Tag: asia

• Cheese, bacon, and starch

  

  I kept spotting this backpack in Les 3 Vallées and I thought it was awesome because, well, in the words of the late Anthony Bourdain, “you can never have too much cheese, bacon, or starch.” Tartiflette is a casserole dish that is local to the Haute-Savoie region in the French Alps. Its main ingredients are potatoes, bacon, and cheese (reblochon to be exact). And yes, it is as delicious and filling as it sounds.

  I also liked that the slogan was specific to the region we were in, and so I went on a hunt to find this mysterious backpack. I must have gone into at least 8-10 stores looking for it. None of them had it. But eventually I learned that it was an online thing. It was for the “I like to ski and hang out in chat rooms” crowd, or at least that’s how one guy explained it to me. So I went online and ordered it back to Toronto.

  It finally arrived today, and I’m looking forward to using it when I snowboard, cycle, and attempt to make tartiflette for the first time. Now I just need to locate some reblochon. (Note to US readers: My understanding is that this cheese is considered contraband in your country because it is unpasteurized and does not meet US import laws. So you may need to find some sort of clandestine cheese market if you want to make it.)

  For those of you who also like to ski and hang out in chat rooms, you can find the bag and other merch, here. It’s all an extension of the Grenoble-based online magazine, skipass.com.

  2024.02.16

• New Taipei Performing Arts Center by OMA

  The new OMA-designed Taipei Performing Arts Center opened up last Sunday and so you’ll now find lots of articles, photos, and drone videos circulating around online. The two partners-in-charge, Rem Koolhaas and David Gianotten, were also on this Monocle on Design episode talking about the genesis of the project and how they worked to optimize the various theater spaces.

  My favorite part of the whole story is how they actually won the design competition. The site is located next to Taipei’s renowned Shilin Night Market. And I can attest to this fame because I spent a summer living in Taipei while I was in university. This night market was the thing I was immediately told I needed to visit as soon as I stepped off the plane. And they weren’t wrong. I spent many a nights with those stinky tofu dishes that smell like feet but actually taste pretty good.

  But for whatever reason, the competition brief stipulated that the night market was to be torn down in order to make way for this new performing arts center. And since it was in the brief, almost everyone took it as a non-negotiable given. The only firm that didn’t — out of 140 bidders — was OMA. They questioned why the city couldn’t have both: a new performing arts center and their wildly successful night market.

  So that’s how OMA — at least partially — won the competition. And I’m certain that Taipei is better for it.

  2022.08.10

• Shaping Cities in an Urban Age

  

  Shaping Cities in an Urban Age is the third book to come out of the London School of Economic’s Urban Age project. It was published last fall. The first two titles were, Living in the Endless City (2011) and The Endless City (2007).

  If you’re familiar with the first two publications, you’ll know that these books are heavily illustrated. Lots of maps, charts, and diagrams. So they make great coffee table books. But they’re also filled with insightful essays — this one has 37 of them.

  In this particular book the focus is on the following:

  “It identifies current trends that are making cities more fragmented, less equitable and environmentally more damaging, and argues powerfully for a more integrated social, environmental and spatial approach that can inform and inspire city-makers that are shaping an increasingly urban world.”

  I am sharing this with all of you today because I have always really enjoyed these books. They have a way of quickly putting things into perspective globally.

  Around 2.5 billion more people are expected to live in an urban agglomeration by 2050. And 90% of this growth is expected to happen in just two places: Asia and Africa. This is an unprecedented shift that will obviously create many challenges and many opportunities.

  This book is about that.

  Image: Phaidon

  2019.02.07

• The 100 million city

  The Guardian recently published this reminder that the real population growth in the world today is happening in Asia and Africa. The article is called, “The 100 million city: is 21st century urbanisation out of control?” Much of the data is from this 2016 paper by Daniel Hoornweg and Kevin Pope, which projected the populations of the world’s biggest cities by 2100.

  The standout example is that of Lagos, Nigeria, which went from under 200,000 people in the 1960s to an estimated 20 million people today. Though, I would imagine that the ubiquity of informal settlements makes it difficult to come up with an accurate number.

  Still, it is one of the world’s top 10 largest cities and, by 2100, it may be the largest city in the world. The Guardian described the population as young, fertile, and increasingly urban. The median age in Nigeria is 18 and the fertility rate for the content is 4.4 births per woman.

  I am mentioning all of this today because I think it grants some perspective. This is an immense city building challenge, not only because of the unprecedented growth rate, but also because it remains largely poor. Lagos, a city, may add more than 2.2x the population of Canada, a country, during the balance of this century.

  2018.03.26

• Urban jungle

  Keeping with yesterday’s theme of urban density, here is a photo by Andy Yeung that I am embedding via his 500px page:

  

  https://500px.com/embed.js

  The photo is of Hong Kong and it was taken using a drone. Click here for other photos from his “Urban Jungle” drone series.

  If you remember the maps from yesterday, you might remember that Hong Kong had a peak residential density of around 111,100 people per square kilometre (2013).

  Above is what that generally looks like.

  2016.03.12

• The rise of the East

  I love the work that LSE Cities (London School of Economics) is doing with Urban Age. If you haven’t yet checked out their site, you should do that now. If you’re a city geek, it’s the kind of site you can get lost in for hours. Especially if you’re a sucker for great diagrams like I am.

  Here’s one I found today that shows where cities are growing in the world:

  

  Each circle represents a city (well, metropolitan area). The dark green dot is the city’s population in 1950. The lighter green dot is the city’s population in 1990. And the yellow dot is the city’s projected population by 2025. Click here for a larger version of the map.

  What’s fascinating about this diagram is that you can so clearly see how the most significant population growth has shifted away from the West to the rest of the world and in particular Asia. That is, those dots have more yellow than green.

  We, of course, already knew this was happening. And population is just one dimension. But it’s still interesting to see this in diagram form. We are living through the rise of the East. And this diagram is a reminder of that.

  2015.11.19

• The world in 2050

  The United Nations recently released its 2015 version of World Population Prospects. It looks as if they put out and revise this report every 5 years.

  The Economist then took some of their data and assembled it into the following charts:

  

  It’s obviously extremely difficult to predict what will happen in the world by 2100, but to the extent that forecasting is possible, the world’s population is expected to reach somewhere around 11.2 billion people. Today it’s 7.3 billion.

  The bulk of this growth is expected to happen first in Africa, and then in Asia. By 2100, Africa’s share of the global population is expected to grow to 39% and Asia’s share is expected to decline to 44%.

  If you’ve been following population trends, most of this shouldn’t come as a surprise to you. The meaningful population growth happening in the world today is happening in the developing world. 

  That’s why architects, such as Rem Koolhaas, have been studying cities like Lagos (Nigeria) since the late 1990s and early 2000s. Below is a photo from a book/research project that I love called Mutations (2000). I pulled it from my bookshelf this morning.

  

  It’s interesting to think about what all of this will mean for the global economy and for global governance. 

  The United States is about to be alone when it comes to advanced economies with a globally competitive population. Europe is shrinking, which leads me to believe that a strong EU is likely important. And we now have lots of megalopolises with big populations, but with very low income levels.

  Nigeria is the largest economy in Africa, but per capita income is somewhere around $3,000.

  2015.08.09

• The PRESTO Push

  

  Back in 2004, I spent a summer living in Asia. And one of the things that I remember really standing out for me was Hong Kong’s Octopus card. It’s a refillable card that you just tap to get onto transit. Lots of cities have them.

  But the cool thing about the Octopus card was that you could use it so many other places besides just on transit. I don’t know know what it’s like today in Hong Kong, but I remember also using it in taxis and to buy breakfast in the morning at Pret a Manger. That was pretty incredible for 2003.

  This was also great for me because I’m one of those people that dislikes carrying around paper money/change. I almost never spend my change and so it just ends up just accumulating in a container beside my front door. Here in Toronto we also use microscopic transit tokens, so that adds another layer of inconvenience.

  But that’s all changing.

  Toronto now has its own version of the Octopus card and it’s called PRESTO. Technically it launched in 2009, but I only recently noticed the card readers appear at my home subway station (King Station). So tonight I decided to finally pull the trigger and order a card. I’ve been waiting 11 years for this moment 🙂

  And I was doing that, I noticed this message on the website:

  

  Not surprisingly, we seem to be pushing to get PRESTO rolled out before the world comes to visit. And I think that’s a great thing.

  One of the big benefits of hosting an event like the Pan Am Games or the Olympics is that it creates a hard deadline to get things done, which is something governments often need. It’s a bit like tidying up before guests come over for dinner. You find a way to do it before people arrive.

  There’s a lot of debate about whether or not it makes sense for cities to spend the money on playing host city. But I don’t think we should ignore the fact that they can be a great catalyst for city building. Things get done. And oftentimes done is better than perfect.

  Good news: I’ve been told that the PRESTO system will be compatible with mobile phones and near field communication. Because let’s face it, cards won’t be around that much longer.

  2015.06.18

• Locations of the 100 tallest skyscrapers in the world

  This morning I stumbled upon the following chart (via The Atlantic) summarizing the locations of the 100 tallest skyscrapers in the world.

  

  As you can see North America dominated tall buildings for most of the 20th century. But then in the 1980s, Asia starting building. Then in the 2000s, the Middle East started building. And today, Asia and the Middle East are where the world’s “supertalls” sit.

  What’s fascinating about this shift is that in many cases, there’s absolutely no physical or economic need to developing so tall. Yes, rising land values can drive up the height of a building, but not to the extent that we’ve been seeing.

  Instead, building “the tallest building in the world” is more symbolic than anything else. It’s about ego. It’s about asserting your position on the global stage. And so while this is a chart about tall buildings, it’s actually a pretty telling chart about global ambitions.

  2015.05.19