The River

What boggles my mind about the whole riverfront project I'm working on is that the city has hasn't put nearly the kind of effort into developing the site like other cities have. I mean, just look at the image above taken from the lookout of the Town of Kansas pedestrian bridge and tell me this is not a great place. And though you can't see it so well in the image, the entire opposite shore is actually somewhat naturalized! The shoreline has been allowed to develop however it wants to with a levee behind it that's covered all in native riparian trees. Whats even better is that the trees are all tall and dense enough that they almost completely block from view all the heavy industrial lands behind them. Kansas City is sitting on a gold mine with it's beautiful natural riverfront and almost nobody knows about it.
Just look at any major city in the Midwest with a major river running through it and both banks are usually packed with random industrial stuff with no signs of naturalness. But here, despite the fact there's a major industrial hub just north of the river and the city center sitting a mile to the south, the river itself is actually a very quiet, somewhat natural place with little view of heavy industry. Coming out here, you can almost get sense of what the place may have looked like 150 years ago when the city first started to develop. That is, not considering the three sets of bridges that jump out from the city to the south and disappear into the dense vegetation to the north.
For my site, the naturalness is much more diluted with 3 railroad lines running through it and a small coal power plant to the SE that supplies steam to most of the buildings downtown. Add to that an archaeological dig for the original town of Kansas, two power substations, and a recently created wetland from an old failed project on the site and you've got one fun riverfront project to work with. I guess its these kinds of projects that we live for as Landscape Architects though.

Anyways, Enjoy the picture and I'll add more from the site soon. In the meantime, we just got an inch or two of snow and I'm going outside check it out.

The good Life

So in contrast with the last post which came from the highways of LA, this one comes from the old growth forests of the high Sierras. Actually, though you can't see it in this picture, this was taken in Sequoia National park and all around me are giant sequoia trees. Anyways, this place was amazing. We got up here early in the morning and found a great trail that was completely devoid of people. Morning light is really great up here for taking pictures.

extra notes about the picture: This picture is actually a merging of two different shots. One focused on the background while the other focused on the moss/mistletoe? covered foreground tree.

Well thats all for now, enjoy!

Neighborhood Safety Meter

Welcome to the great new way at quickly finding out where your neighborhood ranks in the ol' safety factor. To find out, the general safeness and/or amount of gang activity in your neighborhood is directly related to the amount of razor wire surrounding and protecting your street signs. And just in case your don't know which way the scale goes:

More razor wire= safer street signs=less safe neighborhood.

Funny how that all works out.

Which way do I go?

Here is the cool sign post that is on the riverfront project I am working on this year. The structure in the background is the elevator for the town of Kansas pedestrian bridge that overlooks the Missouri river. The steel has also weathered fairly nicely to match the character of the area. Anyways I just wanted to get this out there for you guys to look at

Chinese Garden

Gardens in China tend to be a lot more colorful then their Japanese counterparts. On the other hand, they still employ a high quality of thought in their careful design. This garden was probably the only "authentic" Chinese garden I visited while in China. Unfortunately, almost all the extensive landscape construction done today over there lacks any depth of design and tends to serve as just a "pretty" facade.
Overall, I was really glad to actually visit this garden since it allowed me to see some of the better aspects of authentic Chinese design.

Massage trail

This really cool stone walkway was a little further down the mountain from the waterfall picture I posted earlier. I was told that it is meant to massage your feet as you walk along the path. Well as it turns out,they were correct...however, there is one side where the stones are further apart from one another and then it just starts to hurt your feet. I guess I just need to work more on my zen meditation and special stone stepping skills.

Anyways, pathways like these are really cool looking and I thought that they make an interesting picture.

Question

I thoroughly enjoy this picture from my brother's 2nd grade English class. I'm not sure if its because of the silhouette of the student against he bright window or what but I just think that it is really cool. Contrary to what the picture shows, the classroom is properly lit and the room's apparent darkness is just a trick of the camera.
Also, visiting the class was one of the most enjoyable days of the trip for me since being in a classroom as an observer is something rarely experienced anywhere.

Waterfall

High up in the mountains in a few government protected tourist attractions, there still exists a little bit of real nature. Unlike most places in china we visited, there is actually wildlife like birds around here. One of the biggest things they were pointing out to us with all the signs around here is how clean the air is. Normally all these clean air signs would strike people like us as odd except for the fact that the air everywhere else is so dirty and polluted that
it really was noticeably cleaner here.

Chinese Garden

Oh yeah! I finally got the China pictures and now here is the first one. We visited this really elaborate garden while we were there and it provided quite a few nice pictures. I'll let you guys come up with your own thoughts on this one, I thought it was something enjoyable to look at.

One more View....

Sorry about posting another apartment view but I haven't gotten the chance to take many other pictures yet. Anyways, I feel this one is better then most of the other ones since it shows the entire wide angle view that I get from. This image is of a thunderstorm sweeping over Lexington sometime last week. This is what a "Severe Thunderstorm Warning" looks like for those of you who haven't seen to many of those. These clouds were putting out a lot of cool lightning and about 15 minutes after this picture was taken the rain had arrived at my apartment. Anyways, I should be getting more China pictures soon when I travel back to St. Louis to pick them up next week.