Finding beauty, and questions, in the concrete.

David Gutman shares news and images of the work of Laura Hamje, who has spent two years creating beautiful paintings of the Alaskan Way Viaduct—which will close for good in a month.
You may have your own photos of the viaduct. Maybe you’ll get a piece of the rubble. But Hamje, 32, has spent the last two years creating a more durable, comprehensive memorial of the massive elevated highway that’s dominated Seattle’s waterfront since the middle of last century.
Hamje is showing 53 paintings of the soon-to-be-extinct viaduct, which loomed for 65 years before a tunnel boring machine named Bertha slowly cleared a new underground path for cars along the Seattle waterfront.
According to Gutman, Hamje's work captures the all of the many experiences of the viaduct, to wrestle with an ambivalence about the project.
She paints it, and the painting, in turn, inspires feelings in others. But after more than two years of incessant looking at, and thinking about, the viaduct, Hamje’s like a lot of us — still not sure how she feels about it.
It’s noisy, it’s polluting, it severs the waterfront. But it moves people — well over 100,000 a day. It’s got those views. And it’s just been a part of daily life for so long.
FULL STORY: ‘Time’s running out’: Seattle painter memorializes the soon-to-be-dismantled viaduct through art

Montreal Mall to Become 6,000 Housing Units
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Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

California High-Speed Rail's Plan to Right Itself
The railroad's new CEO thinks he can get the project back on track. The stars will need to align this summer.

Nevada Legislature Unanimously Passes Regional Rail Bill
If signed by the governor, the bill will create a task force aimed at developing a regional passenger rail system.

How Infrastructure Shapes Public Trust
A city engineer argues that planners must go beyond code compliance to ensure public infrastructure is truly accessible to all users.

Photos: In Over a Dozen Cities, Housing Activists Connect HUD Cuts and Local Issues
We share images from six of the cities around the country where members of three national organizing networks took action on May 20 to protest cuts to federal housing funding and lift up local solutions.
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