built environment back

Heading to Dolores park last week, I noticed parallel marks in the pavement that seemed to be the shadows of an old railroad. As a relatively new resident in the Mission, I commented to my new roomate: "There must have been a streetcar line here."

Dolores Street between 17th and 18th

"No way." My roommate responded. I pondered San Francisco's urban development, the transformation of the city with the arrival of the automobile, and the history buried under the pavement. I bet her a six-pack there used to be a streetcar on Dolores Street and decided to restart the Built Environment Blog.

This map shows that there was a streetcar on Dolores in 1943 -- but not between 18th and 19th.
Map from Central Pacific RR Museum via Burrito Justice, one of my favorite San Francisco blogs. 
Bet undecided.

Some things are the same. Despite being warned ahead of time by Fred Kent that grad school would brainwash me, I think I've emerged with my independent perspective intact. I'm more into soil and plants than I used to be, though, and I've gotten to know a ton of fascinating designers. I'm living in the Mission in San Francisco now (neighborhood map) and I've just finished three years of landscape architecture school. While I'm still way into old buildings and urban puzzles,  So really, no one's sure what the new phase of the blog will be like.

There are a whole bunch of blogs I've started reading and the links on the sidebar will be adjusted shortly. The team at Polis consistently puts up thought provoking work, for instance, and you always learn something reading a post at Free Association Design.

There may be a post about shrimp farming, at some point.

I still save an eclectic set of bookmarks at my del.icio.us page and I've also joined Twitter. I tend to retweet more than I post original content, but I find the whole twitter phenomenon fascinating.