‘Urban Design’ for Jake’s Theme

Jake explains his challenge like this, “Urban design is the process of designing and shaping cities, towns and villages. Whereas architecture focuses on individual buildings, urban design address the larger scale of groups of buildings, of streets and public spaces, whole neighbourhoods and districts, and entire cities, to make urban areas functional, attractive, and sustainable.”

Here is my choice of pics for Jake’s challenge.

The Megacity of Hong Kong, whose name derives from ‘Hsaing Kang’, meaning fragrant harbour, rates as one of the most populous cities in the world.

Here is a view taken looking over Kowloon to Victoria Harbour. How it has changed since my mom lived there as a child in the 1930’s, when she used to be taken to school in a rickshaw.

The city itself is really like most of the world’s cities, except for the signs being all in Chinese.

It doesn’t look terrible busy in these photos, but to me it felt like wall to wall people, especially at night-time, when all the locals as well as the tourists seemed to be out on the streets. I believe some family apartments are so small, (only 40-50 sq metres), and have bunk beds overlapping with cooking areas and food storage. Is it surprising that people only go home to their ‘cubicle apartments to sleep, and that they conduct their social life outside ?

Here is one of the side streets of the city.

Although Hong Kong is one of the richest cities in the world, in the back streets, the signs of poverty were very evident. Almost a fifth of the population of this glittering city, are suffering extreme financial hardship.

To see more interpretations of Jake’s theme, just click here.

Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge: Roads

Cee’s roads challenge this week, had me searching through a few of my albums for something different. I’ve travelled many roads, in many countries, and I do try not to snooze, just in case I miss something.

This long, narrow and very winding road up to Machu Picchu really kept my heart in my mouth. Not a chance I was going to fall asleep on that coach, as I had to keep breathing in every time I saw another vehicle coming towards us down the hill.

This is the road through the town at the bottom of the hill, also very narrow.

A dusty, stony road through Bolivia, made for quite a bumpy ride.

Another sand road through a Bolivian town. Tarmac would be a real luxury.

Back to the USA, and a drive down the highway in Montana under clear blue May skies, was far less stressful. We could see Yellowstone in the distance.

As we travelled through Yellowstone National Park in Wyoming the weather became less Spring-like, and the road was quite slippery.

Back to civilisation, and Times Square is much more populated of course. You can hardly see the road for cars and people. 🙂

Here’s the Lincoln Tunnel, as we sped our way out of the city. No stopping allowed of course. 🙂

Hong Kong roads are also very busy, and quite hair-raising to cross.

In Xian, the roads were extremely congested, even though there weren’t many if any cars around.

Of course what ever road you may be travelling on, it’s always nice to ride in style, so from the ridiculous to the sublime. I was most impressed when our New York taxi arrived. I was expecting one of those yellow cabs.

To see more interpretations of Cee’s theme, just click here.

Weekly Photo Challenge: Near and Far

This gallery contains 8 photos.

Here are my photos for this week’s ‘Near and Far’ WordPress Photo Challenge. The first was taken from our colourful long-tail boat, as we were ferried around the ‘Khlongs’ in Bangkok. This one was taken from the Moorish castle which … Continue reading →

Jake’s Sunday Post: Road

“The real winners are not those at the top but those who have come the farthest over the toughest roads. Your victory may never make the headlines. But you will know about it, and that’s what counts.”  Ernest A. Fitzgerald

Jake’s Sunday Post challenge “Road” had me searching through my photos. Hundreds of roads to choose from, but I’ve chosen a few of those which I remember the best.

Here we were in a busy main street in Hong Kong, one of the best places to shop in Asia, and an added bonus was, no sales tax. 😀

The main road on the French Polynesian island of Bora Bora, was definitely not a shopping Mecca. 😉

I never realized just how wide the Great Wall of China was until we actually walked along it. The section of the Great Wall at Badaling, is about 26 feet high and 23 feet wide at its base, large enough to allow six horsemen to ride along the wall. In mountainous northern China, it served as an elevated highway in ancient times. It was very impressive to see in reality, and we did what tourists do; wandered along it, snapping photos.

Of course we didn’t walk the full length of this road, as it stretches for almost 2,500 miles, from Central Asia to the East China Sea. 😉

At the end of our Li River cruise, we finished up in Yangshuo. As you can see, there’s not a car in sight on the road through this town.

On our way from Las Vegas to San Francisco, we stayed overnight at a place called Bishop in the spectacular Eastern Sierra region of California. The next day, we turned onto Highway 120, the road through Yosemite National Park. You may notice that I wasn’t dressed for the snow. It was the beginning of July, and I’d assumed that being summer in California, it would be really warm.

Another very snowy road, is this one on our way from Thermopolis to Rapid City, on our road trip to Yellowstone Park. We didn’t expect that at the end of May, we would have such wintry weather and with blizzards too.

Driving along the road through Yellowstone, we encountered some rather unusual pedestrians. These Bison thought the road was built for their use. At one stage, we had to wait behind a whole herd, until they decided to move off the road and back onto the grass.

This beach-side road in Bali, yielded quite a few treasures worthy of purchase.

Here is one of the roads through the main shopping area of Phuket. As you can see, once again,  the main mode of transport in this Asian town, is also by bicycle and motorbike.

Well I guess that’s enough roads for one challenge. My post is beginning to remind me of that old Bob Dylan song, “Blowing in the wind………..How many roads must a man walk down…….”

Have a great day everyone, whatever road you may be travelling on.