Archive for Housing
July 28, 2009 · Filed under Diversity, Emergence, Heritage, Housing, Urban Structure
Urban society may seem a modern phenomenon but cities have been around for a lot longer than one might think. Indeed, once nomadic tribes began to settle in one location, they saw that it was good, became fruitful, and multiplied. Decades, centuries and millennia passed while war, climate change and human migration all took their toll. Relatively few ancient cities have managed to survive the test of time. Here are 10 that have not only survived, but continue to thrive.
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Popularity: 38% [?]
July 28, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, Density, Housing, Multi-Level Urbanism, Public Art, Public Life
Maybe this can also ease the American housing crisis: Two brothers in Brazil are literally living on the outside of a building in Rio’s Old Center. Since May, twenty-seven-year-old Tiago Primo and his twenty-year-old brother Gabriel, have been sleeping, working and eating on the side of a building 33 feet up in the air for twelve hours every day. They plan to continue this display until August. Um yes, it’s art.
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Popularity: 52% [?]
July 28, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Density, Diversity, Housing, Planning, Suburbs, Zoning
Don’t write the obituary for McMansions just yet. Although mass-produced behemoths more than 3,000-square-feet in size have only been common (and commonly criticized), since the late ’90s, home sizes have never been influenced by need alone. The builder association’s report also points out that houses ballooned most—about 1,000 square feet—during the period between 1970 and 2008, when household size dropped from 3.11 to 2.57. Homes are getting smaller now because people feel poorer, but all that will change once the recession ends and consumer confidence is restored.
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Popularity: 38% [?]
July 24, 2009 · Filed under Density, Diversity, Housing, Master Planning, Place making, Planning, Urban Design, Urban Structure
Because the rebuilding of cities is so important, the effort to do so, if that effort is based on recognizable principles, deserves recognition as something special. If by giving these principles a different name, they can bring together urbanists with different views about, for instance, building new towns, then simply for political reasons it’s worth doing.
Cities are worthy of their own movement.
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Popularity: 31% [?]
July 24, 2009 · Filed under Economics, Housing, Master Planning, Real Estate
A working-class neighborhood became a bohemian theme park, which in turn became a fantasyland for luxury-condo developers. Now, littered with half-built shells of a vanished boom, Williamsburg is looking like something else entirely: Miami.
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Popularity: 16% [?]
July 3, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Density, Diversity, Housing, Urban Design
Cities everywhere are struggling to grow in healthy, eye-pleasing, eco-friendly ways — a concept the Dutch have got dialed. In Seattle, where building big hasn’t always worked out financially or aesthetically, it might be time to try things Amsterdam-style.
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Popularity: 16% [?]
July 3, 2009 · Filed under Density, Housing, Revitalization, Shrinking Cities
The housing crisis and economic downturn that have forced many Americans to stay put are boosting older cities where population had been shrinking or was stagnant, according to Census estimates out Wednesday.
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Popularity: 16% [?]
June 14, 2009 · Filed under Economics, Families, Housing, Real Estate, Shrinking Cities
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.
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Popularity: 15% [?]
June 10, 2009 · Filed under Creative Cities, EcoCities, Health, Housing
On May 16th, New York City unveiled a new initiative, Food Retail Expansion to Support Health (FRESH), which combines zoning changes and some financial incentives to make it less costly for developers to include supermarkets in their projects, and to allow the construction of supermarkets in light manufacturing districts without a special permit.
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Popularity: 9% [?]
June 8, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, End of Cheap Oil, Heritage, Housing
Much like every big city, Toronto has an aging array of Post WW-II high rise apartment buildings. When they were built in the 1960’s they were considered the height of modernity and dense urban design, but now as they are close to reaching the end of their intended lifespan, they are hugely inefficient and lack the qualities that make a sustainable, viable, urban community. There are no markets or grocery stores, inadequate public transportation, and little retail or local jobs. Rather than tear the towers down to start anew, the Mayor and City of Toronto want to use this vast resource of buildings and revitalize the city to become a more sustainable, walkable, greener community.
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Popularity: 14% [?]
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