London towers policy is in chaos. Boris Johnson, elected on a pledge to stop the plague of towers promised by his predecessor, Ken Livingstone, now wants towers everywhere. Hazel Blears, who has permitted towers that Johnson wanted stopped, is now stopping ones he wants built, notably two giants in Wandsworth and Ealing. There is no policy, no one in charge and certainly no ounce of aesthetic judgment.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Launched in 2006 by LA planning director Gail Goldberg, the Urban Design Studio was created to address the city’s lack of urban design standards and to create a more pedestrian-friendly city. The small studio, headed by planners Emily Gabel-Luddy, and Simon Pastucha has already spearheaded the recent creation and approval of a set of Downtown Street & Urban Design Standards and Guidelines, which encourages wider sidewalks (at least 15 feet on some downtown blocks) and the possibility of street life, and a set of Walkability Guidelines.
Popularity: 32% [?]
Don Elliott, author of A Better Way to Zone, argues that dynamic zoning regulations can help cities grow appropriately and avoid bottlenecks to good development.
Popularity: 27% [?]
Zoning was originally undertaken to promote and protect health and welfare in choking, filthy urban tenements. Ultimately, it became a tool to atomize the city, segregating uses and driving density down. Zoning has wrecked cities and given us drive-by suburbanism: mall here, school there, supermarket a few miles over there, quarter acre lots with lots of lawn, office 30 minutes away in the city center. This, of course, is precisely the kind of idea about cities that we must abandon. Fast.
Popularity: 12% [?]
Though a healthy contingent of commentators on “What Will Save the Suburbs?” advocated either burning suburbia down or simply letting nature take its course, the opinions offered ran the gamut from using them to relocate displaced Palestinians to turning them into self-sustaining communities.
Popularity: 11% [?]
The international border between the United States and Mexico at the San Diego-Tijuana checkpoint is the most trafficked in the world. Approximately 60 million people cross annually, moving untold amounts of goods and services back and forth. Zooming into the particularities of this volatile territory, traveling back and forth between these two border cities, we can expose landscapes of contradiction where conditions of difference and sameness collide and overlap.
Popularity: 34% [?]
Urbanism, like any field, has its own dogmas, orthodoxies and raging controversies. It’s both art and science, it affects almost everyone on a daily basis (whether they realize it or not), and it overlaps with a vast array of related disciplines.
Popularity: 9% [?]
Installation of a digital billboard in Los Angeles’ Silver Lake neighborhood catalyzed environmental design protests that led to a proposed new sign ordinance in this city.
Popularity: 17% [?]
Liberal Wisconsin capital would limit development, tree removal, fast food restaurants and parking to promote ‘sustainability.’
Popularity: 8% [?]
Apple Inc., known for the minimalist designs of its computers, iPods and retail stores, aims to drop that aesthetic in the middle of Washington’s Georgetown. The historic district doesn’t want it.
Popularity: 7% [?]