Import Export Architecten designed a new type of ‘small scale’ urban camping. The mobile UC can be implanted in any city centre that likes to experiment with this new type of camping. UC is a place where adventurous city wanderers can stay overnight, meet other campers and find a safe shelter with basic designed practical facilities.
Popularity: 43% [?]
The Lego ‘City Corner’ set happens to be a superb example of sound urban design. Notice first the mixed use development, where people can live and work in the same spot, in this case there is residential use above the pizzeria. Almost every truly vibrant place has a mix of land uses, as opposed to segregated uses where people live in one district, work in another, and shop in yet another, etc.
Popularity: 54% [?]
Dozens of US cities may have entire neighbourhoods bulldozed as part of drastic “shrink to survive” proposals being considered by the Obama administration to tackle economic decline.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Villa Grow by Swedish architects Kjellgren Kaminsky, is an adaptable housing concept catering to starting families that can be extended as they grow.
Popularity: 15% [?]
Biking and walking are the principal means of transport within the suburb of Vauban, Germany.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Each morning, about 450 students travel along 17 school bus routes to 10 elementary schools in this lakeside city at the southern tip of Lake Como. There are zero school buses.
In 2003, to confront the triple threats of childhood obesity, local traffic jams and — most important — a rise in global greenhouse gases abetted by car emissions, an environmental group here proposed a retro-radical concept: children should walk to school.
Popularity: 7% [?]
From Porch to Patio, a 1975 piece by Richard Thomas, discusses the transition in American society from the semi-public gathering place in front of a house to the private space in the back.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Gardening advocates, who have long struggled to get America grubby, have dubbed the newly planted tracts “recession gardens” and hope to shape the interest into a movement similar to the victory gardens of World War II.
Popularity: 9% [?]
The downturn has accomplished what a generation of designers and planners could not: it has turned back the tide of suburban sprawl. In the wake of the foreclosure crisis many new subdivisions are left half built and more established suburbs face abandonment. Cul-de-sac neighborhoods once filled with the sound of backyard barbecues and playing children are falling silent. Communities like Elk Grove, Calif., and Windy Ridge, N.C., are slowly turning into ghost towns with overgrown lawns, vacant strip malls and squatters camping in empty homes. In Cleveland alone, one of every 13 houses is now vacant, according to an article published Sunday in The New York Times magazine.
Popularity: 10% [?]
Josefina, the Italian grandmother who lives next door to my house in Toronto, says she will never leave the neighbourhood, even though she can afford a house somewhere else.
It’s the excellent cuts from Vince the butcher, the suitably pious service at St. Anthony’s and the neighbours who understand her rural dialect. Her sons have all moved out to live among the big houses of the outer suburbs, but she’s staying.
Ana, the Portuguese girl who serves me coffee down the street, would very much like to get out of the ‘hood, which seems restrictive and limiting to her. But her stonemason dad doesn’t get much work, and her mom doesn’t speak English, so they’re stuck.
Popularity: 14% [?]