infrastructure

Underground Typography. 1957: “It’s a big job. But for the sake of the subway itself and for the sake of the city it serves and for the people of that city it must be done soon.” For all the urban type spotters, typographer and historian Paul Shaw turns out an epic history on the evolution of type and wayfinding design in the NYC (and a few other) subway systems. Of particular interest is the push and pull of internal and external influences, and the spread of good ideas from one transit system to another across the Atlantic.

Previously from Shaw on this blog: typography and fascist architecture in Rome.

America’s infrastructure is crumbling. “More than one in four of America’s nearly 600,000 bridges need significant repairs or are burdened with more traffic than they were designed to carry.… A third of the country’s major roadways are in substandard condition — a significant factor in a third of the more than 43,000 traffic fatalities each year.… The number of dams that could fail has grown 134 percent since 1999 to 3,346.… Underground, aging and inadequate sewer systems spill an estimated 1.26 trillion gallons of untreated sewage every year.”

It’s not just rising costs or a lack of funds: “Infrastructure repairs simply aren’t as sexy as ribbon-cuttings. The public and politicians are more likely to support new construction, leaving existing structures wanting.”

CrashStat. Display pedestrian and bicyclist fatalities from 1995-2005 on a Google Map of New York City.