The Case Against Fake “Walkable Urbanism”
If You Lived Here, You’d Be Urban By Now: The case against a “walkable urbanism” that is neither walkable nor urban.
Popularity: 74% [?]
urbanism.org
Urban news [almost] daily.Archive for Master Planning
‘This town has been sold to Tesco’
Imagine living in a Tesco house, sending your child to a Tesco school, swimming in a Tesco pool and, of course, shopping at the local Tesco superstore. According to the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe), the government’s adviser on architecture and design, this collective monopoly is not an imaginary dystopia. “Tesco Towns” on this model are already being planned across the UK, from Inverness in Scotland to Seaton in Devon.
Popularity: 87% [?]
Brasilia, 50 years later
Brasilia was the aspiration of three people: a visionary politician, Juscelino Kubitschek, who dreamed of building a new capital from nothing in the heart of his country; an architect, Oscar Niemeyer, who never put down his pencil and was so afraid of flying that he often drove for three days to reach the site; and Lucio Costa, an enlightened urbanist, who possessed not only futurist sensibilities but also a profound knowledge of his country.
Popularity: 48% [?]
Don’t Plan On It
The forces shaping our cities today are not municipal agencies but private organizations such as park conservancies, downtown associations, historic-preservation societies, arts councils, advocacy groups, and urban universities. Entrepreneurship also plays an important role. In projects large and small, real estate developers have replaced city planners and bureaucrats as the chief players on the urban scene, restoring neighborhoods, attracting residents to downtowns, helping to create the amenities that keep them there.
Popularity: 36% [?]
Mr. Ratner’s Neighborhood
Manipulative developers, shrill protesters, and a sixteen-tower glass-and-steel monster marching inexorably forward. What the battle for the soul of Brooklyn looks like—from right next door.
Popularity: 66% [?]
City farm to go on site of van Egeraat scheme
A “pop up” city farm is to be created on the site of Erick van Egeraat’s multi-billion-pound masterplan to regenerate east London’s Canning Town and Custom House, which starts in 2012
Popularity: 37% [?]
A Place Is Better Than a Plan
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.
Popularity: 33% [?]
Peeling Back Pavement to Expose Watery Havens
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.
Popularity: 74% [?]
Urban Fade / Visiondivision
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.
Popularity: 69% [?]
Big Bang Planning vs Emergent Urbanism
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.
Popularity: 45% [?]