The nicest streets in England are gradually being wrecked – sinking under a tide of plastic windows, concrete roof tiles, replacement doors, satellite dishes, smashed-out front gardens and streetscapes cluttered with ugly broken paving, bollards, barriers and traffic signs.
Popularity: 35% [?]
When politicians and the media mention Main Street, they evoke one people and one place. But there are over 10,466 streets named Main in the United States.
Popularity: 26% [?]
But perhaps – and here’s the upside – the city, having evolved through brutal modernism and gluggy postmodernism, is approaching its glorious collaborative apotheosis, where we can have the thrill of speed without its harshness and the buzz of being-there without its smugness.
Popularity: 39% [?]
For many communities, street beautification has been viewed as an unnecessary expense. But as cities compete for investment, new residents, and tourists, there can be a substantial return on design dollars. The Value of Urban Design, produced by the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (CABE) in the UK, quantifies and defines the monetary benefits of thoughtfully-designed urban spaces. CABE argues that good urban design adds value by: producing higher returns on investment; producing local competitive advantages; raising prestige; responding to demand of local businesses; providing benefits to local workers (through productivity gains and the like); and reducing management, maintenance, energy, and security costs.
Popularity: 48% [?]
While the Wall stood, the zone between East and West Berlin was a potentially deadly space. But since the end of the Cold War, it has mostly stood barren. Now a Dutch landscape architect wants to transform the former no man’s land into a series of secret gardens and recreational areas.
Popularity: 44% [?]
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.
Popularity: 31% [?]
It seems kind of strange now, but a while back, before airports became the fortresses they are today, I used to visit them occasionally to read and write. I’m not sure what drew me to them—something about the energy, or the equality, or the possibility of the place. You could start on one side of the world, step over a threshold, and in a few hours, begin a totally different life. I loved that feeling of being at the doorway to everywhere.
What I didn’t realize at the time was that according to French thinker and anthropologist Marc Augé, I wasn’t really in any place at all.
Popularity: 34% [?]
“The bicycle is the means of transport used most often in Amsterdam,” reports Bike Europe. “Between 2005 and 2007 people in the city used their bikes on average 0.87 times a day, compared to 0.84 for their cars. This is the first time that bicycle use exceeds car use.”
Popularity: 29% [?]
The Queens Plaza Bicycle and Pedestrian Landscape Improvement Project transforms the tangle of urban infrastructure cutting through Long Island City from a harsh, disorienting industrial maze into a lush, navigable landscape, a gateway to Long Island City that organizes various flows and scales while providing a refuge for residents, workers and the road-weary. The urban and landscape design unites the surrounding neighborhoods and restores the connection between the city and the river. The project spans 1.3 miles, revitalizes JFK Park and connects it to the dramatic water’s edge below the Queensboro Bridge.
Popularity: 100% [?]
For our Design a Livable Street project, we asked GOOD readers to take a picture of a poorly planned street and photoshop it into shape. Our judges, Aaron Naparstek from Streetsblog and the designer Carly Clark, looked over the submissions and were “extremely impressed with the quality.” They picked a first place entry and four runners up.
Popularity: 27% [?]
