A Cry for Help

Have you seen those house flipping shows on HGTV and TLC? The ones where idiots who don’t know a saw from a hammer but have $500,000 burning a hole in their pocket go buy a house, renovate, then sell it for a hefty profit?
Have you heard of Hurrican Katrina, and the city formerly known as [...]

The last couple weeks have brought amazing news to those of us who love the city of Providence: five huge projects that will dramatically change downtown (and the skyline!). The Westin is getting a new tower. The Big Three of the skyline will be joined by the OneTen Westminster condominium tower (you can tell they’ll [...]

Remember the RI+URBlog? Haha, me either! I finally got around to posting on it, though, so go check it out. There’s pictures and everything.
The Wrecking Ball Comes to (Down)Town

I just spent the past couple hours (ok, all day) working on the design of my Urban planning blog, the RI+URBlog. I’ve been wanting to do this for a while, especially since not everyone who reads A Cry for Help is as into that kind of stuff as I am. I also wanted to [...]

Yesterday’s ProJo had an article about the first building to go up in downtown Providence in a decade. To be built on the first dirt lot you see when entering downtown from Rt 95, the GTECH building will occupy an amazingly important spot in Capital Center, as both a gateway to the city and one [...]

Jim Kunstler, one of my favorite authors and famous or his cranky social commentary, has a feature on his website called Eyesore of the Month. Once a month, there’s a new picture to illiustrate just exactly how screwed up our built environment is. There’s been some great ones, which you can see by looking through [...]

Living in South County, I am subjected to the usually boring “South County” section of the Projo. This past week though, with the threat of a big box development, there has been a really interesting series of articles about the citizens of Hopkinton standing up to their town planners and town council about the [...]

I was (digitally) sifting through a couple hundred pictures I’ve taken in Providence and came across this one, which I thought was pretty interesting:

These benches are facing the Woonasquatucket River across the street from the Foundry and just upriver from the Mall/Rt. 95. You’d never know there was a river there, as you can [...]