Saturday, July 24, 2004

Everything has to start something

Welcome to Land & Space Twin Cities. I'm Mark Danielson, and I've been working to chronicle changes in the Twin Cities urban landscape since 1996. Over the past eight years I've taken thousands of photographs of new buildings going up and old ones going down, and have spent significant amounts of time researching the buildings in those photographs. Over the coming years I hope to share this huge mass of information with you, and hopefully get some of you involved in tracking the changes as well. (Hey, the metro area has over 2.5 million people in it. That's a lot to cover.)

While simply figuring out what should be photographed has been a challenge, it's nothing compared to the task of organizing everything in a way that's understandable and accessible. I originally aimed to launch this project in 2000, but reality interviened, as it has every year since. I've found myself confronted with the same issues this year, so instead of taking more time trying to figure out how to organize everything, I decided to just go ahead and start with something.

And that's what you see now. A text-only weblog may be a strange way to start a site that'll eventually be dominated by photography, but it's better than nothing.

The Twin Cities is a fascinating place to live. I hope you enjoy my view of it.