Urbanism News
Monday, March 31, 2008
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Starchitects are merely stylists, says RMJM boss The cult of the “starchitect” is diminishing the role of architects in the construction industry, the boss of one of Britain’s leading commercial practices has warned. |
Sunday, March 30, 2008
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Farming the City Like many good ideas, community food planning seems obvious in retrospect. Each new subdivision raises a host of concerns as it goes through the approval process - but how well its surroundings can feed future homeowners has seldom been one of them. |
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The inescapable sales pitch 'It turns you from being a citizen of the community to . . . a set of captive eyeballs for marketers' |
Saturday, March 29, 2008
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Gyre-O-Matic Online shopping enters a whole new dimension. |
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Dubai architecture: the tart turns tasteful Once ridiculed for its design bling, the Emirates city is getting an avant-garde makeover from the world's top architects. |
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SUVs Without Wheels The financial industry is suffering convulsions because it gave too many people too big an answer to the question, “How much house can I afford?” But in looking over the mess left by the popped housing bubble, another question comes to mind, one of much greater consequence in the long run: “How much house can the planet afford?” |
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Baltimore , place of Yes and Yes Are you a Believer or a Cynic? Baltimore is a city built for a million people, with only 660,000 living in it. We're either 2/3 full or 1/3 empty: so what do you like, Potential or Decay? Depending how you break, potential means either homesteading or gentrification, decay means either romantic desolation or slow motion urban tragedy. Decide quickly, and don't forget the race and class angles, either. |
Thursday, March 27, 2008
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What Does Climate Change Do to Our Heads? A small yet growing body of evidence suggests that how people think and feel is being influenced strongly by ecosystem transformation related to climate change and industry-related displacement from the land. These powerful stressors are occurring more frequently around the world. A case in point: When researchers from the Centre for Rural and Remote Mental Health at the University of Newcastle in Australia conducted interviews in drought-affected communities in New South Wales in 2005, the responses suggested some of their subjects may have been suffering from a recently described psychological condition called solastalgia (pronounced so-la-stal-juh). |
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New eco-towns to make it hard going for cars with 15mph limit Half of all households in eco-towns will have to live without a car and those that have one will find their speed limited to 15mph, according to standards for the wave of new towns unveiled yesterday. |
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New Brooklyn Vistas, and a Fight Over Plans for Them For the first time in decades, visitors to the north side of Brooklyn’s Pier 1 can see something breathtaking. New Jersey. |
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What Will Be Left of Gehry’s Vision for Brooklyn? The growing possibility that much of the multibillion-dollar Atlantic Yards development in Brooklyn will be scrapped because of a lack of financing may be a bitter pill for its developer, Forest City Ratner. But it’s also a painful setback for urban planning in New York. |
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Little-known open spaces enhance downtown S.F. The Intercontinental terraces show the mixed results of a decades-old city policy that requires new commercial buildings in central San Francisco to provide publicly accessible open space. More than a dozen such spaces now exist, including lush street-side plazas and rooftop aeries with spellbinding views. Yet many are hard to find unless you're in the know. Others are more Scrooge-like than welcoming. |
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Bulletproof public design in L.A. A growing movement in crime-ridden parts of L.A. incorporates safety into parks and residential architecture. |
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Paola Antonelli and Benoit Mandelbrot The curator and the mathematician discuss fractals, architecture, and the death of Euclid. |
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Is this the greenest city in the world? Eco housing, car-free streets and socially conscious neighbours have made the German city of Freiburg a shining example of sustainability. But this brave utopian vision of clean living has its fair share of dirty linen. |
Wednesday, March 26, 2008
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Star Cities The world's best-known architects are turning to planning. Is a new form of urbanism emerging? |
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As climate worries grow, cities turn green The green-roof craze is now climbing city walls--and anyone with a green thumb can cash in. |
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Farms in Cities Surprisingly enough, there do exist urban farms in Canadian cities. |
Saturday, March 22, 2008
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Adventures in fantasyland In his new book, philosopher Mark Kingwell explores Shanghai and sees how China's magic kingdom can please the senses - and make poor people disappear. |
Friday, March 21, 2008
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A Landmark From the Start, Now Getting Its Official Due The news may be that 1 Chase Manhattan Plaza — the towering silvery monolith that forever changed the Lower Manhattan skyline nearly a half century ago — has not been made a landmark already. |
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Rebirth of the ratepayers' association Mark Weiser, head of the Midland Park Community Association, says that "the easiest thing you can do to be part of the neighbourhood is say 'hello' to your neighbours." |
Wednesday, March 19, 2008
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How Mechanization Can Help Cities Rethink Parking Unsightly and space-consuming, parking is nonetheless a key component for most urban development. But the rise in innovative parking solutions and mechanization technologies is poised to transform the parking garage from an eyesore into a cohesive element in any sustainable, walkable and livable project. |
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How to Revitalize a City Copenhagen offers lessons in creating exciting public spaces. |
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A Most Convenient Truth: The unexpected, amazing revival of the...bicycle New public bike systems debuting in Paris, Barcelona and other cities mark the dawn of personal rapid transit. |
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Saint Brad With his Make It Right project in New Orleans, Pitt may be on his way to becoming architecture’s most important patron. Is architecture up for the challenge? |
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Planners suck, says James Dyson The future of Sir James Dyson’s £56m design and engineering school in Bath is under threat ahead of a planning vote by local councillors on Wednesday. The vacuum-cleaner entrepreneur, who wants to build a centre to teach 2,500 teenagers a week and start a diploma to reduce Britain’s shortage of engineers, faces an uphill battle for approval. |
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London explores future of architecture The future of London's open spaces is the subject of a new exhibition in the British Capital. The exhibition focuses on forces that have shaped the Capital's extensive public spaces and on ways the city can be adapted for the ease and enjoyment of its people in the future. |
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New Toronto waterfront development will have a “future proof” energy centre Waterfront Toronto, a 2,000 acre area of largely publicly owned land, is one of the largest urban developments currently underway in North America. As part of the project, a 3500 square meter District Energy Centre is under development which will consist of an interconnected network of underground pipes which that be extended to every area in each of the waterfront precincts. |
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Chasing Away Urban Congestion New York, London, Seoul and other major cities are desperate to eliminate traffic gridlock. Congestion fees may provide relief, but Zipcar co-founder Robin Chase believes she has the perfect wireless solution. |
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
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A Farewell to Ice The latest report on changes in the world’s glaciers, which we cover in the newspaper today, is Mass Balance Bulletin Number 9. The take-home message for many parts of the world — from Asia to the European Alps to the Andes — appeared to be, “Farewell to ice.” Essentially, the mountain storehouses of frozen water that have shaped their history and culture, or that have provided a secure year-round source of water through modern times, are no longer secure. |
Monday, March 17, 2008
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No Big Dig copycats As other cities consider removing elevated highways, activists cite Boston as a reason not to go underground. |
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Foraging for Lunch on the Streets of L.A. Everyone knows we're facing tough economic times -- job losses are increasing, yet prices are rising for commodities, including oil and food. Well, the food part of it is not bothering Nance Klehm as much as it is the rest of us, because she gets a great deal of her food for free by foraging. And I don't mean in the woods. |
Saturday, March 15, 2008
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UK collective to rebuild razed Chinese city GroundLab, a collective formed last year 'to win large-scale competitions', has bagged the international competition to redesign the Chinese city of Longgang. |
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UK architects seek to modernise Paris British-based architects including Zaha Hadid, Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, Michel Mossessian and Think Place are competing to lead one of 10 multi- disciplinary teams tasked with creating a future vision for Paris. |
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A City by the Sea -- or Under It? Artist Eve Mosher spent last summer tracing a 70 mile chalk line 10-feet above sea level throughout New York City. |
Friday, March 14, 2008
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Backyards, Beware: An Orchard Wants Your Spot Growing fruit trees in the backyard has always been popular in Southern California, but even there the mini orchard is gaining adherents. Lora Hall, a 27-year-old graduate student, is typical of the new breed of fruit grower, motivated, she says, by a desire to wean her dependence on the supermarket. |
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AP Probe Finds Drugs in Drinking Water A vast array of pharmaceuticals _ including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones _ have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows. |
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Condo boom pushing out city's creatives Artists are being squeezed out of the very spaces where culture is created and new businesses are grown. |
Thursday, March 13, 2008
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Zero, Now. The time has come to reconcile ourselves with a fundamental truth. Most of us were already alive when humanity went into overshoot and (sometime in the late 80's) began using up the planet faster than the planet could replenish itself. And many of us will still be alive, when, by mid-century at the latest, we have returned again to being a sustainable, one-planet civilization. |
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Nowtopia: How Pirate Programmers, Outlaw Bicyclists, and Vacant-lot Gardeners are Inventing the Future Today Outlaw bicycling, urban permaculture, biofuels, free software, and even the Burning Man festival are windows into a scarcely visible social transformation that is redefining politics as we know it. As capitalism continues to corral every square inch of the globe into its logic of money and markets, new practices are emerging through which people are taking back their time and technological know-how. In small, under-the-radar ways, they are making life better right now, simultaneously building the foundation—technically and socially—for a genuine movement of liberation from market life. |
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Designing for Unpredictable Urban Change Leading international urban designers, landscape architects and architects arrive in Auckland on April 3rd to attend a conference focusing on the potential of landscape to resolve future environmental needs. |
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Drive-in theaters back from the dead A few years ago, it felt as though drive-in theaters were fading into oblivion, if they weren't there already. From the 1970s to the '90s, thousands closed, often due to rising land values that were worth much more as built-up condos and/or mini-malls than empty parking lots with an adjacent bigscreen. |
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Pedestrians and pedallers unite!
Cyclists and pedestrians need to work together to improve the streets of London. |
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Trouble in utopia as the real Brazil spills into Niemeyer's masterpiece Overcrowding, traffic and crime blight futurist capital, admits legendary architect. |
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
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Delirious Dubai One thing for sure, Rem Koolhaas doesn’t hedge his bets. He also knows how to stick his neck out and not lose his head. He has perfected the old debating trick of disarming his critics in advance. Philip Johnson was also a master at this. Before anyone could criticize the pandering commercialism of his office tower designs, he would say, “I’m a whore.” |
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Two Tales of One City For decades, the Cabrini-Green projects represented the worst of urban blight. Now, in the most massive public housing overhaul the country has ever seen, Chicago is tearing them down. But when you get rid of the slums, where do you put the people? |
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Why won't architect Lord Rogers pay us a visit in grim estate he wants preserved? To those unlucky enough to live there, it is a grim, concrete monstrosity blighted by urine-soaked stairwells and marauding gangs of youths who lob rubbish – and worse – from its brutally modernist aerial walkways. But for Britain's leading architect Lord Rogers, Robin Hood Gardens in East London is a "beautiful" work of art, worthy of comparison with Bath's magnificent Royal Crescent. |
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Eastern Europe redefines its identity In the period between the world wars the architectural avant-garde was firmly central and eastern European. It is hard to imagine now but the combination of revolution in Russia, of emerging states attempting to forge their identities through architecture and of an intellectual diaspora that forced many of the finest architects away from their roots to Germany, Britain and the US – notably Hungarians Marcel Breuer and Ernö Goldfinger and Russian Berthold Lubetkin – led to an explosion of radical design. From Adolf Loos to Mies van der Rohe and Le Corbusier, all the greats of modernism were at work in central Europe and Russia. |
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Cities on the edge of chaos It is one of the most seismic changes the world has ever seen. Across the globe there is an unstoppable march to the cities, powered by new economic realities. But what kind of lives are we creating? And will citizens - and cities - cope with the fierce pressures of this new urban age? Deyan Sudjic, director of the Design Museum and author of a major new report, asks if the city of the future will be a vision of hell or a force for civilised living? |
Friday, March 7, 2008
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It's war on our roads and cars should not be the winners Over the past 50 years Melbourne, as in the rest of Australia, has developed an addiction to cars. Car ownership has gone up 500%, and cars have pretty much won every major policy battle during that time. Indeed, our pedestrian strategy safety was built on the principle of keeping pedestrians off the streets, and roads have come to be seen to be car-only spaces. |
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The city that never sleeps ... nor stops talking What does the telecommunications traffic flowing in and out of New York City reveal about the city that never sleeps? |
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Militant mothers of Japan win school-run bicycle victory For years the young mothers of Japan have held their tongues as the country's silent minority but now they have been pushed too far. In open revolt at the Government, their demands are simple: sell us cheap tricycles or leave us alone. |
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New Yorkers Get Priced out of Grocery Stores Enormous accumulations of wealth are hitting New Yorkers where it really hurts -- at the deli counter. |
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A two-wheel solution to a more livable city For all the techno talk about magnetic levitation trains or personal rocket packs, the urban transport system of the future turns out to be bicycles. Sprockets and chains, seats and handlebars, this 19th century technology may be the best weapon we have for the long campaign to make livable cities in the 21st century. Bicycles take a fraction of the space and materials of cars or buses, are powered by the excesses of our calorie-rich diets, and have the huge advantage for those who ride them of extending both quality and length of life. |
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
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Locative Media as an essential part of the city The Dutch Architecture institute (NAi) hosted The Mobile City conference on 27-28th of February, 2008. The day provided both a theoretical and practical context to the multitude of topics applicable to the subject of the “mobile city”. Speakers such as Steve Graham, Tim Creswell, Christian Nold and Malcolm McCullough gave their insightful views on locative media applied to the city. |
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Welcome to the digital spec home From his desk at Michael Carlson Studio Architecture in Sarasota, associate Jedd Heap can design a building, then plop the design down anywhere in the world, even spinning it around to fit better on a tight lot. |
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Praguescape: What about the blob? Berlin has its Knut the polar bear; Prague has its octopus. It's been exactly a year since Jan Kaplický's design won the competition for Prague's new National Library building on Letná hill. Within those 12 months, Czech lawmakers have managed to elect a new president, Canada and the United States have agreed to lift Czechs' visa requirements, and talks on stationing an anti-missile radar on Czech soil have entered their final stage. |
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The Boardwalk and the Bling It was just after 6 on a recent Tuesday evening, but Coney Island was so dark it could have been midnight. The Nathan’s sign was on, but the service windows facing the sidewalk were closed. A single car sped down Surf Avenue, honking at anyone who stepped off the curb. The Parachute Jump, a ride that hasn’t had a rider in decades, looked dark from the subway station a few blocks away, except for a single blinking light at its tip. |
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The Architect as University President "There's a reason you became an architect. It wasn't just about buildings. It was about people, it was about making communities more livable." |
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Make to submit Croydon towers for planning Make Architects has unveiled its latest designs for a set of crystalline towers making up part of the vast regeneration of Croydon, south London. |
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Past Forward: Mannahatta Mannahatta, which is derived from the indigenous Lenni Lenape tribal name for the land, seemed historically to burst with diversity. |
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The townhouse scourge A rash of identical homes weakens the city's individuality. |
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The great Sydney exodus One in five Sydneysiders are so sick of traffic and the high cost of living they are considering moving to another city. And in a blow to Sydney's creative energy, NSW is falling behind the rest of Australia as people in artistic and cultural jobs abandon the state. |
Tuesday, March 4, 2008
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Getting to the office the green way The costs of the daily commute to work can be a killer: rising gas prices, expensive parking, car insurance, public transit payments, not to mention the stresses of getting there, and the environmental toll from air pollution. |
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Landscape/Architecture Firms Growing Closer When SWA Group was brought in as the landscape architect for the California Academy of Sciences, located in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park, the challenge was to create one of the most efficient and sustainable buildings in the Bay Area. Renzo Piano’s design called for a green roof that would essentially lift a piece of the park and place it atop the building: seven earth mounds that would serve as a research facility. |
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Japan's Young Won't Rally Round the Car As youths forsake wheels, designers try to make vehicles less stressful, more convivial. |
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Hollywood and Architecture Combine Forces to Conceive New City Imaginary Forces’ Peter Frankfurt Collaborates with Greg Lynn/FORM and Alex McDowell to create New City for MoMA. |
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The Antisocial Urbanism of Le Corbusier At the same time that he is celebrated as the visionary architect of such modernist masterpieces as the Villa Savoye (1928) and the pilgrimage chapel at Ronchamp (1955), he is decried as an irresponsible and perhaps mentally disturbed city planner. |
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'Enjoy life while you can' Climate science maverick James Lovelock believes catastrophe is inevitable, carbon offsetting is a joke and ethical living a scam. So what would he do? |
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Transportation Planning Warms Up to Climate Change Relatively speaking, Sisyphus had it easy: one boulder, one route, up and down, with zero emissions. But for contemporary planners worried about climate change, an even more formidable task is emerging. It involves America’s billion or so wheels, infinitely chaotic movements, and a stew of gases that threatens the biosphere. |
Monday, March 3, 2008
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City on the Gulf: Koolhaas Lays Out a Grand Urban Experiment in Dubai It has been 12 years since the Dutch architect Rem Koolhaas unleashed his concept of “the generic city,” a sprawling metropolis of repetitive buildings centered on an airport and inhabited by a tribe of global nomads with few local loyalties. His argument was that in its profound sameness, the generic city was a more accurate reflection of contemporary urban reality than nostalgic visions of New York or Paris. Now he may get a chance to create his own version. |
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The Meaning of Form Lelystad has been developing its town centre since 2001. The master plan by West 8 comprises housing, office space, various public buildings, and plenty of public green areas. The eye-catcher of the plan is the Agora theatre by UN Studio, the office run by Ben van Berkel. |
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Urban farming goes global Beer may have made Milwaukee famous, but the city's image in the 21st century could be shaped by organic vegetables and free-range chickens raised in urban neighborhoods. |
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Facing the urban challenge In the light of the forthcoming elections, the Kamra tal-Periti calls on all stakeholders to collectively re-commit themselves to better quality in architecture and urban design, and to higher standards in the construction of buildings and urban spaces for the benefit of the community. |
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A shard on the skyline It is one of the world's most glorious cities. But is St Petersburg about to be ruined by a skyscraper designed by a UK firm? |
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Radical plan to drive cars from key roads Speed limits will be dropped on key routes, lanes removed and traffic lights changed to favour public transport and pedestrians under a new strategy for Melbourne's inner north to be launched by Public Transport Minister Lynne Kosky today. |
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A level playing field for cities From Athenian philosophers to Florentine painters to Chicago architects, cities have long been wellsprings of collaborative invention. In the past, urban creativity was an interesting sideshow, not the main economic event, but today, the rebirth of Boston and New York and London has been built on the increasingly important urban edge in connecting innovative people. The same economic forces that did so much to harm industrial cities in the 1970s - globalization and technological progress - also increased the returns to being smart and you become smart by being around other smart people. We are in a great urban age, because urban connections forge human capital and create innovation. |
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The Big Commute, in Reverse On most days, Matthew Davis, a 28-year-old portfolio manager, can count on spending about two hours getting to work and another two hours getting home. That’s going against the tide of commuters going into New York City for work. Mr. Davis, who rented an apartment in Park Slope in Brooklyn when he landed a job in the securities industry in New York, found himself not on Wall Street, but in Ronkonkoma, working for a financial services management company. |
Saturday, March 1, 2008
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Cities of dreams Fifty per cent of the world's population now lives in cities. By 2050 it will be 75 per cent, so considering the urban future is important. We need more than platitudes. |
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Building up to a battle of wills Noel Malcolm reviews Architect and Engineer: A Study in Sibling Rivalry by Andrew Saint. |
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Build me a pyramid:; Daniel Libeskind and the oligarchitects Western architects make a killing building monuments for regimes that you wouldn't want to bring home to meet the folks. |
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With Electric Scooter, MIT Hopes To Rev Up Practical Transport It’s a humble home for what might be the future of urban transportation. Locked in an office here at MIT’s Media Lab is the latest prototype of the RoboScooter, delivered just one month ago from Taiwan. |
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11 Neighbors from Hell Thank god for zoning laws, covenants and deed restrictions. |
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HKR, Make and Gehl to redesign Dublin's City Markets A collaborative design team formed by HKR Architects, Make Architects and Gehl Architects has been selected to redesign and redevelop Dublin's famous City Markets. |
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We're beginning to get the 'Eco' -- but what's Density? 'How much does your house weigh, madam?" Buckminister Fuller, the famous architect who invented the geodesic dome, used to delight in asking this question at parties. |
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Antonio Villaraigosa: The Gridlock Kid Can the mayor find his way out of a jam and lead Los Angeles to global glory? |
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