Urbanism News

Urbanism News

Wednesday, January 31, 2007

Making Other Arrangements

As the American Public continues sleepwalking into a future of energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones people have just before awakening. It is a particularly American dream on a particularly American theme: how to keep all the cars running by some other means than gasoline. We'll run them on ethanol! We'll run them on biodiesel, on synthesized coal liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on electricity, on used French-fry oil . . . !

Paris To Roll Out Free Bicycles

The City of Light wants to soon become a city of bicycles. Paris City Hall announced it has selected French outdoor advertising firm JCDecaux SA to operate a new free bicycle service in the capital.

Joining other European cities like the Dutch capital, Amsterdam, Paris wants to make thousands of bikes available for free to commuters, strollers and tourists -- in part to help cut down on pollution.

When Rome Builds A Subway, It Trips Over Archaeologists

As this city begins work on a new, 15.5 mile subway line, massive earthmoving equipment sits idle while teams of archaeologists with tiny spades sift through dirt.

More than 17.5 million cubic feet of it is being removed by hand, to unearth the remains of tombs and stately residences that once made up the ancient metropolis beneath the surface of the modern city.

"Our guess is that these were probably taverns," said Anna Giulia Fabiani, shouting over the roar of weekday traffic as she surveyed ancient walls and doorways at a dig site across from the Colosseum.

Unconventions and the Toronto Transit Camp

If you want people to innovate, you usually have to bring them together. Conferences can be a terrific tool for getting folks in the same place and talking about the same related set of ideas, but they have a number of problems.

Sand ban a wake-up call for industry: architects

The recent Indonesian ban on the sale of sand to Singapore has been an effective wake-up call for the industry, say architects.

Sustainable construction and alternative materials are now the buzzwords.

Global as a matter of course

China native Qingyun Ma, USC’s new architecture dean, is steeped in a bi-continental approach: Eastern tradition meets Western technology — with the freedom to blend the best of both.

Floating Underground

Rufina Wu is a graduate student in her final year at the School of Architecture, University of Waterloo, Canada. She spent one year on research for her thesis at Tsinghua University, Beijing. During that year she did something rather unusual by switching her comfy room at the school's dormitory for a bed at a "basement complex" – a space underground, originally constructed for air defense reasons. Due to national defense politics, many underground defense structures have been constructed throughout the country starting in the 50ies. Within the past years those spaces have been increasingly transformed into inhabitable spaces, affordable for a large number of urban and floating (migrant) population, who would most likely not have a home otherwise.

Tuesday, January 30, 2007

It may be time to hit the brakes

Putting homes, schools and parks by freeways was seen as a final frontier in L.A., but a USC study on pollution could force a rethinking.

The Internationalization of Planning

With new bilateral accreditation agreements on the horizon, planners have a whole world of professional opportunities before them. But new training programs are needed to help planners learn the social and cultural context present in a different country.

Monday, January 29, 2007

The City That Never Walks

For the past two decades, New York has been an inspiration to other American cities looking to revive themselves. Yes, New York had a lot of crime, but somehow it also still had neighborhoods, and a core that had never been completely abandoned to the car. Lately, though, as far as pedestrian issues go, New York is acting more like the rest of America, and the rest of America is acting more like the once-inspiring New York.

Fighting the Urban Sprawl

In the Netherlands, SeARCH seeks architectural solutions to long-standing urban problems.

Fritz Haeg: Small Revolutions

With one small gesture, architect/artist/salon-owner/school-master Fritz Haeg made a great disruption to the "toxic uniformity" of suburbia. By convincing a suburban family in Salina, Kansas to tear up their manicured lawn and replace it with an edible garden, Fritz transformed a standard and consumptive lawn into something idiosyncratic and productive.

Architecture and Climate Change: An Interview with Ed Mazria

Last year, Ed Mazria and his New Mexico-based non-profit organization, Architecture 2030, revealed that architecture – or the building sector, more generally – is the largest single source of greenhouse gas emissions, worldwide.

To help prevent "catastrophic" climate change, then, the building sector must become carbon neutral. Reaching that state before the year 2030 is what Mazria has dubbed the 2030 Challenge.

The Skyway’s the Limit

As with so many other irrational phenomena of our day, like the building of bigger and better nuclear bombs or of wilder and more whimsical counterfeits of motorcars, people have come to regard the pathological as normal, and the more senseless a proposal is in terms of vital human needs, the more likely they are to give hundreds of millions of dollars for its execution.

Toronto’s One Zone Best In World?

The eminent design futurist Buckminster Fuller once argued that modern buildings were so many fancy nozzles on the really important stuff of the city: the engineered services that are hidden below ground. While architects may take issue with being dismissed as mere stylists, Toronto just added another invisible technology to Fuller's modern city. Today, a city is not a world contender unless it offers a ubiquitous, high-speed Internet service. Now Toronto has one.

How Boro will lose its 'crap town' tag

Middlesbrough was an architectural wasteland. And then an inspired Dutchman turned up.

Friday, January 26, 2007

Locals float great visions

A Fledgeling Hobart architecture firm that usually designs house extensions has beaten the world to jointly win the Hobart Waterfront International Design Competition.

MIT study: Get more energy from Earth's heat

Geothermal could meet 10 percent of U.S. needs by 2050, it finds.

Kids aren't carpoolers

Carpool lanes don't work. Maybe it would help to require at least one passenger be a licensed driver.

Lake Ontario Park

Last week, James Corner, founder and director of the New York architectural firm Field Operations, flew into Toronto for the unveiling of his company's interim plans for Lake Ontario Park. The public event at the Radisson Admiral Hotel, which was thronged by some 400 interested citizens, was something we'd been looking forward to since early last year, when Field Operations landed a contract with Toronto Waterfront Revitalization Corp. (TWRC) to transform a long strip of Hogtown's urban shoreline into a continuous refuge of beaches and wetlands.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Never Too Late - China Discovers Eco-Products

As China’s consumption of land, energy and resources is escalating, ecological disasters are becoming more frequent. But with recent international media coverage, awareness is slowly rising in some levels of the government. To demonstrate their determination to turn around the rudder (in an already critical state), governments have brought to life so called “eco-projects”, some of which are now in planning stage or completed. We will give you some overview of these projects in articles filed under “Ecoprojects”.

Steven Holl Architects - T-Houses

Steven Holl Architects recently presented the design for T- Husene (the T- Houses) located in the Ørestaden area of Copenhagen. With this project Steven Holl Architects sets a new example for residential typologies based on the concept of urban porosity. Leaving behind the standard typology of residential perimeter blocks, the dancing T’s with colored and reflective undersides carve the sky within the green folded space.

Rehabilitating Robert Moses

For three decades his image has been frozen in time. The bulldozing bully who callously displaced thousands of New Yorkers in the name of urban renewal. The public-works kingpin who championed highways as he starved mass transit. And yes, the visionary idealist who gave New York Lincoln Center and Jones Beach, along with parks, roads, playgrounds and public pools.

Time to give our new architects a break

Some of the most iconic buildings of the past century were the work of relative beginners - experience shouldn't count for everything.

Massive Brooklyn Development Designed by Frank Gehry Gets Green Light

With the recently completed IAC/InterActiveCorp.’s headquarters, Frank Gehry, FAIA, has finally made a mark on New York City. Now he is about to make a bigger one. In December, the state’s Public Authorities Control Board gave unanimous approval to plans for the Atlantic Yards, a $4 billion–plus Brooklyn development that is expected to contain more than 6,400 apartments, a new arena for the Nets basketball team, and several hundred thousand square feet of commercial space. Gehry will design every building on the 22-acre site.

London 2012 'to be greenest ever'

The London 2012 Olympics are to be the greenest games in history, organisers have said.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Buildings that try too hard

You don’t have to have a Gehry to change a town, but getting it right is a fine art.

Politics and planning don't mix, says expert

Getting the politics out of planning decisions was essential for proper and transparent development, the Capital Alliance conference in Canberra was told yesterday.

D.I.R.T. Studio Earns Urban Design Award

D.I.R.T. Studio, a design firm based in Charlottesville, North Carolina, is the recipient of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee’s first biannual Urban Edge Award. Honoring international excellence in urban design, the $50,000 awards program was initiated by the School of Architecture and Urban Planning at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee.

Building for the bad

Alexander Hosch looks at the uneasy marriage between autocrats and star architects.

Jane Jacobs influenced me, Harper says

No doubt to the surprise of some, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper says one of the influences in his approach to the environment is the famous urban theorist Jane Jacobs.

'We need to integrate schools into the community'

Smart planning and architecture integral to creating healthy buildings.

Saturday, January 20, 2007

A Mighty City

A Mighty City constructed on a series of variably-sized hilly islands linked by bridges.

Eight is Enough

The Dutch landscape architecture and urban design firm WEST 8 is one of the foremost practitioners in the emergent discipline of landscape urbanism. WEST 8 creates its innovative vision through a praxis that unites a distinctive collection of architects, landscape architects, urban planners, and industrial designers. The combination of a fluid design team, a profound reading of context, and an intuitive knowledge of situation give WEST 8 an incredible basis in which to explore and fabricate the contemporary landscape.

A fine line

The debate: there is a need for some closeness and much detachment between architect and critic.

Great Cities Need Great Builders

Robert Moses still bestrides New York like a colossus. More than three decades have passed since Jane Jacobs and Robert Caro tore down Moses's once pristine public image, but his physical legacy remains standing. Our New York is Moses's New York. He built 13 bridges, 416 miles of parkways, 658 playgrounds, and 150,000 housing units, spending $150 billion in today's dollars. If you are riding the waves at Jones Beach or watching the Mets at Shea Stadium or listening to "La Traviata" at Lincoln Center or using the Triborough Bridge to get to the airport, then you are in the New York that Moses built.

Weighing In on City Planning - Could smart urban design keep people fit and trim?

Lawrence Frank is no couch potato. Taking full advantage of his city's compact design, the Vancouver, British Columbia, resident often bikes to work and walks to stores, restaurants, and museums. That activity helps him stay fit and trim. But Frank hasn't always found his penchant for self-propulsion to be practical. He previously lived in Atlanta, where the city's sprawling layout thwarted his desire to be physically active as he went about his daily business.

Our Urban Future

Sometime in 2008, the world will cross an invisible but momentous milestone: the point at which more than half the people on the planet—roughly 3.2 billion human beings—live in cities.

Urban centers are hubs simultaneously of breathtaking artistic innovation and some of the world’s most abject and disgraceful poverty. They are the dynamos of the world economy but also the breeding grounds for alienation, religious extremism and other sources of local and global insecurity. Cities are now both pioneers of groundbreaking environmental policies and the direct or indirect source of most of the world’s resource destruction and pollution.

Cars conquering the Bicycle Kingdom

Every time Ms. Wu ventures by bicycle to her local supermarket, she takes her life into her hands.

In the capital of the self-proclaimed Bicycle Kingdom, there are no bike lanes on her road. Taxis and buses clog the pavement. Car doors are flung open without warning. Parked cars block her path, forcing her into narrower spaces.

Thursday, January 18, 2007

Can Vancouver Avoid the 16-Hour Downtown?

There is a very common phrase in urban planning / development work: the "24-hour neighborhood".

The 24-hour neighborhood normally refers to a neighborhood (or community, or other local area) in which people live, work, and take part in night-time activities. It often is related to a desire to create place in which a mix of different activities happen throughout a day/night in a place, as opposed to, say, image of the standard office district (active for 8 hours a day and then vacant at night…)

Lijnbaan R.I.P.

Jo van den Broek devised it; Cornelis van Traa made it possible; Hugh Maaskant designed the flats; and Frans van Gool, working for Van den Broek en Bakema, designed the shops. Lewis Mumford was the first to describe it; and thousands of architects and urban designers copied it, from the Netherlands to deep in Russia and from South Africa up to Scandinavia: the Lijnbaan in Rotterdam.

China's 'cancer villages' pay price

The small hamlet of Shangba is a tiny jumbled collection of houses sitting in the lush green paddy fields and hills of southern China.

It sounds idyllic, but many of the locals are dying after drinking polluted water.

Searching for common ground in the cityscape that surrounds us

People look to museums for many things: stimulation and beauty, insight and relief, a quick blast of style or a slow immersion in art.

That's all well and good. But this year, I'd like to see the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art provide something else: an illuminating perspective on the fast-changing city and region around it. In other words, expand its definition of architecture to reflect the fact that it is not only an aesthetic discipline. It's the stuff of which our landscape is made.

Lakefront plans get back to nature

Pathways, sandbar and urban wildland all part of master plan `to redefine image of Toronto'.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Farmers' markets nurture a need for open space

In the mythology of the American Dream, it's the privacy of our sanctuaries that defines, comforts and nourishes us. Homes, we are told again and again, embody our innermost desires. But lately I've been feeling how other sorts of spaces -- public, free and accessible to all -- are emerging to show us what home really means. Perhaps home isn't where we feather our nest with fancy things but the place that feeds the soul of a community.

Daring designs at Cityscape 2006

With the value of projects planned or underway in the Gulf now exceeding US $1trillion, the Dubai Convention Centre played host to Cityscape last month, in a climate of unparalleled investment in the real estate sector. In fact, with the eyes of the world on Dubai, a staggering $160 billion (AED588 billion) worth of real estate projects were announced in the three weeks leading up to the event.

Planning guru guiding Vancouver's East Fraserlands fends off critics.

Even if you've never heard of Miami-based Andrès Duany before, you've felt his impact. As co-founders of new urbanism, he and partner Elizabeth Plyter-Zyberk have reshaped much of the thinking about cities in the past two decades, arguing that higher density can be compatible with market-friendly neotraditional and vernacular architecture.

World's First City Was Destroyed By Fierce Ancient Battle

Archaeologists from the University of Chicago and the Syrian Department of Antiquities have uncovered new details about the tragic end of Hamoukar, one of the world's earliest cities, as well as clues about how urban life may have begun there. Sadly, it seems what might have been the world's first city was destroyed by what the researchers say was probably the world's first major urban battle.

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Shiver me timbers

Is this the greenest place to live in Britain? A Cornish housing development powered by the elements.

Building a Neighborhood, a Block at a Time

When people these days comment on the resurgence of Downtown Los Angeles, they tend to focus on the so-called mega-projects, principally Grand Avenue and L.A. Live, each with budgets of more than $2 billion.

To be sure, these are ambitious undertakings, the much-heralded Grand Avenue proposing to top Bunker Hill with a cluster of distinctive housing, office and hotel towers hovering over a shopping mall, and L.A. Live across from Staples Center, where work is well underway, will create an enterprising mix of entertainment venues and residential uses.

Atlanta Gets a Makeover: More Up, Less Out

Atlanta has long been linked to sprawl and traffic jams. Now several huge mixed-use construction projects seek to remake the city's landscape. The new developments aim to create neighborhoods in Atlanta as swank and walkable as some sections of New York and Chicago with easy access to nearby office jobs, chic restaurants or fashionable boutiques. If successful, the physical and cultural shifts could serve as a blueprint for other cities.

A new place to socialize

Shanghai planners are considering yet another urban splendor aimed at Chinese socializing. Cinepanorama — a semi-outdoor complex of a cinema-theater, restaurant and shopping — is designed by renowned architect Jean Pierre Heim.

Imagine there's a heaven...

Growing up in Liverpool, Stephen Bayley was inspired by the city's architecture, but depressed by dereliction and decay. As it prepares for its reign as Capital of Culture 2008 in a frenzy of regeneration, he marvels at how the city of nightmares has become the city of dreams.

On the waterfront: Money and vision give Seattle a bold new vista

Eight years ago one of the few open parcels of land in central Seattle was a desolate brownfield bordering the Puget Sound waterfront and ringed by the city's skyline. The eight-and-a-half acre property, a former fuel storage and transfer site for Union Oil of California, was in the final stages of an environmental cleanup and was sliced by a major street artery and an active railroad.

Redeveloping Essex's fallen utopia

Continuing a series looking at the decline of the British high street; David Sillito visits Harlow to see how planners hope to regenerate a crumbling new town once hailed as being at the cutting-edge of urban design.

A makeover for Manhattan 'street furniture'

One problem will be the extremes of the weather. Another will be pollution, not just from the cars and trucks thundering by, but the chemicals sprayed on the street by the sanitation trucks. And then there's graffiti.

As if that isn't enough, the thousands of new bus shelters, newsstands and public toilets, which are to be installed in New York City over the next year or so, also face the challenge of winning the affection of the millions of New Yorkers who'll be using them every day.

In City Ban, a Sign of Wealth and Its Discontents

Guangzhou, the chaotic export capital in southern China, appeared to hit a major Chinese milestone this month, becoming the country’s first city to reach a per capita income of $10,000 — more than five times the nationwide figure and a rough threshold for becoming a “developed” country.

But in a measure of just how problematic prosperity can be here, the city will institute a ban on motorcycles and motorized bicycles on Monday, hoping to quell a crime wave that has been building to more than 100,000 offenses a year.

Monday, January 15, 2007

Global place - or is it a hat?

Some of you may know Oliver Sacks' book “The man who mistook his wife for a hat”? It's about people afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations - and in particular a man who looks at something familiar (his wife) but perceives something completely different.

Bike or car? Think twice

Ah, the bicycle. Is it going the way of, well, the bicycle? The humble bike, once an emblem of China, ubiquitous, iconic, demanded by brides as part of their dowries - along with a sewing machine, a watch and a radio - sadly seems old-fashioned to many urbanites, write Song Mo and Wen Chihua.

Where Money’s No Object, Space Is No Problem

Eight years ago one of the few open parcels of land in downtown Seattle was a desolate brownfield bordering the Puget Sound waterfront and ringed by the city’s skyline. The eight-and-a-half acre property, a former fuel storage and transfer site for Union Oil of California, was in the final stages of an environmental cleanup and was sliced by a major street artery and an active railroad.

Sometimes creativity is a walk in the park

For Great Park designer Ken Smith, the "aha" moment came when he wandered into a canyon in San Diego's Balboa Park.

Suddenly he had a vision of a man-made canyon transforming Irvine's flat El Toro air base site into an appealing public park.

Cities Most Innovative in Global Warming Fight

In an increasingly urban world, the most innovative ideas in the fight against global climate change are coming from cities and local initiatives, an environmental think-tank reported Wednesday.

Future of transport

How you travel is who you are: but what happens to identities and communities as people travel further, faster, and more frequently?

Artspeak

The arts community is responding to climate change, and changing the conversation in the process.

An upside to urban sprawl

Rapid urbanization is taking a heavy toll on the environment and human living conditions around the world, but it could also make the problems easier to solve.

Saturday, January 13, 2007

Architecture's Second Life

Who wouldn't enjoy the opportunity to change all the things about your life that you most yearn to change? This is the question the designers of Second Life had in mind when they built their successful massively-multiplayer online world. Second Life is not premised upon the completion of quests, doesn't require you to have a job, doesn't demand that you defeat any alien races or slay any dragons. The whole idea of Second Life is that you have, well - a second life in all of its minutiae. Starting with the creation of a new you, the Second Life world offers opportunities for the designing and construction of virtual clothing lines, virtual cars and yachts, and even virtual villas. There's been loads of hype, so much so, that celebrities make appearances, and big business has taken note.

In Traffic’s Jam, Who’s Driving May Be Surprising

It’s a common enough thought among city drivers inching through traffic: Everyone around me came from the suburbs, making my life miserable. But it’s wrong, because more than half the drivers who crowd into Manhattan each workday come from the five boroughs.

Cities rediscover allure of streetcars

The streetcars that rumbled and clanged through many American cities from the late 1800s until World War II helped shape neighborhoods. More than a half-century later, streetcars are coming back and reviving the same neighborhoods they helped create.

Time to build outside the box

With a new planner at the helm, Vancouver has a chance to shake up the way it builds. And as the 2010 Olympics loom, there's a new sense of urgency.

They're talking the walk

Plans call for a greener, less car-centric Century City that would connect new housing with shops, offices and restaurants.

Benefiting from a Cover Up

U.S. cities are increasingly putting freeway segments underground and covering them with parkland. Whether called a lid, deck, bridge or tunnel, there are already some 20 highway parks in the country, several under construction — most notably, the Rose Kennedy Greenway park atop Boston’s Big Dig — and at least a dozen more in the planning pipeline. As urban auto impacts become less welcome, these decks have moved from the novel to the expected. Despite the sometimes considerable cost — as much as $500 per square foot — they are no longer classified as porkbarrel. They’ve been redefined as amenity investment with high economic payback.

Will the 2008 Olympics in Beijing Showcase Pollution as Well as World-class Athletes?

Runners coughed and gagged as they limbered up. Thick smog shrouded the Tsing Ma Bridge. Pollution index readings on this morning in February 2006 were at 149, the highest in months. Any reading over 100 is considered unhealthy.

`Irritable Bilbao Syndrome' spawns civic horrors

The construction of the Guggenheim Museum in Bilbao, Spain became ground zero for a new urban pandemic. I like to call it, Irritable Bilbao Syndrome or IBS, an epidemic spreading across the globe transmitted by civic enthusiasts who believe iconic museums are the shortcut to successfully transforming a rust belt city into a Mecca of creativity.

New Year’s Resolution: Physically Separated Bike Lanes in ‘07

Happy New Year! As part of its commitment to create 200 miles of new bike lanes in the next three years, New York City's Department of Transportation plans to build out 70 miles of new bike lanes in 2007. The devil, as always, is in the details.

Our Urban Future

By the end of this decade, there will be nearly 3.5 billion city-dwellers. The annual State of the World report, prepared by our allies at Worldwatch, has long been one of the most critical resources for understanding the problems facing our planet and their possible solutions.

Friday, January 12, 2007

Why it pays to go green

Most institutions feel that the strict conditions needed for housing art are incompatible with environmental demands. But compliance with eco-friendly requirements can pay off in the long run.

The New Jersey Barrier

Mark Oberholzer explores the urban highway’s potential for wind power.

Tuesday, January 9, 2007

A London scene set by guerilla art

All around the city, street artists are stopping people in their tracks ... and thoughts.

Re:Vision

Re:Vision, a revolutionary competition to create the prototype for an innovative sustainable community, has launched officially online at www.urbanrevision.com. This series of international design competitions that will launch in late January 2007, explores the "WHAT IFS", providing the opportunity to participate in an innovative process of transforming a run-down city block into a thriving mixed-use area that centers on the family and supports local sustainable businesses.

The Hidden Vulnerability of Mega-cities to Natural Disasters: Underground Spaces

The rapid and extensive underground expansion of mega-cities – for subways, malls, parking and public utilities – takes place often with too little knowledge of associated risks and too few plans to minimize the effects of a natural disaster, United Nations University experts warn.

Monday, January 8, 2007

The Lure of Living Above It All

It is a fine feeling to step into the elevator of an apartment building, press the button marked “PH” and take a ride to the top — or at least near the top. And at a time when the wealthiest New Yorkers are getting even wealthier, there are more buildings in Manhattan with many more of these elevator buttons that bespeak the privileges of penthouse living.

The Lure of Living Above It All

It is a fine feeling to step into the elevator of an apartment building, press the button marked “PH” and take a ride to the top — or at least near the top. And at a time when the wealthiest New Yorkers are getting even wealthier, there are more buildings in Manhattan with many more of these elevator buttons that bespeak the privileges of penthouse living.

The Land of Rising Conservation

In many countries, higher oil prices have hurt pocketbooks and led to worries about economic slowdowns. But here in Japan, Kiminobu Kimura, an architect, says he has not felt the pinch. In fact, his monthly energy bill is lower than a year ago.

The Lure of Living Above It All

In many countries, higher oil prices have hurt pocketbooks and led to worries about economic slowdowns. But here in Japan, Kiminobu Kimura, an architect, says he has not felt the pinch. In fact, his monthly energy bill is lower than a year ago.

Preserving China on his own dime

Canadian millionaire Jeffrey Huang didn't get much sympathy from Chinese authorities when he rescued dozens of historic buildings from the threat of demolition and decay.

The former Toronto-based textiles trader has spent the past seven years on a hunt for ancient architecture on the verge of destruction. Scouring the towns and villages around Shanghai, he has rescued more than 150 historic structures -- everything from 400-year-old temples and mansions to wooden bridges and tea houses and even a gangster's faux-Roman villa from the 1920s.

Nobody in the Chinese government has offered any help. "They think it represents the backwardness of China," Mr. Huang says. "Some of them say, 'Why are you keeping these ugly old things to show to foreigners? China is a modern country now.' "

Preserving China on his own dime

Canadian millionaire Jeffrey Huang didn't get much sympathy from Chinese authorities when he rescued dozens of historic buildings from the threat of demolition and decay.

The former Toronto-based textiles trader has spent the past seven years on a hunt for ancient architecture on the verge of destruction. Scouring the towns and villages around Shanghai, he has rescued more than 150 historic structures -- everything from 400-year-old temples and mansions to wooden bridges and tea houses and even a gangster's faux-Roman villa from the 1920s.

Nobody in the Chinese government has offered any help. "They think it represents the backwardness of China," Mr. Huang says. "Some of them say, 'Why are you keeping these ugly old things to show to foreigners? China is a modern country now.' "

We've seen the future, and it is us

Human habitation has been, and is increasingly, playing a direct role not only in the extinction of species, but in their evolution. By our own actions, we may be accompanied into the future by ever more diverse pests and pathogens, and may leave behind what we value most—elephants, tigers, and others of the earth's great megabeasts.

Sunday, January 7, 2007

America the creative

Can statues of killer-bees and storytelling festivals stop the country's smallest towns from withering away?

Saturday, January 6, 2007

Rem demands boycott

Rem Koolhaas has called on architecture’s superstars to join him in a campaign to overhaul the competition system, which he has condemned as “hideous” and a drain on resources and influence.

Cell tower redesign looks to turn modern eyesore into modern art

Cell towers aren't meant to be aesthetic additions to a community; they're simply necessary accouterments to modern life. Some are disguised as palm trees or hidden in church steeples.

The Shock of the Old: redefining the history of technology.

There are certain bits of received wisdom that nobody normally challenges. Such as: we live in an era of constant, accelerating change, that innovation is the key to economic survival, and that we all travel everywhere by personal jetpack.

Where the Sidewalk Ends: Dubai

A few of us from Project for Public Spaces were recently in Dubai to train a group of the city's leading real estate developers in Placemaking. The largest city in the United Arab Emirates, Dubai has experienced explosive growth in recent years, emerging as the regions financial and cultural capital. Not surprisingly, the rapid changes are setting a course that will force Dubai to confront many difficult transportation and development policy decisions in the very near future.

A 'Plague' of Condos

London, England's Alain de Botton has been in Vancouver for one day, and he's sitting in a Granville Island café, unsullied by incessant hype about 'Vancouverism' and its positive influence on North American urban redevelopment. What does the author of The Architecture of Happiness think of our new downtown?

"It's a condominium plague," he says. "It's like a locust invasion."

'It's a good thing,' home builder thinks

Lifestyle diva Martha Stewart is bringing her taste in homes and decor to Central Florida real estate.

The first Stewart-inspired development in Florida will be built by KB Home on 31 acres southwest of Windermere, company representatives confirmed this week.

Enrique Norten Bags Two Waterfront Competitions in December

Enrique Norten, is rolling on the river. In back-to-back competition wins last month, the Mexican architect has made inspired proposals for the waterfront: On December 13 he was chosen to help lead the reinvigoration of Rutgers University’s historic campus in New Brunswick, New Jersey, in a project that focuses on linking the school to the banks of the nearby Raritan River. Eight days later Norten learned that he would master-plan a stretch of the Mississippi River in New Orleans.

An urban neighbour

Last year must not be allowed to slip away without commemorating a sometimes under-appreciated urban neighbour.

Friday, January 5, 2007

Moving for the Food

Sure, some people would do anything to have a view of Central Park or to live in a great school district, but I wanted the cheese bread called pandebono and the $6.50 meat-and-rice-and-soup lunch special at my local Colombian diner, Seba Seba. And I wanted Little India and its famous Jackson Diner five blocks away, not to mention the Patel Brothers supermarket, which snarls traffic on weekends as South Asian immigrants from across the metropolitan area shop for imported ingredients (while double-parked).

Making Other Arangements

As the American public sleepwalking into a future of energy scarcity, climate change, and geopolitical turmoil, we have also continued dreaming. Our collective dream is one of those super-vivid ones people have just before awakening. It is a particularly American dream on a particularly American theme: how to keep all the cars running by some other means than gasoline. We'll run them on ethanol! We'll run them on biodiesel, on synthesized coal liquids, on hydrogen, on methane gas, on electricity, on used French-fry oil.

Ito's New "Real" in architecture

Shapes and forms that seem to spring to life. Spaces that seamlessly integrate interior and exterior. Revolutionary architectural concepts and evolving technologies have in recent years helped realize buildings that once would have been impossible. Toyo Ito, a leading light of this new architecture, is currently advancing projects all over the world.

It's all part of life

Hitoshi Abe, who will head UCLA's architecture department, believes in bringing people together — in buildings, in activities, in pretty much every way.

Building the future

Giant windmills, floating skyscrapers and an "elevator to space" in Lake Michigan. An automated 64-lane superhighway in the center of Chicago. Navy Pier reinvented as a year-round farmer's market. A system of underground tunnels through which people travel throughout the city and state. A network of water-recycling "eco-boulevards." Houses made of bioengineered trees.

Tearing Down the Towers

The formula that emerged from the 2000 and 2004 Presidential elections was provocative: the less dense the population, the more likely it was to vote Republican. Republicans appeared to have lost the cities and inner suburbs, positioning themselves as the party of country roads, small towns, and traditional values. Though Bush was often mocked for the time he spent on his ranch, sleeves rolled up, gun in hand, the image was widely promoted and served as a cornerstone of his identity among Republican voters.

What was supersized may one day be downsized

The size of the average American house more than doubled between 1950 and 1999, according to U.S. Census Bureau statistics. From 1982 to 2004, the typical new single-family house grew about 40% from 1,690 square feet to 2,366 square feet.

In the face of these increases, however, the size of the average American household has shrunk from 3.3 to 2.6 people.

Into a newmindspace

Newmindspace organizes free, fun, all-ages events like parties on subway cars, public pillow fights, giant games of capture the flag on city streets, massive bubble battles, public art installations and much more. Newmindspace is committed to reclaiming public space, inventing new ways of having fun, and creating community.

Thursday, January 4, 2007

30.000 cyclists get green traffic light wave

Cars and especially busses have for year had the benefit of a green traffic light wave on the roads. But now it is the cyclists turn to enjoy a smooth ride through the city without stopping at red light writes the e-newsletter "News from Copenhagen – Environmental capital of Europe".

Seattle adds a touch of green

Landscaping can be much more than a pretty face on urban development.

That's the idea behind pioneering new construction rules Seattle lawmakers recently approved to encourage builders to construct "green roofs," "vegetated walls" and other features that clean the air, insulate buildings and ease the burden of Seattle's wet climate on the city's drains and creek beds.

Champs Elysées Risks Losing its Soul

Paris is alarmed at the prospect that its beloved main boulevard is becoming just another brand-driven shopping street. City Hall is fighting the invasion of foreign high street retailers and struggling to keep the Champs Elysées as French and chic as possible.

Foresight in Architecture

Architecture is currently undergoing one of the most fundamental and unprecedented shifts in its history, both in the eyes of its makers and its users. Based on a new-found awareness about humanity's undeniable impact on the health of our planet, coupled with the fact that buildings utilize roughly half of all resources, a new challenge has arisen which architecture must address.

The city rediscovers the street

No official place to rally? No problem. The protests for immigrant rights showed how L.A.'s public spaces are a product of their communities, not a planner's desk.

Wednesday, January 3, 2007

The sky's the limit

Anyone with an eye on the development of the modern cityscape, from the reconstruction of regional cities bombed during the Second World War to the smash-it-down, rebuild-it-high ethos of new economies such as China, will have noticed we are soaring into a brave new world of huge skyscrapers and giant office blocks. If Godzilla rose again from the Sea of Japan, 50 storeys high, he'd be dwarfed by many of the glass-and-steel monsters that have risen out of such rapidly modernising cities as Beijing and Kuala Lumpur.

Skyscrapers spring up in response to rising demand

They sound more like theme park rides than symbols of progress, but towers such as the cheese-grater, the walkie-talkie and the helter-skelter are leading a renaissance in British high-rise architecture.

Middle-Class French Join Sleep-In Over Homelessness

Hundreds of people emerged from tents beside this city’s Canal St.-Martin to greet the chilly New Year with a hot lunch from a nearby soup kitchen. But not all of them were homeless.

Dozens of otherwise well-housed, middle-class French have been spending nights in tents along the canal, in the 10th Arrondissement, in solidarity with the country’s growing number of “sans domicile fixe,” or “without fixed address,” the French euphemism for people living on the street. The bleak yet determinedly cheerful sleep-in is meant to embarrass the French government into doing something about the problem.

Can architecture make you fat?

Experts are starting to think so - and they're urging architects and town planners to tackle the obesity epidemic by making new buildings more fitness-friendly.

She's L.A.'s pedal pusher

It scares her to ride her bicycle to work. A vague prickle of apprehension follows her along Sunset Boulevard and down Spring Street on her way into the teeming core of the city. But she rides anyway. Her faith in the future of the bicycle overpowers her dread of the cars that rule these impatient streets.

Tuesday, January 2, 2007

A Century Later, Los Angeles Atones for Water Sins

It may fall short of a feel-good sequel to “Chinatown,” the movie based on the notorious, somewhat shady water grab by Los Angeles that allowed the city to bloom from a semi-arid desert.

Slow Food's Growing Pains

Want to eat local? You'll have to get in line.

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