Urbanism News
Saturday, March 31, 2007
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Good Malls and Bad Cities New quasi-urban shopping centers and the digital public sphere call into question traditional hatred of malls. |
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From Persian folly to boring boxes The house that Hamid Omrani built in Elm Drive has the bulk of an iceberg and the appearance of a wedding cake. Sumptuous balconies jut out of the cream-coloured structure. Corinthian columns prop up the bulging roof. “Everybody likes columns,” explains Mr Omrani. Everybody, that is, apart from local officials, who now frown on such architectural confections, and the Los Angeles planning department, which this week opened public hearings on a plan that would bar houses like it from being built in much of the city. |
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High Line Park Spurs Remaking Of Formerly Grotty Chelsea
The mission of the High Line, the future park that will rest on an elevated train platform slicing across 22 Manhattan blocks, is to slow down. The park’s designers want the experience of it to be meditative, a break from hustling urban life. |
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A Quebec mayor's bold urban vision Investing (to the point where the suburbs were in a snit) in the Saint-Roch neighbourhood was an inspired move. |
Thursday, March 29, 2007
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Urban Farming: Coming to a City Near You Propelled by the obesity epidemic and the drive for more sustainable economies, an urban agriculture movement is flowering across the U.S. |
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Keeping the dream alive With higher housing prices and less land to build on, building planners are thinking about smaller solutions. |
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Wal-Mart Chief Writes Off New York Frustrated by a bruising, and so far unsuccessful battle to open its first discount store in the nation’s largest city, Wal-Mart’s chief executive said yesterday, “I don’t care if we are ever here.” |
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Interview: Ken Livingstone "Red Ken" explains why big business is a progressive force in the new, global London. He also discusses the city's high-density growth, Sharia law and segregation in the capital, and how he will sink Labour if it won't invest in Crossrail. |
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Bahrain World Trade Center Has Giant Wind Turbines! Not wanting to be left behind by Saudi Arabia and Dubai, the country of Bahrain has been approving some interesting and eye-popping developments in the realm of green architecture. Especially interesting is the new Bahrain World Trade Center located in the city of Manama. The 50-story complex contains two identical towers that rise over 240 meters in height. The sail-shaped buildings offer a visually striking silhouette, appropriately referencing the maritime environment of this small Middle Eastern island, and boast one very unique feature — 3 giant wind turbines tying the two “sails” together. |
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Announcing the 2007 Charter Award Winners 20 professional and 5 academic projects transform and repair their built and natural environments. |
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Edible City - Part 1 While in Belgium last week (or was it the week before?), i made a quick trip to Maastricht in The Netherlands to visit the fascinating and hugely inspiring Edible City, an exhibition currently running at the Netherlands Architecture Institute. |
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Milton Keynes? No, Burma's new capital The outside world has got its first glimpse of the secret capital Burma is building deep in the jungle. In 2005, the ruling military junta abruptly announced that the capital was moving from the leafy colonial city of Rangoon on the coast, to an area of malaria-infested jungle 250 miles inland. At the time it was still served by steam trains. |
Wednesday, March 28, 2007
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Agitation, Power, Space: An Interview with Ole Bouman In May 2005, Ole Bouman, Rem Koolhaas, and Mark Wigley co-founded Volume. Volume was meant as both a magazine and a "global idea platform... dedicated to experimentation and the production of new forms of architectural discourse." The tenth issue of Volume was published last month. Meanwhile, on April 1, 2007, Ole Bouman will become Director of the Netherlands Architecture Institute in Rotterdam. As he explained in an NAI press release, that role will involve "draw[ing] inspiration from the major spatial challenges of our time." |
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Shared Bicycles May Be Next on Streets of New York Community organizers and transit advocates are working together to bring a bicycle-share program to Manhattan, Queens, and Governors Island. |
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Olympic park win for 5th Studio Lea Valley park to rival London's great parks in size. |
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The Southland's hidden Third World slums In the Coachella Valley, hundreds of trailer parks house desperately poor Latino workers amid burning trash, mud, contaminated water. |
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How urban sprawl goes against the green Brittish Columbia's dream of slashing emissions rests with where newcomers choose to live. |
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The upside of going downtown Most US cities – New Orleans being a big exception – are on the rebound. Jobs in the city are more plugged into the "new economy" than those in the suburbs. And city living may become essential to curbs on global warming. Downtown is looking up. |
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Smoking fight moves to apartments When chain smokers moved into the unit below Pamela Schuller's, she got a lot more than a couple of new neighbours. Despite asking them to open their windows, the smell of smoke found its way into her apartment – and into the very fabric of her children's clothing.
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Tuesday, March 27, 2007
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Urban design matters — especially for parking decks Standing at the corner of Harris Street and Peachtree Center Avenue, Atlanta native Bobby Glustrom looks up at the imposing 11-story concrete wall of one of Atlanta's downtown parking decks. "Can you have an uglier structure in the world than this?" asks Glustrom, who refers to the building as something one might see in Beirut. "Look at it. It's so offensive." |
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Calatrava unveils tower's latest twist A skyscraper can be a monster, blocking out sunlight, filling streets with traffic, making the city seem like an urban jungle. But in the hands of Santiago Calatrava, architect of the proposed 2,000-foot Chicago Spire, a skyscraper, even one as enormously tall as this one would be if it is ever built, can seem as innocent—and as unthreatening—as a child's watercolor drawing. |
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Still Learning From Las Vegas Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown take on Sin City architecture three decades later. |
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The Evolution of a City, in Words and Pictures Is the World’s Greatest City Becoming Just Another Town? |
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Neighbor friendly Can the era of McMansions be over? These developers strive for a community feel. |
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Developing a big-city plan for L.A. Planners should embrace a blueprint that treats L.A. like a single city rather than a collection of suburbs. |
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The Mall Goes Green Chicago's Green Exchange will be the first shopping center in the U.S. for environmentally responsible and socially conscious businesses. |
Monday, March 26, 2007
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Cyclists demand that city plow frozen bike lanes Activist group symbolically shovels bike lane in hopes that the city will take up the job. |
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A Rail System (and Patience) Are Stretched Thin in Chicago The century-old elevated train system here is as much a city fixture as the towering skyline and the piercing blue waters of Lake Michigan. But deteriorating tracks and trains, chronic budget shortfalls and a region ever more dependent on rail service are forcing Chicagoans to confront the possibility that the system, commonly known as the El or the L, may be at a breaking point. |
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Paris Embraces Plan to Become City of Bikes Paris is for lovers -- lovers of food and art and wine, lovers of the romantic sort and, starting this summer, lovers of bicycles. On July 15, the day after Bastille Day, Parisians will wake up to discover thousands of low-cost rental bikes at hundreds of high-tech bicycle stations scattered throughout the city, an ambitious program to cut traffic, reduce pollution, improve parking and enhance the city's image as a greener, quieter, more relaxed place. |
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Transport chiefs to get taste of their own policies High-ranking public transport officials have been told to take the bus or Metro to work every 22nd day of the month. The move will help reduce vehicle emissions and let officials experience crowded city transport at first hand, the Shanghai Urban Transport Management Bureau said yesterday. |
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In Surge in Manhattan Toddlers, Rich White Families Lead Way Manhattan, which once epitomized the glamorous and largely childless locale for “Sex and the City,” has begun to look more like the set for a decidedly upscale and even more vanilla version of 1960s suburbia in “The Wonder Years.” |
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Faulty towers There has been much talk in recent months of Toronto's strategies for a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emissions. Not yet part of the discussion, however, is the opportunity inherent in Toronto's extensive stock of hundreds of bulky concrete residential "slab" (i.e. big) highrise apartment houses. |
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Utopia revisited A century ago the heroic architectural style of Modernism promised that technology could save the world. Two major exhibitions look at what went right - and wrong. |
Friday, March 23, 2007
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Dr. Shoup: Parking Guru! World-regarded as an expert on parking policy, UCLA Urban Planning Professor Dr. Donald Shoup is the author of The High Cost of Free Parking, a publication so popular among scholars and devotees that he attracts groupies known as Shoup-istas at book signings! |
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Toronto to reveal tough climate change proposals A dramatic 30-per-cent cut in greenhouse-gas emissions by 2020 -- and 80 per cent by 2050 -- are among several ambitious proposals to be rolled out today as part of a comprehensive city plan to combat climate change. |
Thursday, March 22, 2007
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Water Park The PlayPumps Water System performs modern-day alchemy, converting the energy of children cavorting on a simple playground merry-go-round into clean water. As children spin, the system pumps water from an underground well into a 25-foot-high storage tank. Instead of the time-consuming task of hauling water, villagers need only turn a tap. |
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Urban Curators “People get very polarized by graffiti. Is it the broken window syndrome? Is it creating violence? The one thing about graffiti or street art is you know there’s life,” explains Marc Schiller, 42. He, with wife and collaborator Sara, 37, beside him, pours enthusiasm as he talks about street art and graffiti—legally and artistically daring work, often placed right before our eyes, yet so often unnoticed. This art exists as much for its own sake as for any audience, but thanks to the work of this unlikely husband-and-wife team, street art has a champion: the website Wooster Collective. |
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On Top of Shanghai (Almost) Sinocities went to check out what Shanghai looks like from above. The World Finance Center is nearly reaching its record height. Right now the construction of 77 floors is finshed, 24 more to go. Take a look at some of the snapshots we took on the windy climb to the top… |
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New 'bedouins' transform a laptop, cell phone and coffeehouse into their office A new breed of worker, fueled by caffeine and using the tools of modern technology, is flourishing in the coffeehouses of San Francisco. Roaming from cafe to cafe and borrowing a name from the nomadic Arabs who wandered freely in the desert, they've come to be known as "bedouins." |
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Mr. Bloomberg, tear down this wall! Allied forces announced today that the Wall must come down. No, there hasn’t been a return to the Cold War, but partisans say that the Manhattan Bridge has become a “Berlin”-style wall cutting through the heart of DUMBO. |
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Can you read me? Dutch architect MVRDV has divided its modernism-influenced Barcode House into nine distinct strips, each with its own purpose. |
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Martha Schwartz : Landscapes of Awareness With little care or tact we keep expanding our cities and replacing what was once wilderness with pathetic shrubs in the medians between three car lane avenues. Because we love nature, we put small planters in front of big box stores in the concrete seas that are our suburbs, in what amounts to a desperate effort to humanize the landscape. |
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Shrinking to Fit the Interstices Urban density makes sustainable cities possible. The more closely together we live, the more we share amenities, and the less space we take up for our personal needs, the smaller our collective footprints become. But getting more compact means changing the commonly accepted correlation between McMansions and good living. |
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How Traffic Jams Are Made In City Hall If you want to know why so few people use mass transit, meet Sue, a college administrator in Minneapolis. If anyone would use transit, Sue would. She's single, she lives in a condominium, and she can afford any additional out-of-pocket expense. She could use her city's Hiawatha Line, a light rail route newly completed at a cost of $715 million. But she doesn't, although she feels guilty about it. That's because her car gets her where she needs to go. Faster. |
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Water, water, everywhere – not Across this country, people are more and more concerned about global warming. In marking World Water Day today, it is important to highlight how the global water crisis is contributing to the problem of climate change. The media coverage on climate change in Canada has focused almost exclusively on greenhouse-gas emissions, as have most politicians and commentators. While we do not want to underestimate the serious nature of these emissions, we wish to bring attention to another important cause of global warming: the global water crisis. |
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These invasive species are ruining the retail ecosystem Unchecked by effective regulation, chain stores such as Tesco resemble nature's hungry breeds, suffocating diversity. |
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R U driving? There's another attempt to curb motorists from multitasking on New Jersey highways. Assemblymen Paul Moriarty and David Mayer are sponsoring legislation that would fine those who drive while texting $250 (U.S.). |
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Get cars off King, Toronto Transit asks City Hall Experiment would virtually ban autos on four blocks downtown next summer. |
Wednesday, March 21, 2007
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Megastructure Reloaded Archigram’s Plug-in City, Constant Nieuwenhuys’ New Babylon and Yona Friedman’s La Ville spatiale rank among the incunabula of the 1960s. Combining visionary architecture, pop culture, art, and situationist rebellion, they became known far beyond the narrow confines of urban planning. Till now, however, there has been no exhibition dealing explicitly with megastructuralists’ vision. |
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Green clashes with design in S.F. tower The new 18-story federal building here, designed by Thom Mayne and the Santa Monica firm Morphosis, is hardly short on symbolism or story lines. It is a hulking, aggressive tower in the heart of a city that has seemed wary of bold architectural statements in recent decades. And it is perhaps the most ambitious of the federal government's effort, through the General Services Administration's "design excellence" program, to make new courthouses and office buildings models of forward-looking design. |
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Houses cheaper than cars in Detroit After selling house after house in the Motor City for less than the $29,000 it costs to buy the average new car, the auctioneer tried a new line: "The lumber in the house is worth more than that!" |
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A Glimpse of a More Vertical Los Angeles Long before “the new urbanism” became a tired phrase, Playa Vista, the last remaining large tract of undeveloped land on this city’s traffic-choked West Side, was envisioned as a place where people could live, work, shop and play without leaving their neighborhood. |
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51st IFHP World Congress 51st IFHP World Congress - the main forum for ideas and debate for policymakers, practitioners and researchers regarding the futures of cities. The World Congress will feature keynote speakers addressing the impacts, indicators and implementations influencing the futures of cities. Parallel sessions will feature the presentation of papers, and offer special interest groups such as the IFHP Working Parties the opportunity to assemble. Study tours will take the congress out into the field. Øksnehallen will offer the physical framework for the World Congress. |
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At Housing Project, Both Fear and Renewal More than a decade ago, when the Chicago Housing Authority began dismantling much of its notoriously dysfunctional stock, the worst of Cabrini Green was the first to meet the wrecking ball because it was considered to be among the most frightful addresses in the country. For some families, it still is. Under the supervision of a federal judge, the demolitions have slowed while the residents of several deteriorating buildings and the Housing Authority negotiate redevelopment plans and where the displaced population will go. |
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Clearing a path for walkers Cities across the U.S. are becoming pedestrian-friendly by making walkability a requirement for development. |
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Architect believes 'zipper zone' concept will expedite growth along Poplar corridor Ask architect Frank Ricks what a zipper does and he'll tell you it "holds two pieces of a whole together." But when Ricks speaks about a zipper he isn't talking about the kind affixed to your blue jeans. Instead, he's talking about an area of the city that stretches from Downtown to East Memphis roughly following Poplar Avenue. |
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Tall and Thin, Back in Fashion The sliver building is making a comeback in Midtown Manhattan. The version that Ismael Leyva has designed will soon soar above Eighth Avenue and West 48th Street like a bird made of blue glass, with narrow balconies rising 42 stories high along the neck. |
Tuesday, March 20, 2007
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The Big Ditch: Urban Farmland A project that looks at the architectural typology of food retailing in the UK and its global trading scheme. Supermarket chains implement a global sourcing system to cut supply chain costs and to service multiple countries. This is not an efficient and environmental system that can be prolonged for the future. |
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Step by Step, City by City You might call it de-inventing the wheel. In communities and workplaces across the United States, new groups are marching together to get Americans on their feet. With six in 10 Americans classified as sedentary, walking advocates have vast opportunities and a daunting challenge. The programs that boost walking best take a two-legged approach, giving their target populations a reason to walk - a contest, an incentive or the camaraderie of a group - and removing obstacles that discourage walking, such as traffic hazards, distances from paths and appealing destinations, and lack of time. |
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Plans to improve lanes for cyclists Shanghai is making efforts to prove that the title of "kingdom of bicycles" still fits the world's most populous country, even in the car age. The city is renovating a 300-kilometer network of "cycling arteries," covering at least 60 percent of local roads open to cyclists, and plans to separate bicycles from motorbikes and scooters in some busy areas. |
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Removing Urban Freeways As part of our effort to slow global warming, we should be correcting one of the great errors in the history of American city planning: the post-war binge of urban freeway building. |
Monday, March 19, 2007
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Back to the Future of the Creative City: Amsterdam’s creative redevelopment and the art of deception The comparison between sociologist Richard Florida - author of two books on the rise and the flight of the Creative Class - and a rock star is not unusual. Google ‘rock star’ and ‘Richard Florida’ and you will find dozens of descriptions of performances by the ‘rock star academic’ responsible for introducing pop sociology into regional economics. |
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Structural Integrity Sociologist Nathan Glazer argues that today's leading architects learned the wrong lessons from modernism's mistakes, and need to re-engage with the life of cities. |
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Can London’s skyline grow up gracefully? The Sunday Times Magazine said last year that London was taking over from New York as the world’s financial centre. Glance at the skyline of cranes and girders, and you’re inclined to agree. And if there’s one thing a preeminent financial centre loves, it’s talk of new skyscrapers. As the economic graph goes zinging upwards, so do the plans of ambitious developers and their ever-eager architects. Nobody can ignore a skyscraper. Which is why a public inquiry is taking place into designs for one that looks like a giant walkie-talkie. Just how desirable are these things, and where should we put them? |
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The myth of superstar cities America's urban future lies not with the elite metropolises, but in middle-class havens such as Dallas that are more affordable and less self-regarding. |
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Asia's Quest for the Ultra-Skyscraper Wealth, growth, and the desire to make a mark are spurring cities to build ever higher power-towers—and reshaping architectural design in the process. |
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World-Renowned Architect Discusses Sustainable Design Practices for Urban High Rises Famous for designing high-profile buildings across the world, Helmut Jahn, president and CEO of Chicago-based Murphy/Jahn Architects, offered yesterday his insight into providing the blueprint of a sustainable mixed-use, high-rise development at the New York Academy of Sciences Headquarters in New York. |
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Shaking up Dullsville What should Perth be doing to make it a more vibrant, future-proofed city? Urban planner Charles Landry says we haven't been doing enough. |
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‘It makes a difference to make art’ Artist Olafur Eliasson gave a wonderful lecture in front of a packed auditorium at the NAi on Tuesday evening, March 5, 2007. Luckily, he didn’t talk about the announced theme – ‘structure’ as one of the seven pillars of architecture – but he did talk about his work and, especially, the ideas behind it. |
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Not Oz, but still Emerald Cities In Green City, Mary Soderstrom embarks on an international exploration of what she calls the "green paradox," namely that so many people love gardens and greenery, but when each of us tries to claim a little bit for our own, we end up paving over nature. |
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Cracks begin to show in Canada's suburban dream
As suburbanites feel the creep of isolation, most simply can't afford to be anywhere else. |
Friday, March 16, 2007
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A landscape giant looks back at his roots. They go deep. It is altogether appropriate that Mount Tamalpais dominates the view through the window above the drafting table in Lawrence Halprin's new studio, and that Corte Madera Creek rolls into the bay a few dozen yards away. Those elements -- timeless earth and shifting tides -- define our region's geography. They also run through the best work by Halprin, a landscape architect whose long career shows how limiting that phrase can be. |
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The Malling of Moscow: Imperial in Size and a View of the Kremlin In architectural terms, few cities have endured more abuse than Moscow has during the last decade or so, from the ruthless demolition of major historic landmarks to the boom in garish faux-historical reproductions. So I suppose the news that Norman Foster, one of the world’s most talented architects, has designed a glorified mall in Moscow shouldn’t seem tragic. |
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Exporting the 'Vancouver style' A San Diego housing project designed and developed by Vancouverites demonstrates both this city's place in the world, and the place of the world in this city. |
Thursday, March 15, 2007
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A Condo Tower Grows in Brooklyn The Brooklyn neighborhood of Williamsburg, an old working-class area along the East River, is becoming hyper hip. That isn't such good news for many residents, as housing costs have increased with its status. |
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Reading Lines: Skateboarding and Public Space The appeal of hard landscapes is the alien, un-natural, un-earthly sensations that they allow us to experience. Hard landscapes are not simply coverings with practical qualities. They are representations of the earth laid over its surface: Planetary masks, created by landscape architects leafing through catalogues full of concrete pavers. |
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Teaching Climate On February 20, 2007, architects and students worldwide demonstrated en masse that they are ready to go to work to stop global climate change. Their "gathering" was virtual, however, as schools, firms, and individuals from 47 countries tuned in to the 2010 Imperative Teach-In webcast. |
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House is an island Developers have turned a house into an island in China after the owner refused to move out. |
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Will urban growth trample Vietnam's charm?
Paris has the Eiffel Tower. New York has the Empire State Building. Both are symbols of global cities, recognizable currency of power and prestige. Now the master builders of Vietnam's commercial showcase are racing to put their stamp on tomorrow's skyline. Glass and steel buildings are already sprouting across the city and by 2009, a 68-story skyscraper, designed to invoke the lotus flower and the ao dai worn by Vietnamese women, promises to be this city's Sears Tower. |
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Is the Movement for Sale? Successful (and fun) public space activists Newmindspace face questions about a lack of diversity and their decision to partner with a marketing firm. |
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Green Economics Writer and environmentalist Bill McKibben has become a kind of folk hero in the backroads of Vermont and across the country, wherever farmers markets flourish and citizens rise in fear of global warming. Next month, in hundreds of towns and cities, his "Step it up" acolytes will rally to demand faster action on climate change. |
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Greening Toronto’s Concrete Slab Towers There has been much talk in recent months of Toronto’s strategies for a significant reduction in greenhouse gas emission. Incredibly welcome news, there seems to be a flood gate of creative strategies for seriously combating climate change. Not yet part of the discussion however is the opportunity inherent within Toronto’s extensive stock of hundreds of bulky concrete residential slabs. Typically viewed with scepticism as ‘mistakes’ from the 60’s and 70’s, they may in fact be one of our greatest opportunities for creating a sustainable region. |
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The character of film living spaces Hint: The villains usually go minimalist, while heroes prefer cozy. |
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Good Malls and Bad Cities New quasi-urban shopping centers and the digital public sphere call into question traditional hatred of malls. |
Wednesday, March 14, 2007
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Bohemian Today, High-Rent Tomorrow Creative types are essential to urban and regional economic growth. Here's why—and the cities artists should flock to now. |
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Atkins' 'Central Park' secures design win in Taiyuan, northern China Atkins’ architects in Shanghai have won a design competition for a major city extension in the north-western city of Taiyuan, 300-miles south of Beijing. |
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Shows Try to Renovate Moses' Reputation Robert Moses, the man who remade 20th-century New York on a scale equaled only by Sixtus V's transformation of 16th-century Rome and Baron Hausmann's radical reshaping of 19th-century Paris, is a hot topic again. He is the subject of three exhibitions, two lectures, two symposiums, and a continuing stream of press coverage that today's architectural superstars can only envy. |
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Kotkin bashes urbanism Joel Kotkin is one of America’s most prolific commentators on urban affairs. At first glance, he appears to support something very much like New Urbanism. According to one newspaper story quoted on Kotkin’s website, he favors “suburbs that are not defined by sprawl but a sense of community. |
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Urban sprawl could be environmental headache The environment may rank No. 1 in polls meant to tap the national consciousness but Canadians are choosing auto-dependent suburbs and exurbs over big city life in staggering numbers, the first major release from the 2006 census shows. |
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Population growth will likely be all immigration by 2030 Immigration is fuelling two-thirds of Canada's population growth and will likely become the only source of gains by 2030, according to a national census snapshot released yesterday. |
Tuesday, March 13, 2007
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Google's buses help its workers beat the rush The perks of working at Google are the envy of Silicon Valley. Unlimited amounts of free chef-prepared food at all times of day. A climbing wall, a volleyball court and two lap pools. On-site car washes, oil changes and haircuts, not to mention free doctor checkups. But the biggest perk may come with the morning commute. |
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Ten Things Wrong With Sprawl In just the next 34 years, the Census Bureau tells us, we 300 million Americans will be joined by another 92 million. Where will all these people—mostly us and our direct descendants—live, work, play, worship, buy, sell, and serve? Where will 40 million additional households be located? What sort of built environment will we produce, and what will be the results for the nation’s and the environment’s well-being? |
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Medieval Modern: Design Strikes a Defensive Posture Not so long ago, architects were obsessed with the notion that globalism, the Internet and sophisticated new building technologies were opening the way for a more fluid, transparent landscape in which walls would simply begin to melt away. Things didn’t turn out that way. After 9/11, a craving for the solidity of walls reasserted itself. And the wars on terror, and fractious peaces, enforced it. The Green Zone in Baghdad, Jerusalem’s separation barrier, the concrete bollards that line corporate headquarters on Park Avenue — all are emblems of an unintended new mentality. |
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Using Google Earth for Census Analysis I started the gCensus project for two reasons: First, the Census Department's interface for mapping its data was clunky and looked like something out of the mid-90's—hardly appropriate for a modern web service. Second, there was (and is) a wealth of geographic information publicly available, but few people have access to the kinds of tools needed to view it. Professional researchers investigating geographic data trends use programs known as GIS (Geographic Information Systems) packages for mapping. Unfortunately, there was no tool easily available to the average person who, say, wanted to see how family-friendly a neighborhood might be. gCensus is meant to fill that gap. |
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Bike lanes to be linked around Shanghai Traffic authorities in Shanghai will link cycling lanes around the city this year to create a network of lanes with no obstructions, as one of several measures to improve conditions for drivers and cyclists in the city. |
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Open Source Architecture Architecture for Humanity's Open Architecture Network is in beta and seems to be off to a flying start. Just a few days after launch hundreds of projects have been uploaded and thousands of members have registered. This shouldn't be a surprise. Not only does AfH have a great mission, but the idea of open source architecture (the concept, not just the site) is one whose time has come. |
Monday, March 12, 2007
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de Architekten Cie. designs Urban Delta in Tianjin Tianjin has north China’s leading port. The population of the area surrounding this port complex, the Tianjin Economic Development Area (TEDA), is expected to increase by at least 200,000 people over the coming decade. The international competition for the expansion plan for this area has been won by de Architekten Cie. |
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Design of Density is Key, Says New Lincoln Institute Book The American Dream of a single-family home on its own expanse of yard still captures the imagination. But with 100 million additional people expected in the United States by 2050, rising energy and transportation costs, growing greenhouse gas emissions due to driving, and disappearing farmland and open space, the need for well-designed density has never been greater, says a new book published by the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy. |
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A world without waste The 'zero waste' movement imagines a future where everything is a renewable resource. Sound impossible? From New Zealand to New England, it's already changing the way governments and companies do business. |
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Share the road Hoping to correct a decades-old "urban planning mistake," Louisville city officials are moving to require that anyone building new streets or altering existing ones set aside space for bicyclists, wheelchairs and strollers. |
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Thrusting ambition From Birmingham to Belfast, the UK's regional centres are striving to get on the map by building tall. But does this craze for mini Manhattans speak of a growing regional confidence or a 'mine's bigger than yours' sense of inadequacy? |
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Making a Pilgrimage to Cathedrals of Commerce THE 19th-century shopping arcades of Paris, or passages couverts, are proof that anything modern, if spared the wrecking ball, can be stimulus for nostalgia. When these iron-columned, glass-covered structures shot up around the city in the 1820s and ’30s, they were visionary pieces of industrial-age technology, as whoop-de-do in their day as the warped titanium of Frank Gehry is for ours. |
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Distributing The Future: Designing Sustainable Cities William Gibson’s phrase, "The future is here, it is just not evenly distributed," is a worthy introduction to the "Sustainable Cities: Urban Design,” conference held recently at the United Nations in New York. |
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Deriving Urban Density and Intensity in Greater Washington, D.C. It's not so easy to measure urban density -- either by sight or calculation -- but thoughtful analysis of development intensity can illustrate useful insights into our cities and regions. |
Sunday, March 4, 2007
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Urbanism Holiday I am at the Doors of Perception 9: Juice conference in India presenting my project - then travelling for awhile. Urbanism news will be back up on March 12th. |
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