Hamburg has been trying to woo the much-coveted “creative class” for years in a bid to secure its future. Now the city has become the front line in a bitter conflict over gentrification, with artists squatting buildings in protest against investment plans and members of the far-left scene attacking private property — and even police.
Popularity: 34% [?]
Digital screens now line the walls of nearly every airport terminal, restaurant, convenience store, bar and waiting room in America. They have popped up in gas stations, taxis, schools and even on public buses. They wrap the exterior of L.A. Live and other major commercial complexes. And increasingly they rest in our palms, in the form of the iPhones, BlackBerrys and other smart phones that many of us rely on, like Dante following Virgil, as we walk or ride through the city.
Popularity: 29% [?]
A finalist in the WPA 2.0 competition sponsored by UCLA Citylab, Nicholas de Monchaux and collaborators have provided a case study showing the impacts of the “spaces between places,” spaces owned by the city but unused and still maintained. Monchaux’s group, using geospatial analysis identify thousands of these publicly owned, abandoned spaces and quantify their transition into a network of urban greens.
Popularity: 34% [?]
Amos Rapoport, in his book “The Meaning of the Built Environment. A Nonverbal Communication Approach” (1982, Sage publications, California) explains that as one moves into the domain of non fixed-semi fixed and fixed elements, the cultural variability and specificity tends to increase. An important issue is to discover urban and cultural cues that communicate particular meanings. Cultural cues include nonverbal behaviors, from intuitive ones (adaptors), to exact verbal translations with precise meanings known to all (symbolic gestures or emblems). In 1977, Rapoport listed some potential cues, and of course there are even more.
Popularity: 14% [?]
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% [?]
City dwellers living near parks are healthier and suffer fewer bouts of depression, a study has revealed. The study was adjusted to take into account socio-economic background and found that the effect of green surroundings was greatest for people with low levels of education and income. The study, published in the Journal of Epidemiology and Community Health, found that in urban zones where 90 per cent of the area was green space the incidence of anxiety disorders or depression was 18 people per thousand. In areas with only 10 per cent greenery the incidence was 26 per thousand.
Popularity: 37% [?]
We all know the kiosks on the busy streets of our world cities — those small, neat pop-up booths that sell about everything, from newspapers and magazines to cigarettes and cold drinks. Kiosks mean a lot to me, and to the city itself. At these colourful places, where tourists buy their public transport tickets and commuters grab a fresh newspaper in the morning, is the metropolitan vibe at its best.
Popularity: 42% [?]
LimeWire founder Mark Gorton has recently announced to launch an application for open source urbanism, inspired by the peer-to-peer principle. Gorton’s goal is to stimulate “crowdsourced development, freely-accessible data libraries, and web forums, as well as actual open source software with which city planners can map transportation designs to people’s needs”, aiming to open up the city planning process to a wider audience and shine light on decision-making processes.
Popularity: 24% [?]
With parts of Times Square converted into a pedestrian mall, at least temporarily, some people say they believe the city should take an even more radical step: close 42nd Street to car traffic and build a light rail system to run the width of Manhattan.
Popularity: 11% [?]
Grand Central Terminal. Why does it work so well? Listen to Vishaan Chakrabarti tell it like it is. First, he reflects on some design details of the spectacular Main Concourse. Next, he wanders down Park Avenue and shares some of the history of how private sector competition led to a major public amenity and transformed the entire metropolitan region. Then he explores the terminal’s tentacular North-end Access and reflects further on how the terminal has transformed urban and regional economies. Finally, as he delves into the food court, he ponders lessons to be learned from Grand Central that could be applied to Moynihan Station.
Popularity: 21% [?]