Dense UrBan Fabric

In the fifteen year span between 2007 to 2022, on one four-block section of Division Street in Southeast Portland, twenty-two residential units transformed into 363 total units, a shocking 1650% increase in occupancy in just 1000 feet of pavement. How do we notice these kinds of change as we walk along a street? Often, notice gets paid to individual buildings under construction, but what gets replaced often slips from memory in the face of the new edifices towering over the sidewalk. 

This project seeks to represent the massive shifts in urban construction and planning along a formerly sparse corridor of the city using the unconventional map-making medium of embroidery floss. Two maps, hanging side by side, capture what Division Street was in recent living memory, and what it has transformed into by 2022. 

Along the way, Dense Urban Fabric will hopefully provoke questions about the way we inhabit our cities, what gentrification and densification looks like, and the ethical implications that go along with those concepts.