The Institute for Urban Design in New York has launched By the City / For the City a crowdsourced ideas competition that will lead up to September’s Urban Design Week. It’s a chance for New Yorkers to submit ideas for proactive change in their neighborhood or even the entire city. The interactive map allows people to locate their ideas geographically and start a conversation at the local level.
Popularity: 1% [?]
In the past 10 years, the mechanics of gentrification have become so predictable and codified that the once-messy process of urban renewal is now as tidy and rule-based as a game of Risk or Mouse Trap. Which helps explain why the Toronto-based artist collective Atmosphere Industries debuted Gentrification: The Game! at the Come Out & Play Festival in Brooklyn, N.Y., last month.
Popularity: 49% [?]
A few weeks ago in San Francisco, a number of urban farmers opened a gate in a chain-link fence at Laguna Street, between Oak and Fell Streets, and entered an overgrown lot that has been unused for nearly two decades. The farmers brought with them steaming piles of mulch, which they cast over the edge of the ramps formerly used by cars to enter and exit the elevated Central Freeway spur above Octavia Street, arranging the soil in rows for planting vegetables and filler crops.
Popularity: 50% [?]
Over the past couple of years, coworking has been gaining momentum and attention. It is bringing a new and more flexible way of working to cities by helping people to take advantage of the benefits of interaction and collaboration. Breakout! is taking coworking a step further – pushing people to think entirely outside of the office “box”, and using all of the spaces a city has to offer to do work. By using the city as the office, Breakout! brings work back to the streets – to the places where work, play and leisure have happened for centuries.
Popularity: 32% [?]
Is it just me or, is the modern urban neighborhood getting remarkably old-fashioned? In the Los Feliz (locals pronounce this los-FEE-liz) community of Los Angeles where I live, it feels like everything that was old is new (and smart) again. Things my grandparents in Kentucky have always done—checking in on neighbors, sharing a new crop of tomatoes—seem not so much folksy as generally just a good way to live, even if you are in the big city.
Popularity: 35% [?]
Urban regeneration has seen entire districts pass into the hands of private companies – and their security guards.
Popularity: 25% [?]
Now is a moment that argues for enterprise at the heart of collective, local urban action. This is not about being soppy or seditious – but simply sensible business practice. But it is about doing, not studying; commissioning action, not a feasibility study; choreography, not simply invention. It involves a degree of serendipity. And in urban development, it issues a fatwa on geographers and sociologists obsessing with dicing people in to creative and non-creative classes.
What should we call it?
It’s not exactly “American Idol” but we could start with “Venture Urbanism” – and find something sexier a bit later.
Popularity: 21% [?]
Who says social networks make place irrelevant? Communication designer Sidney Blank begs to differ as he presents STACKD, a new site that helps people in Manhattan office buildings get in touch – for business or beers. In so doing, his project connects such themes as excess capacity, the spatial and local implications of social media and the singular opportunities presented by Manhattan’s built environment. What’s more, STACKD just might provide a powerful tool for architects, planners, developers and even management consultants to interpret how we use space and how we can use it more flexibly and more efficiently.
Popularity: 25% [?]
Whether it’s bike polo, urban golf or scaling public buildings, interesting new urban sports are leaving a distinctive mark on German cityscapes. The metropolitan antics add a twist to traditional sports — and may be cropping up on stretch of tarmac near you soon.
Popularity: 46% [?]
On Friday morning, in what might be seen as evidence that tough economic times can be good for art, a new 37,000-square-foot outdoor exhibition and performance space will open in Lower Manhattan.
Popularity: 31% [?]