects, designers, engineers, planners and artists teamed up to create a variety of big ideas presented at the end of that day and as part of the A Monumental Affair awards ceremony on Nov. 11, at the Indiana Roof Ballroom. You can see the teams’ presentations and notes from the day at KIB’s website. I was a facilitator at the charette, by the way, for Team 4. You can also see a list...
The Privatization of Indianapolis
Posted by Graeme Sharpe in Neighborhoods on Nov 23rd, 2010 | 3 comments
The people who run our cities … think nothing has the right to exist unless it makes a profit, which makes their opinion worthless. The people who truly deface our neighborhoods are the companies that scrawl giant slogans across buildings and buses trying to make us feel inadequate unless we buy their stuff. -Banksy, Wall and Piece, 2005
It is a common idea these days for politicians to speak of running a city like a company. What a stupid idea. Just when we abandon the failed idea of living in a machine, we unfortunately embrace the dystopian vision of a for-profit public...
Envision Union Station
Posted by Curt Ailes in Transit on Nov 22nd, 2010 | 6 comments
Last week, I was asked to speak at an Envision Broad Ripple (EBR)Â meeting. EBR, is a community effort being put forth to change the future of Broad Ripple’s built environment. They are looking at an entirely new zoning structure, and it will be based upon a vision now being developed by community leaders, as well as residents. I was asked to come in and speak about my recent trip to Portland and what I learned at Railvolution. It had particular significance in that they are currently looking at density in the village. Transit is an important component of building density in an urban area.
I...
What Indiana spends on its roads
Posted by Curt Ailes in Neighborhoods, Transit on Nov 19th, 2010 | 6 comments
In light of my recent posts about Indyconnect gutting the light rail portion of the plan for Marion County, I thought it would be a good time to put some of this financial talk in context by displaying what some recent, and ongoing, roads projects in the Indianapolis area are costing us. This is a partial repost of an old article I did for my personal blog before joining Urban Indy
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I want to take this opportunity to point out the manner in which highway construction in Indiana is being undertaken. While Indianapolis has recently received a lot of press regarding...
