Category: public space

uneasy marriage

CA stack CO tracks
It struck me this morning that the park I walk through owes much of its existence to successive technologies. The streetcar technology (smokestack above) has been abandoned. The other technologies that undergird this public space are sewage collection and high voltage electrical transmission.
dog running in snow woods
Rivanna trail, winter weather.
Geology and topography have graced the park with a river. So far, in our political wisdom, we have discouraged building in the river’s channel.
The industrial and the natural features maintain an uneasy balance, remarkably it feels like a park.

Community meetings

Once upon a time the public stage was an open place to see and be seen
Sometime the being seen was without a particular message. Maybe one’s presence expressed support? Maybe it expressed a watchfulness.
LanCoVa BOS
There is information available from body language and the context in which it is thrown down
signs
There are means, within the physical space, even if it is not your turn to be heard to be heard.

Now there are all forms of electronic meetings. Have they increased accessibility? Have they increased effective citizen participation in governance?

Rappahannock Wharf

east high oblique view
8. RAPPAHANNOCK WHARF, LLC, #20-0920 Requests authorization to re-develop a deteriorated commercial wharf to include removal of a failed timber bulkhead and concrete slab, installation of a 70-foot long quarry stone and rubble breakwater with associated clean sand fill and wetland plants to create a living shoreline…
452 linear feet of timber replacement bulkhead, a 16-foot wide gravel boat ramp with flanking timber jetties, a 32-foot long timber wave screen, repair of one 12-foot wide pier, replacement of two (2) other piers at 8-feet wide…
herons's favorite shore
and installation of 205 linear feet of quarry stone riprap revetment to create a commercial marine construction facility base of operation on Town Creek at the end of Callis Road in Lancaster County. The project is protested by an adjoining property owner and another individual in the area.