Archive for Urban Design
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: 28% [?]
February 12, 2010 · Filed under Density, End of Cheap Oil, Energy, Infrastructure, Transit, Urban Design
Advanced community design models are emerging to provide some of the greatest opportunities for reducing fossil fuel use, climate-disrupting emissions and traffic congestion, while also offering affordable, high-quality lifestyles.
Envision living in a community that offers an abundance of local shopping, services and entertainment. The community is focused on a mobility center well connected to the region with transit and vanpools. The need to drive to work and other destinations is minimized. When you do drive, it is in an electric vehicle charged at your house or a fast charge station located in the mobility center park-and-ride.
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Popularity: 27% [?]
February 5, 2010 · Filed under Architecture, Climate Change, Density, EcoCities, Urban Design
Over the last twenty years, theory and practice in planning and urban design have been dominated by the search for sustainable development patterns. Fueled by growing public outcry over issues of environmental protection, energy conservation, agricultural preservation, urban sprawl, roadside aesthetics and highway gridlock, sustainability
has become the banner around which the forces for change in the way we develop our cities and suburbs are rallying. Perhaps the most powerful of these forces — certainly the most vocal — has been the New Urbanists, whose revival of the traditional village prototype is being enthusiastically adopted as a model of sustainable development.
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Popularity: 16% [?]
February 4, 2010 · Filed under Authenticity, Density, Diversity, Ecosystems, Generative Design, Urban Design, Urban Structure
The Hatoyama government’s ambitious carbon reduction goals position Japan for leadership in the postindustrial global economy. Less discussed is Tokyo’s remarkable energy efficiency, urban ecology innovations, and its potential for playing a leading role in the next decade’s biggest environmental challenge: creating sustainable cities with human and environmental benefits.
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Popularity: 17% [?]
February 4, 2010 · Filed under EcoCities, Landscape, Multi-Level Urbanism, Urban Agriculture, Urban Design
Andrew Maynard Architects, a young Melbourne firm in their Urban Orchard 2 concept have veered away slightly from the purely conceptual and have proposed a more actionable concept inspired by the community markets of Cuba. Cuban Market Gardens first arose as a community response to a lack of food security after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Collectively they are able to produce 90% of its citizens fruits and vegetables without the use of transport, simultaneously creating urban green areas and neighborhood integration.
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Popularity: 13% [?]
February 4, 2010 · Filed under Architecture, Density, Planning, Urban Design, Zoning
Architecture bookshops are full of publications about fantastic architects, spectacular streets and extraordinary cities. Alex Lehnerer made a book about the regulations that shaped these cities, produced the streets, and guided the architects. Grand Urban Rules celebrates regulations as the ultimate instruments in shaping cities.
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Popularity: 10% [?]
January 19, 2010 · Filed under Creative Cities, Density, Diversity, Planning, Urban Design
The city imposes notions of sustainability in its decisions on what, where and how to build. Still, it’s not quite the utopia.
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Popularity: 24% [?]
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: 25% [?]
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: 24% [?]
January 12, 2010 · Filed under Active Transportation, Cities from Scratch, Diversity, Health, Pedestrians, Planning, Urban Design
Dubai just opened the ultimate trophy building — the world’s tallest skyscraper, which soars a neck-craning 2,717 feet into the air — but just try getting there from the airport.
Your polite, epaulette-wearing cabdriver screeches down a 12-lane highway and — with the tower in plain sight — he goes miles past it, leading you to wonder whether he’s lost his way or is ripping you off. Only when he finally reaches an interchange and then doubles back to the tower do you realize what’s going on: Dubai wins no medals for urban planning.
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Popularity: 24% [?]
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