Archive for Revitalization
July 9, 2010 · Filed under Authenticity, Creative Cities, Diversity, Economics, Industrial, Revitalization, Waterfronts
Maybe Richard Florida has promoted the wrong creative class. In his model, artists beget coffee bars that make formerly dreary neighborhoods attractive to real estate developers, who lure lawyers and accountants into luxury loft buildings with names like “the Shoe Factory.” Maybe there’s another model, one that sucks a little of the class bias out of the formula and privileges artisans over artists, blue-collar jobs over white-collar ones. Give enough people who are passionate about making things the stability to invest in equipment and hire workers, and you might slow, or even reverse, the death spiral.
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Popularity: 34% [?]
June 13, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Public Space, Revitalization
In May last year, as he was strolling down a sidestreet in the heart of Paris’s Latin Quarter, Alexandre de Nuñez spotted a sign on the front of a building near the white dome of the Panthéon. “For rent,” it said, with one provision: “For bookshop.”
Officially inaugurated this week by mayor Bertrand Delanoë, the Franco-Argentinian’s cosy new El Salon del Libro is one of a cluster of librairies opening in the city’s historic district of erudition, where students mill around the Sorbonne and lecturers recline in the Luxembourg gardens.
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Popularity: 44% [?]
May 31, 2010 · Filed under Landscape, Revitalization, Traffic, Urban Agriculture
Welcome to one of the busiest roads in London. I’m standing beside three lanes of heavy traffic and the cars are hurtling past – but that’s tremendous, because it means the drivers are too busy to notice me.
A fluorescent yellow jacket is not everybody’s idea of a disguise, but I’m wearing my bright cycling top so that if anybody notices me they might think I’m a contractor working for the local authority. After all, surely only somebody working for the council would dig a hole beside a busy road and plant an apple tree. That’s what I’m doing, in my ongoing attempt to turn the town into the country.
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Popularity: 54% [?]
May 3, 2010 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cycling, Revitalization, Traffic, Transit
It’s been more than a generation since the Brazilian city of Curitiba pioneered Bus Rapid Transit. Since then this cost-effective and flexible transit system — which repurposes existing roadways into bus routes rather than constructing capital-intensive new railways — has become a worldwide model for urban mobility in both affluent and developing nations. A new addition to the BRT network was recently launched in India. Last year the northwestern city of Ahmedabad opened the first phase of the Janmarg — the People’s Way. Though still in its infancy, the system has already attracted favorable attention: early this year the U.S.-based Institute for Transportation & Development Policy awarded Janmarg its Sustainable Transport Award.
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Popularity: 32% [?]
April 27, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Diversity, Economics, Master Planning, Planning, Real Estate, Revitalization, Urban Structure
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.
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Popularity: 30% [?]
March 17, 2010 · Filed under Investment, Revitalization, Transit
The recession has hit public transit hard. Government funding is being slashed at all levels, and rising ridership isn’t bringing in enough revenue to keep systems running at full capacity. That’s got transit agencies cutting services or raising fares even as more people depend upon them. So it seems like an odd time for Baltimore to introduce a free bus system.
Popularity: 36% [?]
March 16, 2010 · Filed under Density, Diversity, Economics, Gentrification, Master Planning, Planning, Real Estate, Revitalization, Tall Buildings, Urban Design, Urban Structure, Zoning
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.
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Popularity: 60% [?]
March 16, 2010 · Filed under Graffiti, Great Streets, Infrastructure, Public Art, Revitalization
Last week, a group called the Urban Repair Squad painted sound-effect words—”Thunk!” “Oof” and the like—along Toronto’s Harbord Street where potholes and other perils threaten cyclists. They’re calling the project “Pothole Onomatopoeia.”
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Popularity: 18% [?]
February 12, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Diversity, Planning, Public Space, Revitalization, Urban Design
Lower Manhattan, specifically Greenwich South, which is bordered by the Financial District, the World Trade Center site, Battery Park, and Battery Park City. This urban plan to reinvigorate the neighborhood is based on five overarching principles to improve connectivity and resident and business retention. From this plan emerged a 10-team charrette to develop specific building strategies and a list of action items to jump-start redevelopment.
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Popularity: 45% [?]
January 11, 2010 · Filed under Big Box, Diversity, Economics, Real Estate, Retail, Revitalization, Shopping Malls
The landscape is littered with the giant carcasses of failed retail emporia. Ideas for what’s next are no less visionary. But are they any more practical?
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Popularity: 24% [?]
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