Recommended reading: Alan Wiig’s “everyday structures”, a blog “explor[ing] the place of infrastructure in the urban landscape”, with a particular focus on “Hertzian space” and digital communications infrastructure. Wiig is studying geography at Temple University, so his blog most typically deals with landscapes in Philadelphia or its surrounds. Like many of mammoth‘s favorite things at the moment, “everyday structures” deals with the quotidian material conditions of landscape, posting both readings from Sanford Kwinter or Henri Lefebvre and snapshots of Pelton wheels or a homeless camp juxtaposed with broadband lines. In a recent conversation with a couple other landscape architects, I noted that I think geographers are, in many ways, doing a better job of conceptualizing landscape than landscape architects, particularly with relation to infrastructural conditions in the networked city — Wiig’s blog is an excellent example of that.

[Image at top is from the post “fiber along the road” on “everyday structures”.  Wiig captions — and I quote the full caption because it is the combination of image and caption that makes the typical snapshot on “everyday structures” fascinating — “Automobiles turning, the fiber optic cable runs parallel to the road. Marlton Pike West, in the Garden State. That little white and orange marker in front of the “SO Cornell Ave –>” and “ALL TURNS –>” signs indicates the Internet and other forms of digital communication are flowing alongside the automotive and pedestrian traffic on this route.”]