Archive for Place making
March 10, 2010 · Filed under Authenticity, Diversity, Emergence, Place making, Urban Design, Urban Structure
When we speak of the identity of a place, we express a recognition of the patterns formed around us. We may not be conscious of them to the point of being able to draw them back with precision like Stephen Wiltshire, but we can remember them in the abstract, and in this way, identify different places from the abstractions we recall of their patterns. This is how one street can look sufficiently alike another that we can identify a neighborhood, and it is also why a landscape like Liberty City in Grand Theft Auto can feel like New York City, despite the fact that every object has been reconfigured to create a parody environment.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
March 9, 2010 · Filed under Authenticity, Creative Cities, Diversity, Economics, Families, Gentrification, Place making, Social Justice
Sharon Zukin had come to Greenwich Village and the Shrine of St. Jane not as a pilgrim but to wax sardonic.
Ms. Zukin, a Brooklyn College sociology professor, stared at the modest red-brick town house on Hudson Street that once was home to Jane Jacobs, whose 1961 book, “The Death and Life of Great American Cities,” celebrated the joyous hodgepodge of New York’s neighborhoods: the working-class tailor and the artist, the Italian grocer and the writer, living cheek by jowl.
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Popularity: 29% [?]
February 8, 2010 · Filed under Architecture, Authenticity, Beauty, Place making, Planning, Urbanization
In chapter eight of Anthony M. Tung’s erudite and impressive Preserving the World’s Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis, there is a passage that stopped me in my proverbial tracks and hasn’t left my thoughts since. Tung is writing about Amsterdam at the dawn of the 20th century:
As parts of the inner city became slums and were threatened with clearance, and as picturesque canals were filled in to create new roads and better circulation, elements of the historic environment began to be eliminated. Growing numbers of citizens became alarmed and called for preservation of the historic center. In addition, a new ring of speculative housing began to surround the old metropolis. Numerous Amsterdammers began to ask that the expansion of the city meet a reasonable standard of beauty.
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Popularity: 34% [?]
February 5, 2010 · Filed under Diversity, Health, Place making, Social Justice
Although they tend to sell processed food made by the world’s largest companies, most corner stores are small, family-run businesses. And, when it comes to feeding their communities, many of these businesses find themselves in a serious bind. On the one hand, advocates and public health experts see their stores as pivotal to fresh food access, the key to curbing diabetes and obesity in urban areas with few other food resources. On the other hand, the processed food industry spends billions of ad dollars manufacturing a constant stream of demand for products that are anything but fresh or healthy.
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Popularity: 17% [?]
January 19, 2010 · Filed under Architecture, Beauty, Campus Planning, Diversity, Place making, Urban Design
Daniel L. Vasella, the chief executive of the Swiss pharmaceutical company Novartis, was standing at the center of his imposing new corporate campus this fall, describing the lengths he went to in order to realize his architectural vision. “I made them move the border crossing,” he said pointing toward France. “It interfered with our plans. I put 100,000,000 Swiss francs on the table and said: ‘Move it over there. Tear down these silos and cranes.’ ”
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Popularity: 30% [?]
January 19, 2010 · Filed under Architecture, Authenticity, Beauty, Creative Cities, Place making
www.stuckincustoms.com
Economists have argued that individuals choose locations that maximize their economic position and broad utility. Sociologists have found that social networks and social interactions shape our satisfaction with our communities. Research, across various social science fields, finds that beauty has a significant effect on various economic and social outcomes. Our research uses a large survey sample of individuals across US locations to examine the effects of beauty and aesthetics on community satisfaction.
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Popularity: 24% [?]
January 12, 2010 · Filed under Beauty, Cities from Scratch, Investment, Landscape, Nature, Place making, Urban Design
On a quiet inlet of the Queens waterfront, where Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proposed putting up athletes for the 2012 Olympics, land is being cleared for a series of parks that will be the front lawn for a large midpriced housing development.
Hunters Point South, to be built where the East River meets the Newtown Creek, kicked into gear in late December with the arrival of bulldozers. The 30-acre project, beginning with park and open space design, will eventually include 5,000 apartments and a ferry landing, said Joshua Wallack, who is managing the project for Robert C. Lieber, the deputy mayor for economic development.
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Popularity: 38% [?]
December 15, 2009 · Filed under Economics, Infrastructure, Landscape, Place making, Social Justice
Mike Davis and I met on a summer day in San Diego. He graciously drove his truck and showed me his collection of “interesting sites” he planned for us to see in the area. As we were visiting those places, we talked about variety of subjects.
His selection of the sites was nothing less than socio-cultural paintings in action plus a rough sketch of complex connections drawn by him.
Popularity: 35% [?]
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.
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Popularity: 33% [?]
November 2, 2009 · Filed under Artificial Landscapes, Beauty, Campus Planning, Creative Cities, Economics, Landscape, Parks, Place making, Shopping Malls, Tourism
Disney has always been an easy target for urban designers and architects. Main Street USA, the main drag of its parks, can be read as a cruel joke. Its simulated urbanism and festival atmosphere may seem like a sinister, conservative knock-off of actual small-town main streets of yore, lodged deep in the American collective memory, that corporate titans like Disney helped kill with their economics of scale and squeaky-clean spectacle. Now, instead of a public realm, we have cities that are “luxury products,” meant not for the stuff of life but for endless, mindless consumer fantasy. Thanks (in part) to the influence of Disney.
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Popularity: 49% [?]
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