Marking the biggest change in the site’s branding since it first launched, today I am rolling out a completely new Fort Worthology logo. The new logo, a simple and clean design called “The Heart of the City,” symbolizes the human-scaled and people-oriented principles of traditional urbanism with buildings right up on the sidewalk, and a central square framed by surrounding buildings. Reflecting Fort Worthology’s mission of promoting traditional urbanism, smart growth, transit, and sustainability in Fort Worth, the logo’s color scheme reinforces the relationship between these subjects. Rather than the previous three photos of downtown buildings, the new logo forms an abstraction of classic traditional urbanism which can be successfully applied anywhere in the city. The previous font scheme has been jettisoned as well, with the new logo featuring clean, crisp Futura for its text.
The new logo will be gradually integrated into all Fort Worthology materials - it’s already been installed at the top of the site. Joining it will be some tweaking of the site’s visual appearance - nothing radical, but an overall cleanup of the current design.
Somehow, the absolutely tiny Bailey’s Bar-B-Q has survived in the heart of downtown Fort Worth all these years. Surrounded by giants, the place is still open, serving up Bar-B-Q. It’s right across the street from the federal building downtown.
I love the sense of being overwhelmed that came across here. This tiny little building, not much more than a shack to be honest, has stood in downtown Fort Worth as its surroundings have grown to tower over it. Truly a weird, and cool, bit of urban fabric.
Took this at the ITC as an passengers were getting off an Amtrak train - I think this was the Heartland Flyer.
(Well, technically, Fort Worthology turned 2 on the 23rd, but close enough.)
Two years ago, I wrote the first post on Fort Worthology (an open letter to XTO Energy asking for anything but a parking lot at the Landmark Tower site…alas, you can see how much influence the site pulled in its early days). Over the last two years this site has grown from a modest and little-read bit of nerdery to a much bigger, and much more widely read, bit of award-winning nerdery. I’d still be here posting items into the void if not for you, the readership, so I thank you for coming along on this little blogging adventure of mine. The site’s readership has grown a lot in the last two years - over the last month, Fort Worthology has had over 13,000 visitors and over 25,000 page views, which both flatters and slightly frightens me. Thank you, all of you, for reading.
Today, I’m happy to announce an open beta test of the Fort Worthology iPhone/iPod touch Mode. From now on, if you visit Fort Worthology using an iPhone or iPod touch, you won’t see the normal version of the site by default. You’ll instead see the version shown at right (screenshots taken on an iPhone simulator - you won’t see the scrollbar on an actual iPhone or iPod touch, but otherwise the screenshot is accurate). This new iPhone/iPod touch mode should make it much easier and faster to view Fort Worthology on these devices.
This is a beta test, and feedback I get will be incorporated into future revisions. After this version has been tested for a while, I may disable it temporarily to make changes.
Above, you’ll see what you’d see after loading Fort Worthology on an iPhone or iPod touch. The initial site is compressed into fast-loading bits and formatted for iPhone/iPod touch screens. The red number circle on some calendar dates indicates posts that have comments, and how many they have. To read the first bit of a post, touch the downward-pointing arrow on the top right of each entry. Continue reading ‘Fort Worthology iPhone/iPod touch Beta Test Underway’
Here’s a question for those of you out there in Readerland - is there any interest in a Fort Worthology discussion forum? A few of you may recall we tried this once many moons ago, and it bombed fairly heavily. I blame that to some degree on the forum software we were running - it was fairly obscure and not particularly ready for prime time. Perhaps now, though, with our higher traffic and a better forum software, some of y’all might like to have a discussion forum here. My thinking is that it’d be solely focused on Fort Worth development & urbanism discussion, transit & bike advocacy, and historic preservation, but I’m still thinking about that. I think it’d be beneficial to keep the focus tight and simple for the time being.
So, what say you? Would you like to have a Fort Worthology discussion forum?
We keep having so many posts in a day I’m going to have to find a better way to do this. :) Anyway, in case you missed some of today’s posts as they moved down the page, here they are:
The Human Scale
Love Shack Headed To SoSeven?
Streetfilms: Bike Box
The Carnegie Progress
To be perfectly frank, I’m floored. Fort Worthology has won the Readers’ Choice award for Best Blog in Fort Worth in the new Fort Worth Weekly Best of 2008 issue.
We’re coming up on the second anniversary of Fort Worthology - the first post is from October 23rd, 2006. I’m really quite honored and grateful that in that time, this humble little architecture & urbanism nerdery revue I put on has become as big as it is. I am incredibly honored that you, the people who read this site, have spoken and given Fort Worthology the honor of this award. It means an awful lot to me, and I am truly, truly grateful.
Thank you.
“Performance parking guru” Donald Shoup on the madness of minimum parking requirements, the boneheaded, backwards regulation used by many, many, many American cities that dictates the lowest number of off-street parking that a development must allow:
Every developer knows that cities’ minimum parking requirements are often the real limit to urban density. Minimum parking requirements often force developers to provide more parking than they would voluntarily provide, or smaller buildings than the zoning allows. Off-street parking requirements do not promote a walkable and sustainable city. Instead, off-street parking requirements promote a drivable and unsustainable city.
If West Hollywood or any other city waits until there is excellent public transit before it reduces its off-street parking requirements, most people will continue to drive everywhere, even if Santa Claus miraculously builds the transit system.
If planners insist that cities must have good public transit before they can reduce their off-street parking requirements for every land use, cities will never get good public transit. The smartest step cities can take is to convert all their minimum parking requirements into maximum parking limits, without changing any of the numbers.
Via the excellent Streetsblog.
If you’ve noticed that things have been a bit quiet around these parts lately, the image above reveals the reason why. I haven’t had much time to devote to the site because I’m in the process of remodeling a home in Fairmount (the historic urban neighborhood just south of downtown Fort Worth, for those unfamiliar with it). Understandably, this has occupied a lot of my time and energy of late. (The photo above does not reflect current progress.)
Things will likely be a little pokey around here for a while longer as the remodeling consumes most of my free time. Apologies. I hope y’all will understand.
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