Mr. Chan said that it cost about $100 million a mile to build a subway line in Guangzhou, including land acquisition costs for ventilation shafts and station entrances. By contrast, New York City officials hope to build 1.7 miles of the long-delayed Second Avenue line in eight years at a cost of $3.9 billion, or $2.4 billion a mile. The city expects to use a single tunneling machine. Owners of land needed for subway construction in Guangzhou have few rights compared with those in New York. Here, Mr. Chan said, a property surveyor appraises a building and “whatever he says, that’s it.” But, Mr. Chan added, “because China is now more democratic, if they don’t want to move, then you have to take more time.” And time is of the essence. Guangzhou is growing rapidly outward. Primly dressed in a white silk shirt and light brown slacks, Kerry Li stood under the 30-foot-tall crystal chandelier in the clubhouse lobby at the Hua Nan Country Garden complex and watched as her 10-year-old son played nearby. A bus leaves her gated community in the suburbs and heads for the city, across the broad, muddy waters of the Pearl River, every 15 minutes. But a recently completed subway line under the river goes nowhere near the compound. Ms. Li’s husband, a businessman, drives his own car to work every morning, while his wife stays home. The lure of cars is hard to resist. Chen Hao Tian, a 43-year-old economic planner for the Guangzhou municipal government who worries about the need for mass transit, used to spend a half-hour riding a free bus for government employees to and from work. Then he acquired a silver-gray Honda Accord from the local Honda assembly plant and found he could make the trip in 10 minutes — and run errands along the way for his wife and 13-year-old daughter, and listen to his favorite music. “On my salary, the maintenance costs are a pressure,” he said. “But it gives me great pleasure and the feeling of a higher standard of living.” And few subway rides do that, even for those who build them.
Origins and sources Some of my favourite maps are drawn by a British writer, walker and accountant named Alfred Wainwright. Phil Baines provides background: “Wainwright was an accountant born in Lancashire who fell in love with the English Lake District and moved there to live and work. All his free time was spent walking the fells, and he began his series of seven ‘pictorial guides to the Lakeland Fells’ in 1952 as a way of repaying his gratitude to them. The work took 13 years.” (Type & Typography) Wainwright’s walking maps are drawn to suit their context of use, the books are intended to be used while walking. As the reader begins their walk, the map represents their location in overview plan. As the walk extends through the map, the perspective slowly shifts naturally with the unfolding landscape, until the destination is represented in a pictorial perspective view, as one would see it from their standpoint.
10 Here & There influences Pulse Laser http://schulzeandwebb.com/blog/2009/05/04/here-there-influences/
By Schulze on May 4th, 2009.
I’m going to tell you a little bit about the influences on Here & There, a project about representation of urban places, from when it began. It was warmly received when I first presented some corners of it back at Design Engaged in 2004, before Schulze & Webb existed. Here & There is a projection drawing from maps, comics, television, and games. This particular version is a horizonless projection in Manhattan. The project page is here, where large prints of the uptown and downtown views can be seen and are available to buy. I’ve been observing the look and mechanisms in maps since I began working in graphic design. For individuals, and all kinds of companies, cities are an increasing pre-occupation. Geography is the new frontier. Wherever I look in the tech industry I see material from architects and references and metaphors from the urban realm. Here & There draws from that, and also exploits and expands upon the higher levels of visual literacy born of television, games, comics and print. The satellite is the ultimate symbol of omniscience. It’s how we wage wars, and why wars are won. That’s why Google Earth is so compelling. This is what the map taps into. The projection works by presenting an image of the place in which the observer is standing. As the city recedes into the (geographic) distance it shifts from a natural, third person representation of the viewer’s immediate surroundings into a near plan view. The city appears folded up, as though a large crease runs through it. But it isn’t a halo or hoop though, and the city doesn’t loop over one’s head. The distance is potentially infinite, and it’s more like a giant ripple showing both the viewers surroundings and also the city in the distance.
This is a reversal of the Here & There projection. In Wainwright’s projection we stand in plan, and look into perspective. Wainwright’s view succeeds in open ground where one can see the distance… but in a city you can only see the surrounding buildings. Wainwright and Here & There both present what’s around you with the most useful perspective, and lift your gaze above and beyond to see the rest. David Hockney presents a fantastic dissection of perspective in the film A Day on the Grand Canal with the Emperor of China or Surface Is