Archive for Master Planning
November 17, 2009 · Filed under Emergence, Grassroots, Master Planning, Place making
The importance of small ideas to urban revitalization isn’t widely appreciated. Particularly in the most recent real-estate cycle, many planners, design professionals, and developers produced grand schemes instead. But profound change is more likely to result from a deeply considered idea that alters an essential component of an urban environment than from an elaborate master plan that requires abundant resources and considerable political capital. While some large-scale plans, like Rockefeller Center, are successful, most become impersonal, overbearing failures—or, even more often, are stillborn, the victims of the long process of assemblage, environmental remediation, community participation, zoning adoption, and the securing of financing.
More…
Popularity: 31% [?]
November 3, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, EcoCities, Ecosystems, Landscape, Master Planning, Nature, Parks, Public Life, Public Space, Urban Design, Water
For half a century, a dark tunnel of crumbling concrete encased more than three miles of a placid stream bisecting this bustling city.
The waterway had been a centerpiece of Seoul since a king of the Choson Dynasty selected the new capital 600 years ago, enticed by the graceful meandering of the stream and its 23 tributaries. But in the industrial era after the Korean War, the stream, by then a rank open sewer, was entombed by pavement and forgotten beneath a lacework of elevated expressways as the city’s population swelled toward 10 million.
Today, after a $384 million recovery project, the stream, called Cheonggyecheon, is liberated from its dank sheath and burbles between reedy banks. Picnickers cool their bare feet in its filtered water, and carp swim in its tranquil pools.
More…
Popularity: 62% [?]
August 4, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Artificial Landscapes, Density, Generative Design, Master Planning, Urban Design, Urban Structure, Waterfronts
Visiondivison shared their entry for the Koivusaari Idea Competition to create a new city district on an island just outside Helsinki, Finland. The competition asked participants to organize a master plan for the island that would provide the framework for further planning. Visiondivison’s proposal, Urban Fade, is comprised of a highly efficient city grid that allows users the option of moving around the district to interact with the different areas.
More…
Popularity: 82% [?]
July 24, 2009 · Filed under Cities from Scratch, Emergence, Generative Design, Master Planning, Urban Design, Urban Structure
Mixed-used neighborhoods work because they provide a marketplace for mixed people. Each person brings along his own specialized economic know-how, and so knows how best to provide in details the building program for his specific economic activity. A neighborhood, in that sense, becomes mixed-used because it is the product of mixed users all contributing their part to its complexity.
More…
Popularity: 48% [?]
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.
More…
Popularity: 43% [?]
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.
More…
Popularity: 20% [?]
July 8, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Cities from Scratch, Heritage, Master Planning
Architecture can be tough on second bananas. A case in point: Edward H. Bennett, the co-author with the legendary Daniel Burnham of the Plan of Chicago, the tome of soaring prose, dazzling renderings and profound influence whose 100th anniversary will be celebrated Saturday.
More…
Popularity: 29% [?]
July 2, 2009 · Filed under Architecture, Economics, Master Planning, Planning, Shrinking Cities, Zoning
Existence is the ultimate proof of the possible. Every time a bold new project is tried, and works, we advance our sense of the achievable. Given how much transformation we need in order to meet the challenges we face, we need many more attempts at innovation, and we’re not getting them. The achievable is not advancing quickly enough.
More…
Popularity: 28% [?]
June 29, 2009 · Filed under Cities from Scratch, Climate Change, EcoCities, Master Planning, Urban Design, Visualization
As the population rises, underused and empty spaces are going to fill in. How well the transition works depends on shifts in demographics and infrastructure, as well as architecture. A studio of UCLA architecture students were asked to plot that transition. But before they could be architects, they had to be planners.
More…
Popularity: 47% [?]
June 22, 2009 · Filed under Cities from Scratch, EcoCities, Master Planning, Urban Design, Visualization
The competition is dedicated to (re) think the basics physical and social structures of the cities on the contemporary scenario. Re-Inventcities asked to be understood as an urban-theoretical project seeking to promote the discussion about contemporary landscape of the city taking into account the values of sustainability on large urban agglomerations.
More…
Popularity: 36% [?]
Next entries »
