Urbano

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I-485: Atlanta, Freeways, & Revolts.

**Sources:** (header image) Pods.com; (Top Left) Curbed ATL; (Top RIght) WSB Radio; (Bottom) Flipboard

No. I’m not talking about the US government application for permanent residency. I’m talking about a stretch of highway planned in the ATL but never built.

Every Atlanta resident knows about the ‘Connector’, the infamous traffic clogged 12 to 16 lane piece of street that is currently one of the most congested roads in America and the stuff of nightmares for most Atlantans. It carries 437k cars daily – Pre-COVID of course.

Did you know there were supposed to be two of them? Well, ok not exactly. The uncreated one wouldn’t have ‘connected’ two converging highways for 7.4 miles. What I meant was that there was supposed to be another major north-south highway running along the east side of the ATL.

**Sources:** (Top Left) Atlanta Time Machine; (Top Right) Wikipedia;
(Bottom) Wikipedia

The triple dotted line shown in map on the top-left as well as the north-south red line depicted in the map on the top-right illustrate how I-485’s was to have run parallel to the east of today’s Connector. The map just below depicts a close-up of I-485’s planned route through Atlanta’s eastern neighborhoods of Inman Park, Morningside, and Virginia Highlands. This map’s southern border is delineated with the Georgia railroad where MARTA’s Blue Line currently also runs. The northern border shows I-85’s interchange with I-485 where today’s present GA-400 interchange sits.

The freeway would have created a thoroughfare (see the top-right map) from what today is known as I-675 to GA-400. These respective roadways were originally planned as part of I-485. However, with the cancellation of the interstate creating two disconnected roads, I-675 and GA-400 were given different names and are now maintained by the federal government and Georgia state governments respectively.

This above map shows how I-485 was part of a larger system of east-west and north-south freeways planned for the City of Atlanta known as the Lochner Plan. I-485 would have met with today’s Stone Mountain Freeway at Copenhill. When plans for these two intercity freeways were canceled in the early 1970’s, though, their right-of-ways were used for the Jimmy Carter Presidential library and the 1990’s construction of Freedom Parkway.

Why was I-485 never built? The Atlanta Freeway Revolts.

1946. The Lochner Plan is instituted. World War II is done. Housing demand in Atlanta has pent up as the population has grown during the war. Little to zero public and private capital has been invested in real estate or infrastructure as it has been diverted to the war effort in a patriotic fervor. Personal capital is also still limited as a result of the Great Depression’s economic fall out. To accommodate Atlanta’s burgeoning population at a time of limited housing stock and finances, neighborhoods including Inman Park, Morningside, and Virginia Highlands was seeing homeowners rent out spare rooms and garages or subdivide single family homes into multi-family units (Hall).

As private and public funds freed up immediately after the war, the ability to meet housing demands with new development began. Infrastructure needed to accommodate the future commuters of car-centric 20th century Atlanta as the population moved to the city’s newest suburbs along the edges of Fulton County and the surrounding counties. Along with the creation of the Federal Interstate system and its expressways through Atlanta, the Lochner Plan was born (Hall).

Atlanta was booming, but its inner city neighborhoods that had seen a growth in density during the war were emptying out amidst the city’s rapid socioeconomic and infrastructural changes. Property value decline in central Atlanta followed, and these neighborhoods became the perfect target for demolition (Hall).

The first executions of the Lochner Plan proved controversial. The construction of its first legs – GA-400, The Stone Mountain Freeway, and the Lakewood Expressway (all denoted in the map below) – tore through neighborhoods and displaced existing populations. These first freeways were easily completed in the 1950’s as the Civil Rights Movement gripped the south’s attention. However, as the movement gained momentum through the end of the 1950’s a strong sense of public activism and empowerment made its way into the American South’s culture. By 1964, when the construction of I-485 was announced, this growing attitude helped shift attention in greater numbers to the frustrations and consequences of intercity population displacement (Grant).

The Georgia Department of Transportation’s 1954 Revision of the Lochner Plan.
**Source:** Jake Grant

An important socioeconomic topic should be noted. The neighborhoods I-485 would have run through were more politically connected and endowed within Atlanta society than the neighborhoods displaced by the ‘successfully’ constructed freeways. Residents created powerful neighborhood organizations raising awareness among neighbors to not sell their homes to government entities or real estate brokers working on the expressway; raising funds for filing lawsuits against the City of Atlanta, GDOT; and stopping opposing neighborhood groups from pushing the freeway into their turf. I-485 stayed locked in this legal and grassroots stalemate until in 1973. On June 19th, Atlanta’s Board of Alderman and the Federal Department of Transportation signed separate rejections of varying bills needed to move I-485 forward. By 1975, Georgia’s governor ordered the interstate completely removed from Georgia’s maps (Grant).

Usually at the end of posts like these I enjoy posing some sort of meta question that gets y’all thinking about the implications of these types of urban decisions. This time around though I figured it would be fun just to shed a little light on a very decisive yet long forgotten tidbit of Atlanta’s urban history.

Sources

Morningside Lennox Park Association. Hall, Van. The Interstate that Almost Was. 1994. vahi.org. ttps://vahi.org/wp-content/uploads/interstate_that_almost_was.pdf

Interstate-Guide.com. Interstate I-485 Georgia. https://www.interstate-guide.com/i-485-ga/

Grant, Jake. Rearview Mirror Feature: The Atlanta Freeway Revolts. 2020. fromtherumbleseat.com. https://www.fromtherumbleseat.com/2020/5/6/21245826/rearview-mirror-feature-the-atlanta-freeway-revolts-georgia-tech-expressway-politics-state-urban

Featured

Bologna

View from Bologna’s two towers ( unsplash – Felix M. Dorn)

Bologna. The city who’s name for Americans also means that piece of processed mystery meat that happens to make great sandwiches for 10 year olds (honestly I still like these sandwiches). Thankfully, Bologna is way cooler than just being the namesake of this nutritional substance. The city is truly a hidden gem in Italy. Not only is Bologna gorgeous, it’s full of surprises.

Bologna’s nickname is La Rossa – The Red One – attributed either to it’s proliferation of red-tiled roofs giving the whole city a reddish hue, or attributed to its left-leaning culture that has woven itself into the city’s social fabric since its days as a 12th century industrial hub and as Italy’s anti-fascist capital during World War II. The city is small, but honestly it’s big enough to have everything you could want in urban living. There’s a constant buzz on the main streets lined with lively restaurants and bars, street performers, bohemian Euro backpacker, Italian families enjoying and nice vacation, and love-struck couples walking hand-in-hand eating gelato. Secluded piazze sneak up on you as you saunter down medieval side-streets. The Parco della Montagnola also provides a shaded respite and green oasis from the sunny sky. The historic center, which is a good majority of the city, is unlike the disneylandish major Italian tourist destinations. Bologna feels real.

My favorite site in the city was Le Torre degli Assinelli (pictures above). These towers are some of the only towers left that used to dominate Bologna’s medieval skyline. These towers in medieval Italian towns were individual families’ sign of power to other citizens and foreigners. These specifically belonged to the Asigneli family. I scaled these babies and had an amazing view of the city while inundated with every kind of sound from the city streets. After an hour up there I’d barely had enough.

Top 2 photos from Unsplashed by Bianca Ackermann. Bottom photos by (left) Maria Bobrova & (right) by Salmen Bejaoui

**The Historic Distric is hatched in red and the Basilica is circled. I biked to the Fiume Reno.** Source: Mapsofworld

While in Bologna I really tried to get off the beaten path and experience it to its full. I decided to bike around the whole city (like almost out to the countryside and back sort of deal). I rode out to the Santuario della Madonna di San Luca which sits on a hill just south of Bologna. Here I enjoyed an incredible view of the city and valley beyond in total silence while surrounded by fig groves. It was something out of a fairytale.

The hill & view I was talking about — San Luca

Beyond being the home for the meat that inspired our beloved American lunchmeat, Bologna is the birthplace of other extremely world-famous foods – lasagna, ragu sauce, and tortellini. This was another surprise from Bologna I wasn’t expecting. Also, during my time in Italy almost every Italian I met said that food from the Emilio Romagna (the region surrounding Bologna) is arguable Italy’s best. When an Italian from one region admits that food from another region is better than theirs, that’s saying a lot. I wanted to make sure I tried these 3 Bologna inventions so enjoy the (few) photos I have of these foodie adventures. I was so excited to eat that I didn’t take the best photos. I actually didn’t even get a photo of the lasagna. Lol!

**The best ragu and tortellini I’ve ever had in my life. It doesn’t look beautiful but my stomach thought it was.**

And heeere comes the urban planning nerd side!!

I was completely WOWED by Bologna’s biggest hidden gem – it’s biking infrastructure. As I displayed in my previous post on Redesigning Florence, the photos below show one of the many biking free ways that crisscross Bologna, connecting the historic center and the industrial zones with the burbs through the city’s many parks. I do not exaggerate when I tell you I rode outside of the city on these basically bike freeways. I felt so safe. It was a really relaxing ride. I could get used to a commute like that!

Bologna is a small city, but it’s not teeny. That’s what made the amount of bike paths so impressive for me. It’s shocking for me coming from auto-dominant America to see a city as small as Bologna with a biking system most US cities would envy.

Overall my time in Bologna was a success. I would definitely recommend it to anyone, especially that adventurous traveler who wants to have an authentic experience. This city is big enough to have everything you’d want in a city, thanks to its density and the institutions that make up its urban fabric, but not too big or touristy that it’s overwhelming.

Seriously, go to this city!

Featured

The New Peruvian Food Scene

**A spin on Papas a la Huancaina**
(Chaxras. Lima)

What’s a blog on cities without mentioning food. And what’s a Peruvian writing about food without mentioning Peruvian food. For those of you who don’t know, in 2017 Lima was named the #1 food city in the world by Bloomberg, #3 by Forbes, and mentioned by many other reputable sources as Latin America’s culinary capital.

I’m not gonna go into detail on the deliciousness of Peruvian food because it’s kind of talked about a bit too much. The only thing I’ll mention is the fusion that is Peruvian food, which is what makes it so unique compared to other Latin American cuisines: Spanish, African, Italian, Inca, and (wait for it) Chinese and Japanese.

Feast your eyes.

**Lomo Saltado with Quinoa Huancaina Risotto. Peep the Chicha Morada Pisco Sour on the top right and rocotto and aji sauces on the left.** (**restaurant:** Morena. **city:** Cuzco)

**In order:** **Pancita. Anticucho de Pollo. Arroz Dominguero.** (Panchita. Lima)

**Shumai & Egg Rolls in the background. Chicharron de Pescado right up front.** (Chinatown. Lima)

Now I’m gonna argue there’s a new food culture which, in the next 20 years, will probably be included in this fusion: Venezuelan. With 800,000 documented Venezuelans having fled into Peru as of August 2019 with an average of 1,200 moving into the country daily, they’ve spread out all over the country. In Lima, their presence is obviously recognizable since the cultures are so drastically different. Venezuelans’ food presence stands out for sure.

It’s mainly present in Lima’s conos, the northern and southern peripheries of the city, and not so much in more touristy areas such as San Isidro, Miraflores, Barranco, or the like.

Here’s what I saw on a visit to Mercado Ciudad de Dios in San Juan de Miraflores:

The food carts lining the street are easily 1/2 Venezuelan. It’s so odd but so cool (odd because it’s a new cultural phenomenon). You see the traditional Peruvian ceviche and churro stands along with the frutero selling very very Peruvian fruit – like lucuma and tuna, alternating with Venezuelan tequenos (BC there’s Peruvian tequenos but they’re nowhere near as good) , chicha (100% different from Peruvian chicha morada), arepas, and cachapas.

**Peruvian Fruit Stand** (Sergio TB/Shutterstock)

**Anticuchos** (Agnes Rivera/Lonely Planet)

**A Venezuelan woman selling arepas and chicha in Lima** (AP Photo/Martin Mieja)

Even though Venezuelans refugees have fled into every single Latin American country and their food will probably influence those cuisines, there’s absolutely no doubt that Venzuelan food will be a central part to Peru’s future cuisine. And it will be 100% unique than what happens in other country’s because of the very nature of Peru’s cuisine.

I’m calling it. There’s gonna be an Aji de Gallina arepa or suspiro a la limena chicha out in a few years and they’re gonna be my favorite food. Quote me on it. Rights reserved below!

Sources

Articles

1. Chua-Eoan, Howard. “Why Lima is the World’s Best Food City, By the Numbers.” Bloomberg, 2017. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-03-02/why-lima-is-the-world-s-best-food-city-by-the-numbers.

2. Lane, Lea. “The Top 10 Food Cities in the World (Three are in Spain).” Forbes, 2017. https://www.forbes.com/sites/lealane/2017/12/13/top-10-food-cities-in-the-world-numbers-five-seven-and-one-are-in-spain/#3362d36b1d7d.

3. Moss, Chris. “How Lima Shed its Dangerous Reputation to Become South America’s Greatest Food City.” The Telegraph, 2017. https://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/south-america/peru/articles/peru-food-guide-best-places-to-eat/.

4. Janetsky, Megan. “Fears Stoke Backlash Against Venezuelans in Peru.” The BBC, 2019. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-49156814

Photography

1. Dupre, Brandon. “The Best Street Food Markets in Peru.” The Culture Trip. https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/peru/articles/the-best-street-food-markets-in-peru/.

2. Rivera, Agnes. “Peruvian Street Eats: Lima’s Top 10 Meals on Wheels.” Lonely Planet. https://theculturetrip.com/south-america/peru/articles/the-best-street-food-markets-in-peru/.

3. “Cachapas with Queso de Mano.” Pinterest. https://www.pinterest.com/pin/531987774731723385/.

4. “Venezuelan Chicha.” hiveminer.com. https://hiveminer.com/Tags/chicha%2Cchichero/Recent.

5. Armario, Christine. “Venezuelan Migrants take Arepas to New Lands amid Crisis.” infotel.ca. https://infotel.ca/newsitem/lt-venezuela-culinary-migration/cp1285950497.

Placemaking and Poverty

Placemaking
The collective re-imagination and reinvention of public spaces as the heart of every community; the capitalization of a local community’s assets, inspiration, and potential resulting in the creation of quality public spaces which contribute to the health, happiness, and wellbeing of the community and its individuals.

This definition of placemaking was coined in the early 90’s by the non-profit, Project for Public Spaces. Since then, this term has become an essential part of the education, work process, and vocabulary of urban designers, planners, and architects, making its way into almost every revolutionary and successful urban development project of every scale of the 21st century.

Examples of projects focused on **Placemaking**.
Source: Project for Public Spaces

While working in Peru I was tasked with the renovation of a playground in a part of Lima’s San Juan de Miraflores district called Pamplona. Pamplona, shown in this post’s featured image, is one of Lima’s poorest asentamientos humanos (the politically correct name for slums in Lima). According to San Juan de Miraflores’ development plan for 2021, Pamplona currently encompasses 135,000 inhabitants. Green spaces are few and far between not only because of a lack of planning nor because Lima sits in a desert, but also because residents in these areas will pay almost up to 10x what residents in Lima’s most affluent areas will pay for water. Water is a luxury that cannot be afforded.

Over the five months working there, many of Pamplona’s residents also mentioned they were scared to be in public spaces. Past and present experiences as well as word-of-mouth harrowing tales of drug use and violent crime’s presence in these areas has created a local culture of fear of these spaces, discouraging the use and therefore the creation and maintenance of green space. A lack of municipal funds as well as a cultural lack of pride in public space has lead to the drastic abuse and abandonment of these areas over the years.

When tasked to renovate the playground I was presented with these challenges as well as a playground in complete disrepair (see photographs below for details). The photograph below shows the state of the playground and is also a good representation of what many public spaces in Lima’s poorest asentamientos humanos turn into.

The aluminum roofing had caved in and rusted. Nails stuck out from the wood and the ground which was also littered with broken glass, sharp rocks, and garbage. One of the slides had huge holes in it from rocks people had thrown onto the aluminum roofing, which had collapsed after years of abuse and the weight of the rocks. The bridge connecting the two towers had also lost most of its wood creating an unstable structure. The remaining iron and wooden railings and posts were so splintered and rusted that just putting your hand on it cut you in an instant. Lastly, it was very lifeless with little color and no inviting features.

My goal was to create an inviting place, not just for aesthetics but to instill a pride within the community for their playground. This would make it a place, meaning it would be a location where the community could gather for festivities and daily recreation creating what urbanists deme as the theory of ‘Eyes on the Street’. This was of utter importance to the success of the project because it would encourage a community safety net that would become intrinsic to the space through its daily use. Retrofitting the area with durable materials was also very important to make repairs as easy and infrequent as possible.

In the end we:

Replaced the roofing and wooden supports with welded metal supports and netted roofing. The flexible net would be much more durable than the aluminum foil because of its elasticity. It’s secure fastening to the welded metal supports and natural rock wall would also allow for people to climb out onto the netting to take off rocks weighing down the structure. Once the netting was up, the difference in temperature underneath it from sunnier areas was mind-boggling. The net’s porousness also allowed sunlight onto the playground below, preventing darker, ominous spaces that could lend themselves to shadier activities.
The broken slide and rusted metal bars were taken out.
The decrepit swing set was replaced and fortified with more welded metal structures.
Salvageable iron and wood were sanded while the rest, es pecially around the bridge, were replaced.
The walls were painted to create an inviting place
And the floor was thoroughly cleaned and replaced with fresh sand.

Before & After

Placemaking is of incredible importance to the success of a city. The aesthetic improvement of a space not only increases quality of life by creating an inviting space, it also creates a local civic pride because of the space’s increased use and exposure to the community. This use contributes to the space becoming an essential part of the community and something near and dear to the hearts of those who use it. This in turn invites more and more people to use it, increasing pride, and increasing the safety of the space.

Understanding the importance of placemaking I believe it only just that every human in society should enjoy its benefits. Even if not designed and executed by a top design firm, I believe this endeavor shows the simplicity in creating a place which is not only beautiful but physically durable and empowering for its users. Obviously I hope this new playground increases the quality of life of the neighbors in the area. However, on another note, I hope it fosters a local conversation and action on the continued change of public spaces in Pamplona and impoverished urban areas around the world.

Other Image Sources:

Marshalls, Colorado Real Estate Journal, Model Media, Placemaking CHA, The Trust for Public Land, Rosslyn, You Are Here,

Redesigning Florence

Being an urban planning student I’ve been asked multiple times by Italians and Americans in Florence how I would redesign the city. To us Americans we may think why there should even be a reason to redesign this picturesque city with its even roofline, famous landmarks, exquisite architecture, and lively street life. However, once you start ingraining yourself in Italian culture you slowly start to hear how comparable Florentine traffic is to Milanese and Roman gridlock.

Remember that, those Italian cities are larger than Florence (Milan’s population is 10 times the size of our beautiful Firenze).

And once you move here you see it. For a city of only 300,000 the gridlock is on par with Atlanta’s or Austin’s. Check out these photos below.

Before I begin, what’s key to my answer is not so much redesigning but about retrofitting Florence. Redesigning implies razing what’s present to the ground and building it up from scratch whereas retrofitting is more about fitting new systems into what is already present – i.e. the majority of what planners are taught in planning school.

Living with Florentines is the best way to get the daily scoop on the state of the city’s transportation situation. My host mom has mentioned that what takes 5 minutes in car without traffic will take you an hour during rush hour. AN HOUR. Parking is another beast. It’s also taken my host family an hour to find a parking spot. Yes again, AN HOUR. Honestly this is something unprecedented that I’ve never seen or heard of before in a city of this size.

With regards to parking, my host family has also told me that Florence is one of the only Italian cities where cars are used more so the get around the historic center, main station, and inner suburbs. To avoid traffic, Italian cities usually build huge underground parking complexes near transportation arteries (bus or trams mainly) and limit the cars that can go in the afore mentioned areas (usually by license plate number) encouraging people to use public transit, therefore decongesting the city. Florence doesn’t have this parking system though and since the majority of Florentines in the center use cars there’s a huge parking demand.

You may be thinking why doesn’t Florence just expand its roads. Well, if you do you destroy precious buildings, history, and culture, ruining a city’s character. And this is definitely important in Italy because urban character is of major importance to one of the nation’s largest industries – tourism. And even if you did expand the roads like we do in America it wouldn’t solve the problem. It would just increase the car volume that can move through the city, encouraging more people to rely on cars. Here’s a link to a study done on how widening roads actually increases traffic.

Based on my two years in school, I’ve noticed that planners today are focusing more and more on planning for the person, not the car, by planning bus or train lines instead of highway construction, or retrofitting bike lanes, sidewalks, and street trees instead of street expansion. This then encourages people to travel shorter distances, localizing jobs instead of encouraging people to traverse a whole metropolitan area during their commute. In the US this localizing idea is more “pie in the sky” (even though it shouldn’t be because it leads to the above issues) because of the market forces that shapes our cities, but in Europe it’s easier to do because of previously existing urban fabrics.

Florence as a whole is very bikeable and walkable since it’s so dense, but alternative transportation infrastructure is few and far between and mainly composed of inefficient and uncomprehensive bus lines which get trapped in the traffic. FAIL. Also, safety-wise it would be a mess to bike from the burbs to the center. However, my visit to Bologna earlier this semester gave me the opportunity to see a comprehensive biking system that covered the whole city and particularly in a way that encouraged biking – multiple green ways bypassed roads altogether to connect apartment complexes and work places by snaking through parks and open/unused city spaces.

The photo below shows one of Bologna’s many greenways retrofitted inside an avenue’s median. Even though traffic whizzes by you, you still feel safe because speed limits are lower than in the U.S. and you have a wall of trees as a cushion between you and the cars.

Just this itself could calm much traffic because a bike, like a car, let’s one localize trips. Someone might not choose to use public transit because it doesn’t take you directly from point A to point B, but bikes make transit more convenient. With a bike one could go quickly to a bus stop that’s maybe a mile away and take the bus to work instead of taking a car down the same road as a bus.

This could definitely help remove car users in the center city and inner suburbs, but, since Florence is much larger than Bologna one would need to incorporate some form of rail along major avenues to encourage people living farther out to get out of the car and on their feet.

Rail can bypass traffic altogether, moving people faster through a city. Thankfully a tram system is finally being incorporated into Florence’s city grid, which my host family has said has already greatly reduced traffic in the areas it reaches. Line 2 was inaugurated on February 11, 2020 and is expected to decrease traffic congestion by 5700 cars and 2400 motorbikes daily. That’s a total of 13 million passengers annually on a single tram line. Line 1 and 3 which have already been in place carry around 24 million passenger annually.

**Florence Tramway Map.**
**The Red, Green, and Light Blue lines are the currently constructed lines. The Blue lines are planned for the future.**
(wikipedia)

On this post, I don’t have the time to fully explain the issues tram construction has caused here, but to keep it short, if city officials had planned well enough, tram construction could have barely disrupted Florence’s traffic flow. Instead it’s lead to an incredible number of standstills (the epitome of Italian political inefficiency).

All in all, Florence can greatly decongest itself while keeping its prized possession – it’s stunning Renaissance center and calm, residential character. How to keep this though should be based on a pedestrian-focused transit system that requires retrofitting biking infrastructure and arterial transit lines to create centric-peripheral connections within the metro area. Based on how things are going I think Florence is on the right track. Only time will tell!

Sources

Firenze Fra Le Citta Piu Congestionate. 2015. Firenze. Firenzetoday.it.

Ferrara, Ernesto. “Firenze in sei anni stesso traffico ma che chaos muoversi.” Firenze.repubblica.it, 2016. https://firenze.repubblica.it/cronaca/2016/10/26/news/firenze_in_sei_anni_stesso_traffico_ma_molto_piu_lento-150577574/

Traffico Firenze, Stella (FI): “E’ emergenza rivedere orari ztl, e fare accordo con Ferrovie per uso stazioni metropolitane.” tgregione.it, 2018. https://www.tgregione.it/traffico-firenze-stella-fi-e-emergenza-rivedere-orari-ztl-e-fare-accordo-con-ferrovie-per-uso-stazioni-metropolitane/

Opening of Line 2 of Florence’s Tram System. 2019. cmbcarpi.com. https://www.cmbcarpi.com/en/news/opening-line-2-florence-tram-system/

Trams in Florence. 2019. wikipedia. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trams_in_Florence

Miami + Paris = Barcelona

Barcelona at Dusk. You can see the perfectly planned, tree-lined streets crisscrossing neo-classical apartments in the foreground, the Sagrada Familia dominating the center, and the mountains and beach in the back.

Yes. You read that right.

When I first arrived to BCN I was STOKED because I’d heard about how great it was: the design, the architecture, the food, the nightlife. Everything. I didn’t know what to expect, but I had very high hopes.

They got blown out of the water (in a good way)!

Barcelona had a particular air like Paris or Vienna: picturesque neoclassical streets which echoed the 1800’s, cobblestone pavement, open air café’s where you could stroll into and order an exquisite pastry (physically and taste-wise) and café cortado, all with a Mediterranean flair and some Gaudí and Catalan thrown in there.

Paris or Barcelona? Check at the end for the answer!

I shouldn’t have to say which city this is.

Paris and Barcelona streets. Which streets go with which city?

But then there was something about the place that just screamed Miami. There was the sun. It made everyone seem so much more lively. There was the hardcore Spanish cuisine influence, since the city’s obviously on the Iberian Peninsula. There was the beach with its waterfront restaurants, shiny hotels, and park-lined promenade bustling with tourists and local beach-goers. Also, the nightlife was epic. Arguably the best I’ve seen in Europe. Things didn’t close untill the sun went up, something I never even saw in NYC (but in Lima and Miami, por supuesto, Papito!). The cherry on top was the amount of South American Spanish accents I heard. I was expecting all of this, but I never knew how much it all resembled Miami.

This mixture gave the city such a unique character, especially with it’s obvious Mediterranean influence. Date palms lined the cobblestone avenues and broke up 19th apartments. There were elements about the buildings that echoed architecture I’d run into on my visits to Palestine and Israel. The bright blue water and dry mountains in the background were a good wrapping for the package. But the bow on it all was the amount of Arabic I heard streaming out of storefronts and apartment windows, especially as I roamed the streets of El Raval and Poble-Sec.

In summary I guess you could say Barcelona’s similarities to the City of Lights are more aesthetic while to Miami they’re more cultural. But there’s definitely overlap on either side of the spectrum. Regardless, Barcelona was incredible to say the least. Insanely multicultural with a vibrant street life and food scene, incredible transportation options, parks, and architecture, and great weather. 10 out of 10 would recommend. I’ll for sure be going back.

Well, there’s your new mathematic formula. Miami + Paris = Barcelona.

Which Photo was Which City?

Photos 2 & 3: Both Barcelona

Photos 6,7,8,9: BCN, Paris, Paris, BCN

Lima’s Transit. LOL.

I’ve been living in Lima, Peru for the past three months and it’s for sure been a change from NYC. Being half Peruvian, having visited Lima 11 other times in my life, and having written my Senior Thesis at NYU on the city’s urban development patterns, I’m pretty used to this place. Thank goodness for that because this time around I don’t have the luxury of getting around in a family member’s car and for sure don’t have enough money to taxi everywhere everyday. I’m limited to Lima’s public transit, and the options are pretty few and far between.

Thankfully though I live and move around the only areas where it exists.

Here’s a street map of Lima