jresta
Cyburbian
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I'm a big fan of this guy's column.
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/5765399.htm
It's just so lovely to tag along with your spouse on a business trip and have nothing more pressing to do than gaze out from a cafe. Except that when you're an architecture critic, every trip ends up as a busman's holiday. There are buildings to look at, cities to compare.
So I couldn't help noticing during a recent junket to the Netherlands that Philadelphia looks a lot like Amsterdam, minus the canals. The houses are also supermodel-thin (just like the Dutch), constructed of brick and squeezed onto narrow streets that don't admit cars gladly.
But the more I looked, the more I felt that Amsterdam lacked something as a city.
Where were all the surface parking lots?
http://www.philly.com/mld/inquirer/5765399.htm
It's just so lovely to tag along with your spouse on a business trip and have nothing more pressing to do than gaze out from a cafe. Except that when you're an architecture critic, every trip ends up as a busman's holiday. There are buildings to look at, cities to compare.
So I couldn't help noticing during a recent junket to the Netherlands that Philadelphia looks a lot like Amsterdam, minus the canals. The houses are also supermodel-thin (just like the Dutch), constructed of brick and squeezed onto narrow streets that don't admit cars gladly.
But the more I looked, the more I felt that Amsterdam lacked something as a city.
Where were all the surface parking lots?
