where this begins

is with a discussion of a Koolhaas interview where he describes highway on-ramps in Lagos, Nigeria, which are spontaneously converted by entrepeneurs into open-air markets dealing in car parts, grey/black market materials, etc. (S_, do you have that link still?)
here's something i just dug out of my end of the correspondence:
> i would like to see those on-ramps. (it sounds like a
> scene out of Gibson, exactly parallel to that Golden
> Gate Bridge occupied as residential space -- but then
> Gibson and Koolhaas are so parallel they could be
> secret twins). the onramps seem to presage or promise
> some really sweet daydream -- that one day we might
> take back the highway-space that sliced up our cities,
> and use the elevated land as a second ground. i
> actually daydream about this every time i walk below
> the BQE, especially down towards Red Hook where it's
> really high. how much of a static load could that
> steelwork hold? surely enough for a row of homes on
> either side, with a bike-path running down the middle.
> that would do.
As Mana steered the rental car out of NYC, in the wee hours of 9/16/01,
we
picked up speed on the BQE. Sleep deprived, rattled, distraught, I hung
my
head out the window and looked back. Lower Manhattan was illuminated by
work
lights, amorphous against the cloud of smoke and debris.
> the High Line project (http://www.thehighline.org/)
> looks promising. already there are some great
> experiments there -- do you know the gas station on
> 14th that is essentially hung from the existing rail
> line? one couldn't ask for stronger bones to build on.
Re FHL: wow, I can dig it. The earthquake that hit Seattle in, um,
whenever
that was (I was in NYC), resulted in the condemning of a few buildings
along
the waterfront, most notably for me, The OK Hotel, site of the high
points
of my adolescence (since "resurrected" in the revamped Rendezvous down
in
Belltown). The viaduct, however, is going to have to go. The yuppies
say
it's ugly. I love rolling into Seattle on the ferry and seeing the
skyline
with this huge gray elevated highway thing cutting across the
front...good
article that has decidedly inflected my thinking:
http://www.thestranger.com/2003-03-13/feature.html