Church members propose urban village for congregation, CNU Public Square, Robert Steuteville, January 4, 2023

The 16.5-acre site would be divided into about 200 lots of varying sizes to provide a mix of housing types—from single family cottages to apartments and duplexes—enabling parishioners of varying ages and incomes to live in community. The urban plan retains the current blocks intact, with the exception of a central square carved out of two of the middle blocks. The proposal is very efficient from an infrastructure point of view, and yet creates a distinct village character. 

This is fascinating. It’s a proposal to develop a handful of vacant and derelict blocks in Detroit, around a still-functioning church. I don’t know if or when this will get approved and built, but it’s very cool.

It also points to something I’ve thought about a lot; all these old industrial cities with “urban prairies”—swaths of once-urbanized and now empty land—are bursting with opportunity to cheaply and efficiently build the kind of urban landscapes that so many people love. It would enhance the rest of those cities, turning blighted land into new neighborhoods, and it could use a lot of already-existing infrastructure. Is it going to happen? I don’t know. But this project and article point the way.

Sing to your dishwasher, and it just might sing back: The secret of appliance jingles, YourClassical, Brooke Knoll, August 20, 2020

Our rice cooker plays a jingle; our new stove plays a short tune that reminds me of the Frogger theme; and our washing machine plays a snippet of something when it’s done. I don’t mind the old, mechanical, machine-like noises that appliances used to make. But I like these musical bits and find them interesting. This is a fun piece about the pheneonon.

Also read this piece in The Atlantic on the same topic, going into the marketing and design questions behind appliance music.

Riddle solved: Why was Roman concrete so durable?, MIT News, David L. Chandler, January 6, 2023

Previously disregarded as merely evidence of sloppy mixing practices, or poor-quality raw materials, the new study suggests that these tiny lime clasts gave the concrete a previously unrecognized self-healing capability. “The idea that the presence of these lime clasts was simply attributed to low quality control always bothered me,” says Masic. “If the Romans put so much effort into making an outstanding construction material, following all of the detailed recipes that had been optimized over the course of many centuries, why would they put so little effort into ensuring the production of a well-mixed final product? There has to be more to this story.”

And:

During the hot mixing process, the lime clasts develop a characteristically brittle nanoparticulate architecture, creating an easily fractured and reactive calcium source, which, as the team proposed, could provide a critical self-healing functionality. As soon as tiny cracks start to form within the concrete, they can preferentially travel through the high-surface-area lime clasts. This material can then react with water, creating a calcium-saturated solution, which can recrystallize as calcium carbonate and quickly fill the crack, or react with pozzolanic materials to further strengthen the composite material. These reactions take place spontaneously and therefore automatically heal the cracks before they spread. Previous support for this hypothesis was found through the examination of other Roman concrete samples that exhibited calcite-filled cracks.

In other words, the formulation was highly resistant to cracks because the lime reaction with water would fill in the cracks! It sounds like magic, but it’s engineering. (And I guess it only works once?) How, with modern chemistry tools and knowledge, did we not figure this out decades ago? Huh.

In Praise of Fast Food, Rachel Laudan, Utne Reader

Culinary Luddism has come to involve more than just taste, however; it has also presented itself as a moral and political crusade–and it is here that I begin to back off. The reason is not far to seek: because I am a historian.

As a historian I cannot accept the account of the past implied by this movement: the sunny, rural days of yore contrasted with the gray industrial present.

And:

No amount of nostalgia for the pastoral foods of the distant past can wish away the fact that our ancestors lived mean, short lives, constantly afflicted with diseases, many of which can be directly attributed to what they did and did not eat.

So…what? There’s no upshot with this sort of writing. Eat what you like, and more of what’s better for you, I say. I increasingly realize that so much of what passes for analysis or “discourse” is simply problematizing things that are fine, inventing controversies, or subjecting ordinary attitudes to interrogation. Here, it is done in the service of processed food.

Now, don’t get me wrong, this is a fun read, and there’s a certain virtuosity to it. Just don’t take it too seriously, I think.

Related Reading:

New and Old #31

New and Old #32

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