Cahokia Mounds / Borobudur and Prambanan

Indonesia will one day be a very powerful country.  It has the people, resources, and geographic position to be part of the BRIC conversation (Brazil, Russia, India, China).  Taken together with the rest of ASEAN, it will be influencial indeed.

The country is dominated by Javanese culture, and in the heart of Java is Yogyakarta the seat of the batik craft tradition.  Anywhere you go in town you'll see people making stuff.

Batik is mostly patterns for clothing and household things like drapes and tablecloths.  Sometimes they use the same skills to make paintings though.  You can put a light behind them and they glow!

If you look through the paintings you'll see a few themes again and again.  Volcanos, specifically Merapi, scenes from the Ramayama, images of Borobudur, and maybe Prambanan.  The Ramayama is an important Hindu play that's performed in Yogya almost every night and at Prambanan every so often.  Prambanan is a UNESCO site just outside of town on the way to Solo.

I went there at dawn.

Everybody goes to Prambanan at dawn.  That's how you're supposed to see it.  Although sunset with the Ramayama is nice too.  Sadly it was half destroyed by an earthquake a few years back, but they're slowly putting it back together again.  They've still got the materials, UNESCO just doesn't quite know how to put them back where they belong.

Borobudur, the other UNESCO site near Yogya, is also best visited at dawn.

That's Merapi on the right, a volcano I climbed in the dark and reached the top of at dawn.  I saw the sunrise every morning I was in Yogja.

Borobudur is an ancient Buddhist temple and you're supposed to walk around and around it in circles until you reach the top and realise the foolishness of Samsara and become englightened.  I uh... just walked up and down randomly and then went off to buy stuff...

There's a big park around the 'candi' and you can walk around for hours if you'd like.  There are lots of gift shops and food stalls at the outskirts of the area.

Yogyakarta, like Siam Reap in Cambodia, is small but very valuable for its guesthouses and world treasures.  The people in the city know this and they set everything up so tourists can enjoy themselves and see things in the proper light.  It isn't enough to see Borobudur, you've got to see it at sunrise.  Nobody is willing to take you there at any time other than 4 am.  "Why would you want to be there in the middle of the day?" they ask.



Back on the homefront, St. louis also has a UNESCO site.  In fact, the St. Louis area used to have the greatest civilization in what is now the United States.  What's left of it in St. Louis?  The Sugar Loaf Mound...

Every other mound in Missouri has been removed as a barrier to progress.  How could you possibly keep mounds in an urban context?  Really?

Oh right, parks!  Why didn't we think of that?  Those are the burial mounds of Shilla kings in Gyeongju, South Korea, by the way.  They're beautiful.  Obviously Koreans care about their history.  Why don't we?

Perhaps the mound builders of ancient St. Louis aren't really culturally connected to the modern residents.  Perhaps maintaining ancient treasures and building a tourism industry around them just never occurred to us.

That would explain why our UNESCO site is not a national park.  It's a state park, and a bit of run down one at that.

I'm pretty sure all that erosion doesn't have to happen.  This could be much more than a place you just drive your car past.

The whole park could be much better.

Why do most people in St. Louis never make it to the top of Monk's Mound?  Why don't we go there to watch the sunrise on New Year's morning in great hordes?  Couldn't every hotel in St. Louis offer a sunrise package tour?  Where are our traditional performances and cultural connections?  Sure the culture's long gone now, but we've still got natives around, that's why the Osage Nation bought Sugar Loaf.  Let's celebrate the Osage.  Let's celebrate the Clovis!  Let's connect this to Mastadon State Park and the Center for American Archeology.  We can maintain the region's history for future generations and for tourism revenue.

We should take care of our things.  UNESCO sites belong to the world.

New Grand Viaduct / Seoul Bridge Cafes

There are plans to redo one of the most important connections in the city of St. Louis.  The Grand Viaduct connects the two campuses of St. Louis University over the Grand Metrolink Station.  It's a vital link, and it will be a major stop on our future Grand BRT route.  Right now, it isn't so great at all.  Enjoy this slide show,

Scott Avenue Transit Plaza CCP Feb 09 2010 (2)

This is a chance to build an iconic landmark, link the city together, and make a major transit node.  Wise locals have already noted that the original bridge, which was removed to make way for the current monster, is the most preferred option.

As modern architects don't like to build things as nice as they used to, we're stuck with this new thing.  It's a remarkable improvement over what's there now.  Bathrooms, bus shelters, elevators, etc. 

The main thing this bridge needs to do is connect to the station beneath it.  People and bikes need to move up and down without hassle or time delay. 

Seoul

I can't help but compare the proposed Grand Viaduct to the new cafes that Seoul has attached to all of their bridges. 

Seoul has a lot of very large bridges.  They connect the two halves of the city.  Until recently, they didn't do a good job of connecting the two halfs of the waterfront park. 

Both banks of the Han River have magnificent bike trails.  Getting from one bank to the other requires a bridge.  Almost all the bridges go over the bike trails, so how does one get their bike up there to use them?  Enter the bridge cafes.

Almost every bridge has now been outfitted with large shoulders for bikes and pedestrians. Now many bridges are getting up to four cafes--two at each end.

Maybe some of these cafes might go in the middle of the bridges eventually,

These cafes are meant to encourage activity by the river.  It's part of the new bike friendly Seoul that mayor Oh has been trying to promote.  You can drink coffee and enjoy a nice view.

 Though these things have been in place for a while, and I've been biking up and down the Han, I have to admit, I've never been in one of them.  I have however made use of some of the elevators.

I've also been on buses crossing bridges and have been annoyed to visit the new bus stops at both ends of the bridge.  Buses in Seoul usually go down the middle of the street.  That's true on bridges too.  The bus lanes are in the middle.

 So what brilliant planner decided that this would be a good idea?

Note in that last picture the red line in the middle of the bridge is the bus lane and the short red strip on the side is the bus stop.  Buses have to slow down and cut across several lanes of traffic to stop, then cut back across to the bus lane, then back to the next bus stop, then back to the bus lane.  Obviously for the sake of the bridge, the bus lane should be moved to the shoulder.  I've never seen anyone get on or off at these stops anyway.  Maybe people aren't aware yet.  It is certainly great to have easy access to the park by bus, but the current setup has a bit of a time lag for commuters going from one side of the city to the other.

St. Louis

I am posting all this in relation to the Grand Viaduct because I think there's much to be considered.  A few people have expressed irritation with the planned placement of the elevators at Grand Station.  They want the elevators on the platform, not off to the side.  Perhaps the elevators could work at a 45 degree angle.  I have used such an elevator before. 

Perhaps the proposed bus shelters could expand outwards and incorporate a cafe(s) that pay(s) rent to Metro.  It would not only be TOD, but it would help lend destination status to the plaza below, offer safety at night and warmth in winter, and generally be full of SLU students that suddenly think transit is hip.

Perhaps the new Grand BRT needs to consider where they would like to put their bus lanes.  The current design would require them to run buses along the shoulder of the road, which means a lot of honking at cars trying to parallel park and crowding on sidewalks near bus stops.

MRT Missouri / MRT Minnesota

Have you ever seen this sign before?

That uninformative sign with the bike is a mystery isn't it?  What could MRT stand for?  What is that upsidedown acron supposed to mean?  MRT isn't mass rapid transit here.  MRT is Mississippi River Trail. 

Check out the full map,

The Mississippi River Trail has a long way to go before it is complete, but sections of it have been built.  It should run from Minneapolis all the way to New Orleans.  Google Maps now has bike routes, and I've put together a few of the major cities it goes through here,

(click to expand)

Memphis doesn't have much at all.  St. Louis is notable for the Katy Trail running off along the Missouri River, but doesn't have much along the Mississippi.  The Quad Cities have a good trail.  The Twin Cities are amazing though.  Both sides of the river!

Bicycling Magazine published a list of the most bicycle friendly cities in America and it was a big upset.  Portland was dethroned by Minneapolis.  The Twin Cities are number one in America for biking.  St. Louis weighs in at number 38.

St. Louis,

doesn't quite look like what we're aiming at,

It just doesn't compare does it?  We'll get there! 

Check out the Twin Cities,

We're building, but so are they.  Twin Cities Greenways has plans for more greenways.

As we both share the Great River Road and the MRT, this is good news.  We'll build together and meet up in Iowa.

There's a bike share program called Nice Ride Minnesota that's starting up.  The bikes are going to look like this,

See that blue section and the word, Do?  That's the program's main sponsor.  Health care companies that care about people's health???  Impossible, but true.  This is a bold new America that we're living in. 

Perhaps you've heard of Dan Buettner?  He's a native of St. Paul.  He researches Blue Zones and has partnered with the AARP to make a Blue Zone in southern Minnesota.  The big mystery is if and when the Twin Cities will attempt to become one giant Blue Zone.

What is a Blue Zone?  Watch,



St. Louis has something like that.  Trailnet calls them Healthy, Active, and Vibrant Communities.

I believe the cities along the Mississippi can learn from and help each other.  We've got some of the same goals.

Beer Caves / SubTropolis

Missouri has a lot of caves.  As a teenager, I went on a camping trip inside one.  I slept there, found crickets, and got myself profoundly muddy by the end of it.

Not only are there a lot of caves in Missouri, but there are a whole lot of mines too.  St. Louis based companies like Doe Run operate mining operations throughout the ozarks.

Kansas City has 90 percent of the world's underground office space.  10% of the KC area's industrial space is underground.  There is an incredible facility called SubTropolis, 55,000,000 sq ft with roads, rail, and office space.  It is home to the US Postal Service's stamp storage unit, an EPA logistics center, and more.

They even use the space for cool events like something called the, "Groundhog Run"

Radon poisoning aside, underground caverns have a lot of uses.  Many St. Louisans know that our traditional brewing industry was heavily reliant upon the many limestone caves in the St. Louis region.  The Lemp Brewery for instance was built above the Cherokee Caves in order to store beer down there and keep it cool.  Most of that has been filled in by I-55 construction, like caves across the region have, but there are still many examples in the St. Louis area of caves in active use. 

One man in Jefferson County has gotten a lot of attention for the home he built inside an abandoned mine,

Kansas City has managed to make a lot of use out of the natural and built underground legacies in their region.  St. Louis should do the same.  Perhaps St. Louis and Kansas City should work together to make better use of the state's sunken spaces.  Mines for other uses, caves for conservation if possible.

In 2007, I went to a botanical garden on the island of Jeju, in South Korea.  This garden had several lava tubes on its property.  The paths around the garden lead down into these lava tubes and then out again back into the garden,

I admired it because it managed to make a seamless transition between the surface and below ground flora and fauna.  The St. Louis Zoo and the Missouri Botantical Gardens could probably do something similar.  Both will surely expand in the future.  If either happens to take over land with any sort of natural caves, then perhaps the life in those caves could be better showcased. 

The zoo has been transitioning towards local conservation ecology for a while.  Perhaps they could work on programs to perserve endangered species like the Indiana Bat and the Gray Bat.  Bats are important after all.  We can learn from Austin, Texas and their bat bridge.

1.5 million bats live on a single bridge in Austin and manage to eat up to 20,000 lbs. of insects in a single night.  If St. Louis had an army of bats like that, we'd never need to worry about the West Nile Virus, or local pest control budgets.  Bats and purple martins would do just fine.  We'd also attract quite a few tourists.

Washington University and the Danforth Plant Science Center hope to make biofuels from algae into a major industry.  The question remains of just where we would grow the vast amounts of algae needed to make fuels for commercial use.  Perhaps we can use the algae produced in our waste water treatment processes (which does involve some caves btw). 

Professors in Rolla believe that we could fill the vast mines of southern missouri with water and LEDs and grow algae underground.   This would put St. Louis in charge of a state-wide industry.  The algae only needs a specific frequency of light, so the LED's are expected to use less energy than the algal fuels would produce.  We will see how the research for this progresses over time. 

Carthage, Missouri has an underground motel, and despite occasional flooding, there's some potential for further developments in the area known as the Carthage Underground.

St. Gen has an underground winery.  There's a great tradition of storing wine in caves, and there are quite a lot of wineries in the Missouri Rhineland.  Who needs to make a cellar when there are caves and mines all around? 

Meramec Caverns, a major tourist attraction for Missouri, has recently started to install ziplines.  Back in the Civil War era, the caves were used as a saltpeter plant.

Our caves and mines have loads of industrial potential it seems.  We should explore other ideas along these lines.  How can a vast network of caves and mines be useful to economic, and urban development? 

Why don't local St. Louis breweries offer cave tours?

How can we use caves and mines more wisely in conjunction with our drainage and sewer systems?