Urbanism News
Thursday, March 31, 2005
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Experts Warn Ecosystem Changes Will Continue to Worsen, Putting Global Development Goals At Risk A landmark study released today reveals that approximately 60 percent of the ecosystem services that support life on Earth – such as fresh water, capture fisheries, air and water regulation, and the regulation of regional climate, natural hazards and pests – are being degraded or used unsustainably. Scientists warn that the harmful consequences of this degradation could grow significantly worse in the next 50 years. |
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Parking tight in Seattle? Mayor plans to squeeze it more Almost every night after work, Ebbie Smith circles, block after block, in search of a parking space. She lives in Seattle's Capitol Hill neighborhood, where the parking shortage is notorious, and she usually gets home after most of the spots are taken. |
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Celebration of Cities The city is a fundamental and universal human creation. It is a unique centre for social life as well as individual and collective fulfilment. The frantic, irreversible urban growth that societies throughout the world have experienced over the past few decades has caused a transformation of cities and agglomerations, which rarely corresponds to inhabitants legitimate needs, expectations, and aspirations. |
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Who owns public art? As economists often note, there's no such thing as a free lunch. Having secured private funds to underwrite its new public park, Chicago now faces a clash of private claims and public interests. The issue? The right to photograph the park's signature artworks. |
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Two-thirds of world's resources 'used up' The human race is living beyond its means. A report backed by 1,360 scientists from 95 countries - some of them world leaders in their fields - today warns that the almost two-thirds of the natural machinery that supports life on Earth is being degraded by human pressure. |
Wednesday, March 30, 2005
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Bright Lights, Big City Though ethereal, light is one of architecture’s most important materials. Whether natural or artificial, light can accentuate architectural genius, mask mistakes, grab attention, make a place feel sacred or safe. New lighting technology and educational programs are keys to keeping architecture’s spark alive. |
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The roof transporting us to tomorrow Standing beneath the roof at the Collins Street end of the new Spencer Street Station is not unlike entering a grand cathedral. With its vaulted ceilings and light-filled transparent spaces, it is a world away from the dull Eastern bloc-style dumb box that long masqueraded as the city's main railway terminal. |
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Delhi suburb plans world's tallest building Plans to build a record-breaking skyscraper in a Delhi suburb were given the go-ahead yesterday. |
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Wal-Mart pitches green design for Vancouver The retail discount chain Wal-Mart, already a Goliath across North America, is fighting for a piece of turf in one of Canada's largest cities. |
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Exurb growth challenges U.S. cities Urban centers feel the pinch as people move beyond the 'burbs. |
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The Soul of the New Exurb In the spring of 1996, Lee McFarland quit his high-paying job at Microsoft, sold his house and drove his Jeep Cherokee from Redmond, Wash., to Surprise, Ariz. He had come to build a church. McFarland, who was 36 at the time, knew little about leading churches and less about building them: he wasn't even halfway through the correspondence classes he was taking to become an evangelical pastor. Nevertheless, he'd been hired by a small group of Christians in an adjoining community to do just that. And so a few days after he arrived, he put on a pair of slacks and a polo shirt, said goodbye to his wife, Sandy, and their two kids, who had come to Surprise several weeks ahead of him to get settled in their new house, and set out to find believers. |
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'Supermayor' uses firm hand to clean up Manila He has been called a tyrant, a dictator, a modern-day Hitler, an elitist - incongruous epithets for a man who likes the color pink. |
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Priced Out of Public Service With homes costing an average of more than $1 million, a city councilman in Half Moon Bay decides he no longer can afford to live in the town he's served. |
Tuesday, March 29, 2005
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Revitalizing the Banks Of Washington's 'Forgotten River' Picture a river in Washington, D.C. - no doubt you thought of the Potomac. But the city has another river, the Anacostia, which flows from the Maryland suburbs through eastern Washington before meeting the Potomac some two miles south of the White House. While the Potomac is known as the setting for many of Washington's most popular attractions, the Anacostia is actually omitted from most tourist maps. |
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Tower designs to test copyright law The outcome of a copyright lawsuit filed by a Yale School of Architecture graduate over the proposed design of the Freedom Tower likely will hinge on whether the court believes there is a "substantial similarity" between the two designs, legal experts said. |
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Another fine pickle How Barcelona stole London's prize gherkin - and had the cheek to improve on it. |
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It's time to make the most of suburban sprawl
Flight to the suburbs isn't going to stop. |
Monday, March 28, 2005
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Shootings spur school building design changes Office location, classroom door locks, limited entrances are among the measures to make new or retrofitted schools safer. |
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A majestic coliseum for the modern age It is larger than Stadium Australia and the Stade de France combined, while the Statue of Liberty and the London Eye would sit comfortably under the new steel arch that now identifies Wembley Stadium as the greatest football arena in the world. |
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Electronic Vehicle Identification for Canada Will your next license plate be chipped? Vancouver-based EVI Management is bringing e-Plate to Canada to replace a century-old design with new technology. |
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In bohemian zone of free spirits, can spaces be assigned? One man juggles chain saws while eating an apple. Another bellows with an echo effect at startled passersby. A third holds a sign: "Ninjas killed my family. Need money for Kung Fu lessons." |
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Landscape Architects Stake Their Reclaim Architects grab more attention with their imposing skyscrapers. But landscape architects are emerging as the heroes of modern urban existence. |
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Will the brain drain back up? Richard Florida, who stirred up urban planning with his book on the rise of 'the creative class' in 2002, now says the United States is shooting itself in the foot in the global competition for talent -- while Canada's major cities are pulling ahead. |
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Cities and Web Economies An interview with Jane Jacobs. |
Sunday, March 27, 2005
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Replanting the environmental garden The movement has suffered losses lately, but new strategies -- including "enterprise environmentalism" and spiritual ecology -- could revitalize it. |
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Bikers to get an urban habitat After years of being kicked off hiking trails and public parkland, local mountain bikers will soon have a place to do wheelies off rocks, bunny hop over logs and leap over large boulders. |
Friday, March 25, 2005
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Guerrilla architecture updates Mexico City Risk-taking pays off for the city's young architects as they strive to beautify blighted urban areas with bold designs. |
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Mirador, Madrid On the heels of a building boom and housing shortage in Spain, MVRDV was commissioned to design the Mirador, a 21-story, 156-unit apartment building with local architect Blanca Lleó. Departing from the drab, conventional housing surrounding Mirador's site, the architects created a distinctive silhouette by grouping nine blocks arranged around a communal outdoor void. |
Thursday, March 24, 2005
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Greener pastures for urban rooftops When Susan Boyle and Benton Brown started renovating a 19th-century icehouse in Brooklyn, N.Y., into a residential loft building, they approached it ecologically. They installed solar panels, radiant heating and energy-saving appliances. They also installed a lush, 2,300-foot carpet of plants on the roof. |
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Vibrant Cities Find One Thing Missing: Children The Pearl District in the heart of Portland seems to have everything in new urban design and comfort, from the Whole Foods store where fresh-buffed bell peppers are displayed like runway models to the converted lofts that face sidewalk gardens. Everything except children. |
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Waterfront Rezoning And Its Shortcomings Some New Yorkers look at what is happening on the waterfront in Manhattan, with its ring of continuous public parkland, and think with glee: Some day the rest of New York will have this too. |
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'I'm an outsider' The world's most prestigious architecture prize has gone to the American Thom Mayne. Thom who? |
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Architecture and Carchitecture Last week Nissan Motor offered an early teaser. Two in fact: it unveiled a new sport concept car against the backdrop of a new design studio in Farmington Hills, Mich. |
Wednesday, March 23, 2005
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Kenzo Tange, 91 “Architects today tend to depreciate themselves, to regard themselves as no more than just ordinary citizens without the power to reform the future,” Mr. Tange wrote. “I feel however, that we architects have a special duty and mission ... (to contribute) to the socio-cultural development of architecture and urban planning.” |
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Groundswell For years now landscape architecture has suffered from a disciplinary inferiority complex. Partly this is because the field is generally undervalued — or "misunderestimated," as our malapropmeister-in-chief would put it — by a park-appreciating public for whom "landscape" evokes pleasant but limited images of picturesque gardens and woodlands, of soft green sanctuaries where harried, techno-connected citizens can retreat from the mad ceaseless pressures of the hyper-modern metropolis. |
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A manifesto for architecture – 21 actions for a better Britain The Royal Institute of British Architects has produced a manifesto to inform the General Election campaign about architecture, and to serve as a reference point for RIBA policy development. |
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Bush to Cities: Drop Dead! If proposed cuts to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development go through, it could be 1975 all over again. |
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Free parking is costly investment There is no such thing as free parking, unless you're driving around a Monopoly board, according to a book released today by the American Planning Association. |
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Visible majority by 2017 The number of visible minorities in Canada is expected to double by 2017 and form more than half the population in greater Toronto and Vancouver, according to new projections that highlight the country's growing diversity. |
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British would increase commute for better jobs More than a third of British employees would double their commute if it meant improved job satisfaction and security, according to new research by commercial property company, MDA. |
Tuesday, March 22, 2005
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Mein camp Hitler had Prora built as a Nazi retreat. Now German architects want to resurrect it - as a slick holiday resort. |
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Riverside tower could make splash Chatterjee, an architecture professor at UC., called the vision worthy of the reputation of its designer, Polish-born architect Daniel Libeskind, who last year won the competition to design the new buildings at the site of New York City's World Trade Center. |
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Architect Who Modernized Japan Dies at 91 The architect whose designs guided the rebuilding of modern Japan from the ashes of World War II, died of heart failure at his home in Tokyo on Tuesday at the age of 91, Japanese media said. |
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Universities are the new city planners Are universities becoming the real planners of our cities? Something has happened. Cities used to be planned by professional city planners. But the planning profession as we know it arose, to a large extent, as a response to the urban renewal legislation of the 1950s and '60s, when federal funds poured into cities. Now federal money has dried up. Planning agencies in most cities are underfunded and weak. They react to proposals, rather than initiating anything themselves. A university dean in one city told me the planning department there was ''AWOL." A prominent figure in another city used the word ''toothless." |
Monday, March 21, 2005
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Rotterdam: A City Designed Around Design In Rotterdam, the skyline is not dominated by church steeples or historic monuments but by the mast of the Erasmus Bridge - named for this city's most famous resident - which features a 450-foot spire that resembles an upside-down tuning fork. |
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Americans See Fuel Efficient Cars as "Patriotic" Most Americans believe it is "patriotic" to buy a fuel-efficient vehicle to help wean their country off Middle Eastern oil, according to a new poll released on Thursday. |
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Architect of Unyielding Designs Takes Top Prize Thom Mayne, known for tough, unorthodox designs as well as verbal fracases, was as shocked as anyone at winning his field's top prize. |
Saturday, March 19, 2005
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Tower rejected for falling short of 'architectural excellence' Developer Simon Lim's dream of building Vancouver's second-highest tower -- a 167-metre building with a forest garden encased in glass on its roof -- suffered a surprising setback Tuesday. |
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The high pod A stunning new landmark observation tower designed by the team that created the London Eye could make its debut in Manchester. |
Friday, March 18, 2005
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Live Free and Die of Boredom Is “economic freedom” just another word for nothing left to do? |
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What $3 Billion, More or Less, Buys: A Hotel Fit for Kings At roughly $3 billion, the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi, which just opened to the public, is said to be the most expensive hotel ever built. A billion won't buy what it used to, of course, but three seems to do just fine. |
Thursday, March 17, 2005
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The Shape of Locative Media As the discourse around locative media art gets into gear, Simon Pope sets some new co-ordinates, and salvages some old ones, to navigate this emergent genre. |
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Explaining Urbanism to Wild Animals While nostalgia for the bygone industrial age is plundered by the regeneration industry, some contemporary artists, working amidst the city’s post-industrial reinvention, are attempting more nuanced engagements with urban histories and collective memory. |
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Mysteries of the Creative Class, or, I Have Seen The Enemy and They Is Us Artists and other ‘creative’ professionals are increasingly willing pawns in the State-backed gentrification games of developers and corporations. But can those that wish to challenge the underlying brutalities of ‘culture-led regeneration’ turn their creative powers against it? |
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Nature is a design How do we navigate through office landscapes, tree structures and recreational parks? Have motorways, airports and supermarkets become our natural surroundings? The organisers of the Biggest Visual Power Show thought it was time to redefine the meaning of the word ‘nature’. |
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Mecanoo wins competition in Spain Mecanoo's design for the Theatre and Congress Centre La Llotjaof won an international competition. The complex of 37.500 m2 will be the new icon of the historical city of Lleida and must give an impulse to the surrounding neighbourhood. Mecanoo's design looks strikingly similar to the Congress Centre at the University of Delft - right beside Mecanoo's famous library. |
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Home-grown: Behnisch, Behnisch & Partner Takes on the World Berlin: "Export" at the German Center for Architecture shows off home-grown talent exporting their architectural finesse around the world. |
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Revolution II saves Earth Industrial Revolution II – the green reconstruction of human society – has already begun, and not a minute too soon. |
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Won't you be my neighbor? Studies show that we want to live near people with similar lifestyles. |
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Running on Empty If the cost of energy skyrockets, are the suburbs doomed? Would Long Island, already paying among the highest fuel and electricity rates in the country, become an unsustainably expensive place to live? |
Wednesday, March 16, 2005
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Wal-Mart à la Mexicana Wal-Mart puts down roots in the shadow of the Pyramid of the Sun in San Juan Teotihuacan. Is the global leviathan any match for Quetzalcoatl? |
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Urban coastline: more than just a home by the sea From docklands to pleasure beaches, the way we build our waterfronts speaks volumes about how we see ourselves as a species. |
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Dude, where's the parking garage? Hiding under parks or behind wrap-around condos, ugly decks are donning disguises. |
Tuesday, March 15, 2005
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Places to park and stride Neighborhoods are being designed to get people out of their cars and on their feet. |
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Michigan’s Comeback City In Grand Rapids, smart investments spur Smart Growth. |
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Paris drive to cut traffic in centre by 75% The historic heart of Paris could be closed to all except residents' cars within seven years, the town hall said yesterday, taking mayor Bertrand Delanoe's longstanding campaign against the internal combustion engine to its logical conclusion. |
Monday, March 14, 2005
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Massive Mau Design whiz's new show mistakes fashion for hardcore politics. |
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Urban farming may well hold the key to the future of Detroit What do you do with a city after most of its people leave? |
Saturday, March 12, 2005
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Turning Japanese, why aren't we turning Japanese? The Land of the Rising Sun will not bow to the shrinking space. |
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A shock of green in concrete Cairo In a congested district of the Egyptian capital, a former rubble dump has been converted into an oasis for the masses |
Friday, March 11, 2005
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Way too much information Bruce Mau is a hunter and gatherer -- of information. You can tell he's in hot pursuit of woolly mammoths and other exotic game by the way he has plastered the walls of the Art Gallery of Ontario with brazen declarations about the way that design is infiltrating our homes, and our world. |
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Building the country Shanghai's evolving architecture reflects China's growing self-confidence. |
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Will condos one day line back alleys of the city? Designer Trevor Kruse has a vision for the city -- but he just may be 50 years ahead of his time. |
Thursday, March 10, 2005
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Crown Fountain- Chicago, Illinois As part of an AIA Conference in Chicago last week, various people involved with the Millennium Park project spoke about their experiences on specific park components. Mark Sexton talked about the design and construction of Crown Fountain in the park's southwest corner, a project undertaken by his firm Krueck & Sexton Architects. |
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A myth no more: An architecture award goes to good clients. As the story goes, the Cretian emperor, Minos, sought a refuge for his wife's illegitimate offspring, the human-flesh-eating Minotaur, which was half- bull and half-man. He hired architect and engineer Daedalus, who designed Labyrinth, a fortress of mazes from which no prey could escape the hybrid beast. Daedalus pleased his client, but it was the clarity of Minos' brief that made such a design possible. Dedalo Minosse is thus an architecture prize for that ineffable part of the creative process: the client's participation. |
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An Ode to Olmsted in Orange Christo’s ‘Gates’ not possible in sprawl America. |
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A 3D view of the city, block by block Vehicles that move slowly down the street, pausing regularly to take photographs with remote-controlled cameras, tend to make the police a bit nervous. But one trailer loaded with imaging equipment that made its way through the streets of central Philadelphia wasn't spying — although at first, Secret Service agents had their doubts. |
Wednesday, March 9, 2005
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A Fast Road to Nowhere Plagued by chronic traffic jams, Germany's autobahn is often more of a long parking lot than a high-speed automotive paradise. Some scientists are hoping to explain the hassle of stop-and-go with physics and game theory. |
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A city reaching for the skies To cluster or not to cluster - that is the tall buildings dilemma facing Liverpool. |
Tuesday, March 8, 2005
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Adjacent Wal-Marts May Dodge Size Curbs In what company officials are calling one of the first arrangements of its kind in the country, Wal-Mart plans to build a 74,998-square-foot store cheek by jowl with a 22,689-square-foot garden center. The two Wal-Marts -- each with its own entrance, utilities, bathrooms and cash registers -- would have a combined area 30 percent larger than the 75,000-square-foot limit for a single store in Dunkirk. |
Monday, March 7, 2005
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Eternal sunshine of the spotless redevelopment Edinburgh's dirty old harbours are set to be transformed. But do planners risk turning Auld Reekie into Disneyland-on-sea? |
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A capital idea Jacques Tati’s beautiful, gentle 1958 film Mon Oncle begins with a scraggy pack of dogs sniffing around a series of Parisian spaces, from scrappy street corners to the local place, and ending up in the soulless modern housing of the suburbs. In contrast to the concrete jungle, that little square with its cafe, shops and ineffectual street-sweeper represents our archetypal image of an intimate Parisian quartier: ramshackle houses, stalls, eccentric characters and colourful community life. It is the kind of city that everyone seems to pine for, a utopia of freshly baked bread, lazy cafes and children playing in the street. |
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Urban green space linked to walking, cycling levels The degree to which city people walk or ride bicycles for their daily transportation needs depends largely on how much green space there is, says a new study that examines the role of urban design in physical fitness. |
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End of suburbia draws nigh This 'living arrangement ... has no future' when cheap gas disappears. |
Saturday, March 5, 2005
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Peckham gets ‘most amazing loo’ Will Alsop is to return to the home of his Stirling Prize-winning library with bold new designs for Peckham Square that include “the most amazing lavatory in London”. |
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Pupils teach architects a lesson Schoolchildren are leading the way in a once-in-a-lifetime project to transform our schools. |
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This Space for Sale, Even the Space You're Sitting On Having spent nearly half his life as a transit worker, Ray Volsario is used to his subway cars looking a certain way. |
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Intercultural innovation Our cities can profit from the creativity that cultural diversity brings. |
Friday, March 4, 2005
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Hit the Dimmer, Disney Hall Is Told Officials decided Tuesday to make part of Walt Disney Concert Hall a little duller. |
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100 cities join climate rescue network Britain launched a campaign on Tuesday to tackle the global climate change crisis through the sharing of information between 100 cities in 60 countries from Argentina to Vietnam. |
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The Aesthetics of Urban Renewal Landscape architecture is back—too late for the WTC. |
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Super Size Me! Mercedes is bringing a bigger, bloated version of its Smart car to the United States. Is this cowardice -- or clever strategy? Two writers argue the case. |
Thursday, March 3, 2005
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Cirque du Soleil Dormitory As an element in Cirque du Soleil's ever-expanding campus in Montréal, the 110 residences by Les Architectes FABG continue their goal of transforming a "no-man's land into an urban treasure." |
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Too tall and too close for comfort High-rise buildings continue to sprout unabated in the major urban centres of China, bringing to the fore public concerns about their height and density. |
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Guess Who the City Is Hiring to Do Some Planning New York has long lagged behind such cities as Paris, London, and Tokyo in its reputation for cutting edge architecture. Recently, though, it has had its internationally recognized triumphs, such as Yashio Taniguchi's expansion of the Museum of Modern |
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Along the East River, Everything Old Is to Be Made New Again This crucial link is absolutely essential to the revitalization of Lower Manhattan. |
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Designs on Downtown One thing about Eric Owen Moss: The man can talk. Give him a chance and he goes on and on, sometimes answering what he is asked, and often not. Like many politicians and some creative types, he seems fascinated by his own ideas, by his solutions to problems and his role in finding the answers. |
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Opinion Pages Editorial Cartoons Feature Pages Business Pages Comics Pages Spanish Features Newsweek Sales and Trials Get Mugshots Permissions Personal Photos About Us Contact Us FineToon Fellowship SEARCH800-879-9794 The American Dream Collides With A European Competitor The European Dream emphasizes community relationships over individual autonomy, cultural diversity over assimilation, quality of life over the accumulation of wealth, sustainable development over unlimited material growth, deep play over unrelenting toil, universal human rights and the rights of nature over property rights, and global cooperation over the unilateral exercise of power. |
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Lessons from big MoMA It ain't fair. But it can't be helped. Comparing the massive redevelopment of the Museum of Modern Art in New York with the transformation of the Art Gallery of Ontario in Toronto is something that's got to be done. |
Wednesday, March 2, 2005
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Into the sprawl Soon half the world will live in cities. That means better jobs, personal freedom and increasingly exotic pets. |
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Oslo: City on the Brink In the third installment in the League's ongoing online project, Worldview Cities: Contemporary Perspectives on Architecture and Urbanism from Around the Globe, architects Thomas McQuillan and Lisbeth Funk lead visitors through Oslo, Norwayís ëblue-greení capital, a city struggling with expansion while trying to maintain its characteristic low density. |
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Plan Underway to Reduce Disney Hall Glare
Parts of the mirror-like walls of the Walt Disney Concert Hall will undergo a $90,000 facelift to give them a little less luster. |
Tuesday, March 1, 2005
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Embassies Importing Bold Designs to Berlin With the exception of Daniel Libeskind's Jewish Museum and Norman Foster's redesigned Reichstag, little daring architecture was born of the fortune that was spent on rebuilding Berlin in the 1990's - which was just how the city fathers wanted it. Nostalgic for Berlin of the 1930's, before it was bombed, occupied and divided, they had used an impressive array of building regulations to forestall anything too adventurous. |
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For economic growth, tougher environmental laws? In 20 years, the US has gone from leading the world in wind-energy manufacturing - with at least a dozen enterprising firms - to lagging badly. Companies in Germany, Denmark, Spain, and elsewhere have grabbed the technological lead and now hold roughly 80 percent of a $8 billion market that's growing 25 to 35 percent a year. |
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A new Berlin rises from the Bauboom Berlin encompasses the 20th Century in microcosm: It's been overtaken by fascists, bombed to bits and zigzagged in two. Then, after reunification, when it became the capital of a reunified Germany, it went on a shopping spree, hiring world-famous architects to make the city whole again. But few corporations moved to the new capital, leaving it with a soaring office and apartment vacancy rate. As a result, the city is now broke. |
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Sweet and low down Architects are queueing up to fill Brighton with skyscrapers. They should take a tip from the city's stunning new library. |
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In My Backyard, Please: The Infrastructure Beautiful Movement Steven Holl's latest building, a water filtration plant shaped like a pipe, covered in stainless steel shingles and set in a field on the outskirts of New Haven, is hard to miss - as long as you know where to look. |
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