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Showing posts from February, 2018

Electric cars can fly into space but not charge in the city

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The Car of the Year designation bestowed by automotive magazines feels just as anachronistic as beauty queens or the Man of the Year title that the Time awarded before they discovered that women are people, too. But this year and last year the car of the year has been electric, a fact that urban planners need to pay attention to, no matter that the car in general has long been pushed from its pedestal as the sole driver of development supremely shaping everything in its path. Cities need to prepare better for electric cars. Car of the Year 2017: An all electric Tesla 3 (Photo: Automobile ) The magazine Automobile gave the crown of Car of the Year to the Tesla model 3, a nod to hipsters and tycoons alike and a nod to a hyped brand whose stock value is higher than that of General Motors. The Tesla legend has reached new heights since February 6 when a Tesla Roadster began navigating through space atop SpaceX's Falcon Heavy rocket. A feat that is derided as the ultimate obscene stu

Spatial History of South India: Custom Road in Calicut (4)

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Customs Road in Calicut, Kerala is short, beginning at a T intersection with Beach Road at the Arabian Sea and ending at another T junction just two blocks inland. Its name stems from British colonial times when there must have been secondary custom functions here related to international trade in spices. The local nickname is Kashtam, Malaylam for "what a pity", a not entirely inept description in spite of a promising lighthouse on the foot of the street marking the coastline. Calicut (Kozhikode), the 45' lighthouse from 1903 which replaced a 90' older lighthouse (Photo: Philipsen) Regardless whether one sees the road as one to be pittied, or one that goes back to times when Calicut at the Beypore river was a global port and trade center for spices, it was elevated to being an object for research as part of a project for architecture students from Baltimore's Morgan State University conducted together with students from the local MES architecture school. Research