S2L77: Pakistan's Swat Valley

Swat Valley, Pakistan
March 20-21, 1977

Morning hike up the mountain behind the hotel.
Evening dinner and costume party.
Spent the day napping on a blanket in the yard.

Source: Personal travel notes.

From 1977 03 17 Pakistan

More after the jump.

Forget Main Street. Focus on Greenville.

Patrick Kennedy, the CarFreeInBigD guy who wants to tear out IH 345 in downtown Dallas, takes a look at downtown Richardson with an eye towards "mining the poor utilization of land for gold."

The first thing he concludes is that there's not much that can be done to revive Main Street. The street can't be narrowed, sidewalks widened and more cafe space created. Main Street is already "at capacity, if not over, moving more than 30,000 cars per day as the primary firehose delivery system to/fro 75. The only way to increase pedestrian space here would be to knock down buildings."

As much as I hate giving up on my hopes for Main Street, I came to much the same conclusion when I reviewed the City of Richardson's own Main Street study. "The drawing shows wide tree-lined sidewalks, a tree-lined median, a lane for parallel parking and two lanes of traffic in either direction. How they're going to get all that in the narrow space available is unexplained. What is there now are narrow sidewalks and barely enough street to squeeze two overloaded lanes in either direction."

After the jump, Kennedy realigns Richardson's focus north-south, not east-west.

Before Silicon Valley, There Was Paper Valley

From 2013 06 Wisconsin

Long before Richardson's Telecom Corridor or even California's Silicon Valley, the Fox River Valley in northeastern Wisconsin was known as Paper Valley. The combination of Wisconsin's vast timber resources and water and power from the Fox River was ideal for making paper. The resulting paper mills created prosperous communities and wealthy paper barons with names like Kimberly and Clark. A hundred years ago, it was said that there were more millionaires per capita in Neenah, Wisconsin, than in any other city in America.

After the jump, the Fox River today.

Meek's Cutoff (2010)

IMDB

Meek's Cutoff (2010): Realistic portrayal of Western migration. Unvarnished. Unromantic. Moving. Pioneers were tough as nails. A-

Insurance Intersection

Richardson is in need of rebranding. Telecom Corridor is so 1990s. With all the recent hoopla over State Farm building three new office towers at the intersection of the Bush Tollway and Central Expressway, may I suggest "Insurance Intersection?"

Absurd, you say? Well, sure. But think about why. Last week, my whining about the missed opportunity for these 186 acres of prime real estate focused on the form of the development (see here and here). I claimed it was more 1980s traditional office building, with maybe some nearby apartment buildings to come, than it was 21st century mixed-use, transit-oriented development.

After the jump, what I did not focus on: State Farm itself.