Urbanism News
Monday, July 31, 2006
|
Suburban myths demolished It is the 1950s and Canada's suburbs are exploding amid a postwar economic boom. Everywhere you look, there are crescents and cul-de-sacs lined with modest houses, big backyards and station wagons parked in the garages. The homes all look the same, and behind the picture windows, so do the families. They're white and married and middle-class. The dads work, the moms stay at home and the bedrooms are filling up with babies. That was then. A half-century later, the suburbs have undergone sweeping change and bear little resemblance to the enduring Leave It to Beaver stereotype. Suburbanites are increasingly diverse, with higher numbers of immigrants, singles, lone-parent families, seniors, empty nesters and common-law couples. Suburban communities are also different: many have downtown cores, thousands of jobs and even high-rise condominiums. |
|
Chicago's architectural razzmatazz New or old, skyscrapers reflect city's brash and playful character. |
|
A Church in France Is Almost a Triumph for Le Corbusier More than 40 years after he drowned off a remote beach in the south of France, Le Corbusier remains a transcendent force. Even if some blame him for the modern city’s greatest sins, from the steamrolling of historical neighborhoods to a stultifying emphasis on function, he is indisputably the most influential architect of the past century. |
|
The Downside of Upscale The battle over skid row is part of a long war between the poor and those who would displace them. |
|
Breaking the Vicious Cycle Seattle has a reputation as a cycling paradise, but there's a lot that has to be done before bike commuting is truly viable for regular folks. |
Saturday, July 29, 2006
|
London mayor proposes number plates for bicycles Turning his attention from increased regulation and taxation of car drivers, London mayor Ken Livingstone has proposed compulsory registration and number plates for bicycles. He told London radio station LBC yesterday: 'I'm now persuaded we should actually say that bikes and their owners should be registered. There should be a number plate on the back so that the ones breaking the law, we can get them off the cameras. It's the only way you can do it.' |
|
Wanted: An icon for Melbourne It is easy to have a big idea. It is harder to have a vision. Great cities need visionaries. Melbourne needs one, or more, for the Docklands. |
|
City's grand spaces are going, going...
When do you get to call yourself a Philadelphian? Is it when you can recite a recent timeline of the city's political history, complete with the names and felony convictions of its elected officials? Is it when you find yourself rooting for the Phillies no matter how dismal their performance? Or is it as simple as when you start to share memories of certain public places? All these things contribute to our civic identity, though I'd argue most strongly for the last on the list. Not everyone keeps tabs on local sports or politics. But most city residents, no matter their background or neighborhood, have at one time or another passed through Philadelphia's major downtown shops, banks, hotel foyers, office lobbies, and transit stations. They are the familiar rooms that make up our common home. |
|
How to Create Great Buildings Developers and governments must recognize that imagination isn't always expensive. |
|
Toronto Buildings Going Green on Top, But Very Slowly A handful of buildings in Canada's biggest city are going green on top in an effort to help the environment and reduce global warming, but the city admits its plan for high-rise gardens has barely taken root. |
|
Going Green For many people this summer, the hottest film isn't The DaVinci Code or Superman Returns. It's Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth, the latest evidence that America is getting serious about being green. But there's another inconvenient truth surrounding the green craze: We're paying little attention to the practice of sustainable design. Unlike many other aspects of the environmental movement, sustainable design is a real, practical and long-term practice that could make a huge contribution to energy savings and environmental health around the world--if only architects and building owners would fully embrace its principles. |
|
Just the place for homegrown ecological museum park Melbourne is a tapestry, made of detailed weavings that intermingle and camouflage the whole. By definition it is a private city, visible in small glimpses. Getting to know it requires investigation; appreciation comes from unravelling the streets and lanes so that we build up an intellectual vision. |
|
A question to fire the imagination There are almost as many ideas for this stretch of Docklands as there are architects. But who can capture the imagination of Melburnians? |
Friday, July 28, 2006
|
New Rubber Sidewalks Easier on the Joints Pounding the pavement is getting a little easier on people's knees in many cities around the country. For reasons of safety and ease of maintenance, Washington and dozens of other communities are installing rubber sidewalks made of ground-up tires. |
Thursday, July 27, 2006
|
Cultural spaces Palimpsest and Emotion Our awareness of the value of buildings as witnesses of history contributes to their conservation or conversion. Thus they become architectural landmarks that shape the organic continuity of the city and its visible history. Premodern buildings have benefited from many different heritage policies, first in Europe, where the conservation of a broad variety of architectures provides texture to cities with ancient centres, and later in North America. |
|
J. Shulman, Modernity and the Metropolis Julius Shulman is renowned for some of the most iconic photographs in architectural history. Whether photographing a skyscraper, house, or gas station, Shulman’s compositional artistry and technical precision present a structure in its most engaging, heroic light. Transcending mere documentation of steel and glass, Shulman’s images seem to reveal the essence of an architect’s vision and capture the spirit of the eras in which they were produced. |
|
I'm a celebrity, get me into there... if you want to sell your building It is refreshing that star architects are designing an increasing number of homes, new but are they being too clever for their own good? |
|
behind the curtain In Chicago, America’s greatest architecture city, Studio Gang is using technology to reinvent the process of building |
|
'Cookie-Cutter' Homes Suit Some Critics' Taste After All This is the biggest, fastest-growing master-planned community in the nation. And, quite possibly, the most insulted. "The ugliest and most embarrassing feature of the Front Range," a resident of nearby Denver declared in a letter to the Rocky Mountain News. "One big smush of beige puke," a Denver councilwoman sneered to Westword, an alternative weekly. And from a post on Cyburbia.org, a forum for urban planners: "Highlands Ranch represents the nexus of all that is soulless and evil in the world." |
|
Europan forum prompts discussion To bring Europan 8 to a close, the European winners congregated in Dordrecht for the weekend of June 30 and July 1 to take part in workshops, collect prizes and celebrate. Robert Verrijt, who made the prize-winning design for the Enschede location with Floris Cornelisse, was in Dordrecht and kept a diary of his visit. |
Wednesday, July 26, 2006
|
The Urban Etiquette Handbook New rules for getting along in an endlessly wired, ruthlessly crowded, sexually libertarian city. |
|
Signs of the times -- Chicago sidewalks for sale It's one thing to see the moving ads in a privately owned shopping mall. It's quite another to see them on the sidewalks of a city, which are supposed to be free of such eye-grabbing commercial clutter. Sidewalks are public space.
And now they're for sale. |
|
The Crumbling of the Casbah It has stood for centuries, a slope of gleaming white houses climbing in steps from the sea like a construction of sugar cubes. It gave this Mediterranean port the nickname la Blanche, the white one. But despite the romance surrounding the old quarter, known as the Casbah and once home to pirates and freedom fighters, it is literally imploding from neglect. |
|
Debate Rages on Housing at Planned Brooklyn Park If 1,200 or so high-rise apartments, a hotel and other private buildings occupy about one-tenth of the land reserved for a park project, is it still a park? |
Tuesday, July 25, 2006
|
Healthful habitats are good business Since the rise of airtight modern construction in the 1970s and '80s, the idea that a building can make you sick has become accepted as one potential side effect of bad design. In tract homes with off-gassing carpets or offices with malfunctioning mechanized ventilation or schoolrooms laden with asbestos, many of us learned the hard way that the buildings we occupy can take a nasty toll on our well-being. But can buildings also make us better? |
|
Yacht parking, this way The new America's Cup pavilion in Valencia is sleek, sporty - and could teach the British Olympics planning team a thing or two. |
|
London Mayor Envisions Model "Eco City" in Thames Gateway London Mayor Ken Livingstone announced in April that he would like to have a 1,000-home “eco city” built in the London borough of Newham. |
|
Unconventional Massimiliano Fuksas reinvents the convention center. |
|
On Architecture: A big vision for humane, compact city living fuels firm What a shame it is that the New Urbanists have adorned themselves and their nostalgic, reactionary neighborhoods with that snappy, forward-sounding label, because it's architects like Ray and Mary Johnston who actually deserve it. |
|
Gated communities are enemies of democracy It repulses me to think that some Americans praise and seek out this kind of land-use aristocracy. We like to think of ourselves as the spiritual heirs to Alexis de Tocqueville, the Frenchman who visited America in 1830 and who, by his observations, spawned an entire cottage industry in aphoristic commentary on the American character. What do you suppose he would have said about gated communities? Well, here's an example of his take on the Americans of 1830. See how you think we're doing: "Aristocratic communities always contain, among a multitude of persons who by themselves are powerless, a small number of powerful and wealthy citizens, each of whom can achieve great undertakings single-handed. In aristocratic societies, men do not need to combine in order to act, because they are strongly held together. Every wealthy and powerful citizen constitutes the head of a permanent and compulsory association, composed of all those who are dependent upon him or whom he makes subservient to the execution of his designs. "Among democratic nations, on the contrary, all the citizens are independent and feeble; they can do hardly anything by themselves, and none of them can oblige his fellow men to lend him their assistance. They all, therefore, become powerless if they do not learn voluntarily to help one another. If men living in democratic countries had no right and no inclination to associate for political purposes, their independence would be in great jeopardy, but they might long preserve their wealth and their cultivation: whereas if they never acquired the habit of forming associations in ordinary life, civilization itself would be endangered. A people among whom individuals lost the power of achieving great things single-handed, without acquiring the means of producing them by united exertions, would soon relapse into barbarism." |
|
The Most Inventive Towns in America The tinkerers who helped build America haven't disappeared -- they're right next door. Our search for small-town patent hubs found surprising innovations from coast to coast. |
|
Wildlife welcome here Earle, 47, is not the only one who enjoys his landscape. He shares it at times with raccoons, opossums, cardinals, a red-shouldered hawk, ospreys, blue jays, mockingbirds, hummingbirds, squirrels, reptiles, amphibians, butterflies and more. Recently the National Wildlife Federation recognized Earle's yard as a Certified Wildlife Habitat. |
|
Cities Shed Middle Class, and Are Richer and Poorer for It Some big American cities are flourishing as at no time in recent memory. Places like New York and San Francisco appear to be richer and more dazzling than ever: crime remains low, new arrivals pour in, neighborhoods have risen from the dead. New York is in the throes of the biggest building boom in 30 years, its population at an all-time high and climbing. Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg proudly promotes his city as “a luxury product.” But middle-class city dwellers across the country are being squeezed. |
Monday, July 24, 2006
|
Interview: Do we need to transform our world economy? "We're looking at cities with a much more diversified transport system, cities that are both bicycle friendly and pedestrian friendly," Brown said. "I can see a future where cities will be a very pleasant place to live." |
|
Real Time Rome Real Time Rome is the MIT SENSEable City Lab’s contribution to the 2006 Venice Biennale, directed by professor Richard Burdett. The project aggregated data from cell phones (obtained using Telecom Italia's innovative Lochness platform), buses and taxis in Rome to better understand urban dynamics in real time. By revealing the pulse of the city, the project aims to show how technology can help individuals make more informed decisions about their environment. In the long run, will it be possible to reduce the inefficiencies of present day urban systems and open the way to a more sustainable urban future? |
|
Canada's city-states need more than lip service Though it's only just starting, it is clear that traditional notions of nationality and nationhood are increasingly irrelevant in a world where wealth, power and people are concentrated in fast-growing metropolises. |
Saturday, July 22, 2006
|
Freeze Freeze is a floating building that responds to the rising need to achieve a non-political space. A space that can absorb the lives and ideas of an evolved humanity. A space that is highly utopian yet painfully necessary at a time of increased global tension, diminished democracy and intensified censorship. A space void of territorial concerns. A futuristic Noah’s Ark of ideas and thought roaming freely as the sea levels are rising. |
|
A Thrill to View, or an Eyesore on the London Skyline? hrusting skyward in downtown London is a 590-foot-tall, glass-clad office building, completed two years ago and regularly described as looking like a pickle, specifically a gherkin, or a dirigible on its end, or perhaps a cigar wearing fishnet stockings. The hard-to-miss building has noticeably changed the London skyline. But is the change a plus for the skyline and, as has been suggested, a harbinger of future downtown, high-rise architecture? |
Friday, July 21, 2006
|
Sizzling urbanism Fashion lingo usually results from the trends and lifestyles of a generation. In the ’80s, labels like “Sloane rangers” (It girls from London like Princess Di and her circle of friends), “Valley girls” (preppy-ish gals from San Fernando Valley, California) and “Yuppies” (stylish young urban professionals) were hatched to refer to a coterie of individuals with specific fashion choices and ways of life. More recently, catchwords like “fashionista” and “metrosexual” have cropped up to portray a larger group of people who have a general love for fashion.
The latest add-on to fashion’s ever-growing vocabulary is the term “Urbanism.” Although this is partly what the word refers to, Millie Dizon, vice president for the marketing communications group of SM Inc., says the word espouses so much more than its literal meaning.
“It’s borderless and more global. It’s not just about dressing up a certain way or being a party girl, it’s about having a purpose in life and having the courage to be whoever you want to be,” she says. |
|
Sex in the city Igor de Vetyemy, a young Brazilian architect has created a storm in Rio de Janerio with his plans for an interactive sex museum just off Copacabana Beach. The building, in the form of a giant uterus which will house strip joints, sex capsules and a swinger’s club is in direct conflict with Rio’s Governor Rosinha Matheus who is trying to sever the city’s ties with sex tourism. |
|
Green Wonders of the World Green building technology has reached a tipping point that makes it more feasible — and elegant — choice for new construction. |
|
A project's bow to the new suburbanism Goodbye, suburban sprawl, and hello to "the hottest new trend in real estate": the new village. |
Thursday, July 20, 2006
|
Thousands buy cycles to beat the bowser blow-out Spiralling petrol prices are prompting thousands of commuters to ditch their cars on weekdays and ride to work on bicycles. With the cost of a litre of fuel passing $1.45, cycling groups said the number of riders on some routes had nearly doubled over the past 12 months and bike shops have reported a rise in sales. |
|
Buenos Aires, Berlin, Montréal What could these very different cities possibly have in common? Well, for starters, they’ve each been selected as an official “UNESCO City of Design.” And each has a reputation for creativity, innovation and quirkiness. While the majesty of Buenos Aires and Berlin is dramatic, Montreal’s magic plays out in edgier, more subtle ways. |
|
Don't Just Sit There, Shelter Somebody For most New Yorkers, the thought of abandoned property conjures images of the South Bronx in the 1970s, when owners deserted or even burned their buildings rather than pay taxes on them. Yet local anti-homelessness activists say that despite the current housing crunch, empty buildings still abound—and they’ve convinced Manhattan Borough President Scott Stringer to take action. |
|
Study Documents ‘Ghetto Tax’ Being Paid by the Urban Poor Drivers from low-income neighborhoods of New York, Hartford and Baltimore, insuring identical cars and with the same driving records as those from middle-class neighborhoods, paid $400 more on average for a year’s insurance. The poor are also the main customers for appliances and furniture at “rent to own” stores, where payments are stretched out at very high interest rates; in Wisconsin, a $200 television can end up costing $700. Those were just two examples among several cited in a report Tuesday showing that poor urban residents frequently pay hundreds if not thousands of dollars a year in extra costs for everyday necessities. The study said some of the disparities were due to real differences in the cost of doing business in poor areas, some to predatory financial practices and some to consumer ignorance. |
|
Awards celebrate good, but not great buildings IT HAD to happen. Just as Melbourne celebrates itself as a leading city of design (encapsulated in Leon van Schaik's book, Design City Melbourne) it seems we are in a seasonal trough. The Royal Australian Institute of Architecture awards underline that shift of emphasis. They celebrate the best, which is fine, but hardly significant architecture. Winners are not cutting-edge world design. There is little art — but heaps of good taste. I cannot see this group of buildings, houses, renovations and interiors showing the world the way. |
|
Concrete jumble Empty streets, wilting cabbages and floating bow-ties ... Is this really how artists perceive urban architecture? |
|
Imperfect Beauty Some designers say forget about balance and straight lines. The principle is asymmetry, and it's how nature made us. |
|
Dumpster Gardens "You may not know his name," the New York Times wrote four years ago, "but you have probably enjoyed the public spaces he has created." He is Ken Smith, "the Elvis Costello of landscape architecture." |
|
Smog moves out of the city ... and often finds its way into the national parks. |
|
High Art A Review of Seattle's Skyline (and What It's Becoming). |
|
Where Do Most People Live? Researchers at the Center for Climate Systems Research (CCSR), a part of The Earth Institute, have developed a high-resolution map of projected population change for the year 2025. The innovative map shows a world with large areas of population loss in parts of Eastern Europe and Asia, but significant gains elsewhere. |
|
Rooms at the top answer to urban woes Vertical or horizontal? Urban or suburban? More than ever, this is the choice, whether to grow up or grow out. While the debate rages in Toronto, other cities have long since made their decision. Vancouver, Singapore and Hong Kong are just a few of the places where highrise living has become the norm. |
|
Canada's new bloom town Mannequins in flower-filled bathtubs? A lush outdoor dining room? Montreal's sexy take on garden shows, and its many other enticing green spaces, are turning the city into one of the world's horticultural hot spots. |
Wednesday, July 19, 2006
|
Why we're flush with success One of the world's earliest known civilizations is noted for this professional's work above all else. Without his inventions, the Harappan, circa 3000 BC, would not have even existed. He created unequaled contraptions for the sparkling Athenians while the austere Spartans wasted their time performing feats of strength and agility. The Romans worshiped his complex constructions, giving him not only a protective goddess but also the name by which we still know him today. European monks selfishly let him work his wonders in their monasteries even as their flock wallowed in filth and disease. The British empire awarded him medals of honor for his designs while the French played catch-up, always imitating but never quite equaling the British professional's work. This unsung hero of human history was, of course, the Brain of Drains, the Hub of Tubs, the Power of Showers, the Brewer of Sewers … the humble plumber. |
|
Moscow Metro It's not an art project. No vision, no interpretations, no artistic contributions or ambiguities. This is simply a faithful rendering of the decorations of the Moscow metro, through some 450 photos and 27 panoramas. |
|
This cabbie needs no map Taxi driver is an atlas on wheels who says `the whole world is in my brain'. Answer his geography quiz and you get a free ride. |
|
Why we're Bicycles can put Buffalo on tourism path So much of what we do in the name of tourism is expensive. Bike trails are relatively cheap. They don't require millions of dollars in incentives. You don't have to knock anything down to build them, either. They can meander around grain elevators and under the Skyway. |
|
An answer for the heat? Cool clear water Some Toronto and Halifax buildings enjoy summer relief by tapping depths of lake and ocean. |
Tuesday, July 18, 2006
|
Wal-Mart White Plains Store Will Test Its Urban Model Wal-Mart will open a store in a nine-story building in downtown White Plains tomorrow, an urban model that the retailer hopes someday will work in New York City. |
|
Space to work, rest and play Richard Simmons has good news. The chief executive of the Commission for Architecture and the Built Environment (Cabe) says that feedback gathered for the organisation’s next annual report reveals that people think design is improving, and that the Government has got the message. But he’s not convinced. “There’s still quite a lot that needs to be done and we can’t let up at the moment,” he says. |
|
Helter-shelter In April 2002, McChesney Architects won a two-staged open design competition for a series of innovative swivelling wind shelters on Blackpool’s South shore promenade. The flowing form of each 8m high shelter was prescribed by its two main prerequisites: A vane, which turns the structure, and a baffle that shelters the occupant from the wind. |
|
Theirs is the talk of the city L.A.'s designers and dreamers tackle the future. Party, anyone? |
|
Car-less In Seattle Pedestrian pioneer Alan Durning describes what his family of five is learning by living without four wheels in Cascadia's largest city. Can they survive without the essential currency of the modern American community? |
|
Mayor sketches out "Greenprint" vision Hybrid vehicles, a million new trees and a 22 percent reduction in water use marked ambitious, long-term initiatives outlined by Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper Wednesday in his State of the City address. |
|
Confronting a Pattern of Warped Growth A new statewide coalition of business, municipal, church and education leaders says Connecticut has a mindless approach to growth: development spreads outward, eating up countryside and burdening roadways. Meanwhile, disintegrating urban centers, abandoned factories and vacant industrial land sit unused and wasted. |
Monday, July 17, 2006
|
Vote for Your favorite Green Building Designs for New Orleans Be part of the green rebuilding of New Orleans by voting for your favorite design. All of the submissions feature green building principles for affordable housing complexes that would save residents money by reducing energy costs. |
|
Playing the Sex Card ‘SAY CHEESE’ Bare skin and some not-so-subtle insinuations are becoming the hallmarks of advertising for new condominiums, and for the companies that sell and market them. |
|
Jane Jacobs Revisited The mistake made by Jacobs’s detractors and acolytes alike is to regard her as a champion of stasis—to believe she was advocating the world’s cities be built as simulacra of the West Village circa 1960. Admirers and opponents have routinely taken her arguments for complexity and turned them into formulas. But the book I just read was an inspiration to move forward without losing sight that cities are powerful, dynamic, ever-changing entities made up of myriad gestures big and small. The real notion is to build in a way that honors and nurtures complexity. And that’s an idea impossible to outgrow. ° |
|
A new beacon for London’s energy needs
Marks Barfield Architects and XCO2 unveil a visionary new form of urban energy generation |
|
Architects show modest budgets don't require modest design When a weed-choked vacant lot in one of the city's poorer neighborhoods finally sprouts a house, it seems frivolous to quibble about the design. Who cares if the roof pitch isn't quite right, or if the windows are too small and the detailing is clumsy, so long as a deserving family finally has a decent home? |
|
Population decline With all the attention given to continuing strong growth in the world population, one thing might come as a surprise: Forty-three of the 193 nations around the world will register a decline in population by 2050. Which country will experience the most significant population decline in absolute terms by 2050? |
Sunday, July 16, 2006
|
'Urbanscapes,' a Documentary on the Decaying of Neighborhoods "Urbanscapes" plants a camera in neighborhoods gone to seed, cultivating a bittersweet portrait of American ruin. The filmmakers, Lorena Luciano and Filippo Piscopo, grew up in Italy, and they regard the dilapidations of their adopted superpower with a touch of the tourist's sentimentalism. Wastes of Chicago, Detroit, the South Bronx and Newark are reflected through measured montage and digital-video impressionism. A cello suite by Bach is as prevalent as the trash. |
|
Replica of New Orleans: A Study in Urban Cloning New Orleans is supposed to be 130 miles east of this Cajun country capital on the Vermillion River, but there in the distance, rising from the swampland, is something that looks very familiar. The quaint row houses of the French Quarter are off Interstate 10, past the strip malls. There are Garden District-style mansions in a neighborhood named the Garden District, and blocks full of Creole cottages, lush courtyards and lacy ironwork. There is even a street called Elysian Fields. It is not the Crescent City, however, but rather River Ranch, a commercial development here that is a virtual re-creation of much of historic residential New Orleans, meticulous in detail and substantial in size, with a growing population of more than a thousand on about 300 acres. |
|
LUODIAN - A SWEDISH TOWN? After four months in Shanghai when the longing for the home country set in, I took a trip to the “northern European town” of Luodian together with three friends from Sweden. After a stroll through the empty streets, followed by the curious gaze from the staff at hotel and restaurants, we headed towards “Lake Meilan” for a peaceful tour on a rented electrical boat. Though not having much in common with its model Lake Mälaren, the third-largest lake in Sweden, we concluded that the water pool and landscaping were the nicest parts of the development. Not the least because it was the only part where we saw any other visitors. |
Saturday, July 15, 2006
|
Are cities the new countries? London mayor Ken Livingstone is the latest civic leader to hanker after independence. Is the nation state under threat from the rise of the super-city? |
|
Freitag Shop Freitag's infamous repurposed truck tarp gear will now be sold in a store made of repurposed shipping containers. The Freitag Shop, located in Zurich, is composed completely of gutted, stacked, and secured containers, sharing the same bird's eye view where the Freitag concept was initially conceived from the founders' truckspotting living room in 1993. |
|
Petrol guzzlers face £25 c-charge London Mayor Ken Livingstone has said he wants a sliding scale, with lower charges for low-emission vehicles and higher charges for "Chelsea tractors". The congestion charge for drivers of petrol-guzzling cars could rise to £25 - three times the current charge. The Mayor hopes the move will urge Londoners to buy low-emission cars.
|
|
Putting New Orleans On the Green Line At the White House on Monday, the first lady appealed to a gathering of National Design Award honorees, urging them to get involved in rebuilding the Gulf Coast. Their legacy, she suggested, would be determined by their efforts to improve the devastated region. She also put in a surprise plug for sustainable design, saying that Hurricane Katrina "gives us the chance to build 'green' buildings and to build energy-saving buildings" -- which made her sound like an early-warning siren for global warming. |
|
In Rome's Basement - National Geographic Magazine Sloshing through sewers and crawling down long-lost passages, urban adventurers investigate the mysteries of an ancient city. |
Friday, July 14, 2006
|
The Rise of the Aerotropolis Airports are no longer simply places where airplanes land and passengers and cargo transit. Amsterdam’s Schiphol Airport is a case in point. About 58,000 people are daily employed on the airport grounds. Its passenger terminal—containing an expansive mix of shopping, dining, and entertainment arcades—doubles as a suburban mall that is accessible both to air travelers and the general public. Amsterdam residents regularly shop and relax in the airport’s public section, especially on Sundays and at night when most city stores are closed. |
|
The Mile-High Club Why experimental architecture isn't working out for Denver. |
|
Reshaping the Potteries Stoke-on-Trent is changing, and we are challenging architects and urban designers from around the globe to help shape our future. An international urban design competition is being launched as part of a multi-million pound transformation of our city centre. |
|
Center of attention Ever since the Civic Center Conservancy hired architect Daniel Libeskind last fall to come up with concepts to improve Civic Center, the urban heart of Denver has been the talk of the town. Libeskind's presentation will kick off a public comment period, but why wait? The Rocky Mountain News asked five respected local design professionals to propose the one big idea they think would activate Civic Center. |
|
It's time to cast off an architectural obsession Last week, as part of an ongoing bid to catch up on summer movies, I went to see Robert Altman's A Prairie Home Companion. I did not like it, but never mind: This is not a film review. I bring up this picture here because of Altman's curious decision to decorate his present-day story — one character has a cellphone and another arrives in this year's model limousine, so you know it's happening now — in dusty beige costumery and furniture, and other anachronistic doodads, from the 1940s. Such mish-mashing of contemporary props and historical styles does not work in a movie. And it can get pretty dismaying even in a big city, where most people are accustomed to seeing pastiches of building styles from every period of history. But when is Toronto going to outgrow the mediocre architectural Victorianism sprouting up everywhere across our twenty-first century city? |
Thursday, July 13, 2006
|
Sustainable Housing Prototypes At the United Nations Habitat World Urban Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia, in June 2006, Living Steel announced the results of its International Competition for Sustainable Housing. Living Steel is a consortium of steel companies and associations that has teamed with the UN to find solutions to worldwide housing shortages. |
|
Still playing with the box At first glance, it looks like a mix-up on the docks of San Pedro. Eight shipping containers — those orange-, green- and rust-colored boxes that truckers haul on L.A. freeways — sit stacked two high at different angles on a lot in Redondo Beach. The steel containers, now painted white, have windows, door openings and some entire sides cut out. But there's no disguising their cargo-carrying heritage. They make up different wings of a contemporary-style house that will have a 20-foot-high living room and two walls of airplane-hangar doors that will open completely to the outdoors. |
|
Redefining American Beauty, by the Yard WHEN Cecilia Foti, a seventh grader at the Bancroft Middle School here, was asked to write a “persuasive” essay for her English class in the spring semester, she did not choose a topic deeply in tune with her peers — the pros and cons of school uniforms, say, or the district’s retro policy on chewing gum and cellphones. Instead, she addressed the neighborhood’s latest controversy: her family’s front yard. “The American lawn needs to be eradicated from our society and fast!” she wrote, explaining that her family had replaced its own with a fruit and vegetable garden. She argued for the importance of water conservation, the dangers of pesticides and the dietary benefits and visual appeal of an edible yard. “Was the Garden of Eden grass?” she reasoned. “No.” |
|
Illusions on Sale in Shanghai Just as Stalin erected Potemkin villages to display the glories of communism to outsiders, Shanghai is creating its own illusion of prosperity out of the world's most luxurious brands.
Offering cut-rate rents to top-tier fashion houses, this city of about 18 million is determined to make itself look like a world capital of high fashion. |
|
Regional design center could spark monumental growth in Memphis In the early 20th century, famed architect and city planner Daniel Burnham ridiculed small-scale ideas as having "no magic to stir men's blood." The forum, "Design Matters: Great Urban Solutions Through Collaboration," is where architects, planners and designers will interact with the public for the first time to promote the creation of a regional design center in Memphis. |
|
What next for humanity? Enlightening the Future 2024 is a survey of experts, opinion formers and interesting people from across many sectors, initiated by spiked with the modest ambition of challenging the downbeat spirit of the age. |
|
Eco-warrior upsetting the establishment Four years after starting the zero-carbon estate that made his name, Bill Dunster is wowing Beijing -- and London. |
|
The next real estate boom Dense settlements, not sprawling ranch houses, are the future of housing - and could make for a smart real-estate investment. |
|
Olympics Imperil Historic Beijing Neighborhood A short walk from Tiananmen Square and the Great Hall of the People, a historic neighborhood named Qianmen is an eerie picture of destruction. Ancient homes lie in rubble. Scavengers squat in alleyways and wait to ransack vacated buildings. The reason for the devastation is the 2008 Olympic Games, which have turned much of the city into a noisy, disjointed construction zone. New subway lines and new roads are under construction, even an entire new downtown. On the city’s northern rim, at least 25,000 laborers are building the Olympic stadiums and village. |
|
Plot Lines In Copenhagen, two OMA alums create an ingenious housing complex with a staggering variety of apartment layouts. |
|
Making Cities Work: Detroit Detroit is a classic "doughnut" post-urban city, seemingly pleasant around the outside, but empty in the middle. But now it is trying hard to plug the hole in its industrial heart. |
|
Plants, grass on the rooftop? No longer an oddity. Monarch butterflies flit past little bluestem. Bees fly from prairie clover to purple coneflowers. A small hawthorn tree rises from a mound. The expanse of native plants and grasses isn't a park, but the top of City Hall, the premier green roof in a city that is making green building a civic cornerstone. |
|
Extreme Makeover After transforming its downtown into a residential mecca, Vancouver is trying to find the right balance between condos and commerce. |
|
Shade issue hot topic for downtown planners City leaders, mixed-use developers, and the 4,600 Arizona State University students and faculty descending on downtown Phoenix in August are -- or will be -- on a quest for shade. |
|
Hidden in Plain Sight: Transit-Oriented Development's Role in Enhancing Affordability The housing market in America is changing dramatically as American households get older, smaller, and more ethnically diverse, and these shifting demographics are fundamentally re-scripting the American dream. While the single-family home with a two-car garage in the suburbs was ideal for the family with a breadwinner dad, stay-at-home mom and several kids, it doesn’t work nearly so well for families with two working parents and one child, or for “empty-nesters” or other households with no children. |
Wednesday, July 12, 2006
|
The future is really in our cities The dwindling number of people who live outside Canada's large cities insist that their future depends on increased government support, to keep the young from leaving town. The Conference Board of Canada believes they're wrong. The economic think tank demonstrates that focusing government funding on major cities not only benefits those cities, but benefits smaller communities as well. In fact, those smaller communities are better off if subsidies go to the big cities rather than to them. |
|
Should the city buy Jane Jacobs's house? With an asking price of $850,000, the ivy-covered Annex house at 69 Albany Ave. looks like it could be a bargain in one of Toronto's most desirable neighbourhoods. |
|
Sarasota asked to consider 'sky plaza' First it was a 107-foot-wide bridge, then a 27-foot-tall statue. The next big thing to be proposed for Sarasota's bayfront: a 180-foot-long platform that would hang over U.S. 41 traffic, forming a sort of elevated concrete park for pedestrians on their way from downtown to the water. |
|
Beijing awaits new 'back garden' Beijing is building its largest city park, the Olympic Forest Park, which will become the "back garden" of the Beijing 2008 Olympic Games. |
|
Ambulance service - on two wheels Catterall is Bolton's first ambulance paramedic on two wheels. Her bike carries emergency first aid and life-saving equipment, including a defibrillator and oxygen tank, which will enable her to deal with an emergency until an ambulance arrives on scene. Bicycles are often the fastest and most convenient way for the emergency services to reach injured people in town centres. |
Tuesday, July 11, 2006
|
China backs bikes to kick car habit Having spent the past decade pursuing a transport policy of four wheels rich, two wheels poor, the Chinese government has suddenly rediscovered the environmental and health benefits of the bicycle. |
|
In Concord, a high price for suburban serenity For his family's 15,000-square-foot dream home, businessman Douglas R. Brown chose a wooded spot in the north end of Concord, not much different from when Henry David Thoreau hiked there in the 1850s. "The remote location was an attractive issue for us," Brown recalled. "We never thought about the additional time it would take for the fire department to get there." Seven times now, emergencies small and large have schooled the Brown family in the price of serenity. Concord -- like Carlisle, Boxford, and many affluent suburbs around Boston and other US cities -- has too few fire stations and too few firefighters to protect all of the town. The town's story is, in this respect, a disturbingly commonplace American story. |
|
Gridlock, schmidlock L.A. traffic isn't as bad as you think. Try driving 60 mph through the center of Paris. Sprawl is not the worst thing that ever happened to the nation's cities. In fact, by many measures, it's been beneficial. Despite the cliche among some academics and intellectuals that sprawl leads to incoherent, unattractive, traffic-clogged cities, the reality is that it has benefited many people over many years. Most Americans today, including the vast majority of suburbanites, are happy where they live, work and play. |
|
Street Smarts An interview with smart-growth expert and author Anthony Flint. |
|
Your Own Private Utopia Using Wrights & Sites new "A Mis-Guide To Anywhere", city dwellers around the world can unlock a "mental toolkit" that will help them discover the extraordinary in the seemingly mundane urban experience. |
|
Architecture: Doing what comes culturally While Luxembourg splashes out, Liverpool is taking a more parochial approach. |
|
700-unit housing plan chosen for Cultural District The Pittsburgh Cultural Trust today announced plans for a $460 million housing development that will link the Downtown Cultural District with the Allegheny riverfront. |
Monday, July 10, 2006
|
Miracle Up North
How the people of Finland took a healthy message to heart. |
|
Living large - Buyers' demand for bigger, better houses shapes new generation's 'dream home' When home buyers complain they can't afford a house because of soaring prices, what they often mean is they can't buy a "decent" home -- and increasingly the definition of "decent" is four or more bedrooms, three or more baths and a three-car garage. |
|
Beefed-up by design Say goodbye to the gaudy arches and uncool colors as, at last, McDonald's enters the age of mass good taste. |
Saturday, July 8, 2006
|
More Parks, Less Parking This “Community Vehicular Reclamation Project” is not only public art, but it is also a super smart way of reclaiming public space…one parking spot at a time. |
|
A $200,000 condo for your car The latest high-end garages are bigger than your first apartment -- and a lot fancier. Think security, climate control, pool tables and even valets. |
|
Goodbye, Columbus Modernism failed to save the Indiana town that architecture famously built. |
|
On the Ball What if the world cared about sustainability as much as soccer? |
|
Cambodians ride 'bamboo railway' Travellers in Cambodia have to deal with one of the world's worst train networks. There is only one passenger service a week, and it often travels at not much more than walking pace. So people in the north west of the country, near Cambodia's second city of Battambang, have taken matters into their own hands. |
Friday, July 7, 2006
|
The New Jungles Think wildlife loves a country setting? Turns out that many animals, birds and plants now prefer the city. |
|
London’s security architecture: the end of the sustainable city? The intensive anti-terror security measures implemented in London – both before and after 7/7 – are altering the relationship between the citizen and public space. |
|
Democracy should be exercised regularly, on foot The millions who took to the streets on February 15 2003 didn't stop the war in Iraq, but the lesson too many extrapolated from that extraordinary march was the wrong one. Crowds out in the streets do have power, and they sometimes do change what goes on in governments. The third month of this year could have been called the month of marching, as students across France, migrants and migrant-rights activists across the US, and citizens across Nepal, took to the streets. |
|
Alain de Botton aims to build on happiness Happiness may soon be built within commuting distance of London: honey-coloured limestone tiles may well feature; fibreglass Georgian columns certainly will not. The philosopher Alain de Botton, author of a study of the relationship between architecture, beauty and human happiness, which became one of the year's more surprising bestsellers, is set to express his beliefs in bricks and mortar. |
Thursday, July 6, 2006
|
Solar power to the people Brockton is about to become home to what is believed to be the first solar-powered condo development in New England. Each town house in Johnson Square Village, a 26-unit development being built on Foster Street, will have an 18-panel solar array that will harness the sun's energy to power TVs, computers, and other appliances. Solar power will provide more than half the needed electricity, saving condo owners hundreds of dollars every year. |
|
Improving urban environments: why children's voices should be heard The impact of involving children living in urban areas in decisions about their local community can be dramatic, according to new research from the Economic and Social Research Council. Empowering them can have positive effects on the children's academic and social development and contribute to improving school curricula. |
|
Reality dictates that we push for greater suburban density Suburbia is the problem. Suburbia is culturally arid. Suburbia caters to the worst instincts of a materialistic society -- eating up agricultural land, encouraging wasteful sprawl and, because of its dependence on the car, contributing to global warming. Whenever I hear criticisms like these, I always think: Well, okay, even if I agreed much of that were true -- and I don't -- where, exactly, do the critics of suburbia expect all the suburbanites to go? |
|
Renderings so real they fake you out Anchoring the New York skyline, the 1,776-foot tall Freedom Tower stands as a memorial to liberty, the evening sun glinting off its steel, downtown New York reflected in its glass panels. Problem: The Freedom Tower doesn't exist, at least not outside the mind and computer screen of architect David Childs. But looking at the image, it's hard to tell what's real and what's only on the drawing board. |
|
The gas ceiling A helium roof that rises and falls with the weather? Rem Koolhaas's Serpentine Pavilion is a joyous extravagance. |
|
How the chill wind of commerce killed off the bow tie 'WHEN did architects stop wearing bow ties?" was the whispered question at the Great Man's wake. Well, when did they? A glance revealed all. In a dress circle replete with eminences, grises and not so, there were black shirts, corduroy jackets and collarless suits aplenty, but not a bow tie to be seen. So the question, despite its wife-beating overtones, is apt, especially if metaphorical. When did architecture depart the gentlemanly mindset to become that saddened and compromised shadow of itself we see today? |
Wednesday, July 5, 2006
|
How much denser can Vancouver get? A lot more, says specialist UBC urban design specialist Patrick Condon says that with its expected population increase, Vancouver has to become even denser. |
|
New London urban design unit to deliver 'world-class architecture' Mayor of London Ken Livingstone today announced plans for a new architecture and urban design unit which will support the delivery of world-class architecture and sustainable and inclusive design across London’s built environment. The Mayor’s new unit - ‘Design for London’ - will see the merging of staff from the Greater London Authority’s Architecture and Urbanism Unit and the London Development Agency’s design team, and will also work closely with the urban design staff from Transport for London. |
|
Selling India's slums Bulldozers race through Shanti Nagar - a slum in Northern Mumbai, on a cloudy, overcast monsoon morning. Shanty homes and shacks are destroyed. It is all part of Mumbai's plans to give itself a facelift. The city's government plans to turn this slum into a jogging boulevard. |
|
McMansion envy Drive through some of the suburbs or trendy areas of Chicago and you will see small bungalows and ranch houses dwarfed by newly constructed 3,500- to 5,000-square-foot mini-palaces sporting the latest bells and whistles. |
|
Capitalist Roaders The figures behind China's car boom are stunning. Total miles of highway in the country: at least 23,000, more than double what existed in 2001, and second now only to the United States. Number of passenger cars on the road: about 6 million in 2000 and about 20 million today. Car sales are up 54 percent in the first three months of 2006, compared with the same period a year ago; every day, 1,000 new cars (and 500 used ones) are sold in Beijing. The astronomic growth of China's car-manufacturing industry will soon hit home for Americans and Europeans as dirt-cheap Chinese automobiles start showing up for sale here over the next two or three years. (Think basic passenger car for $10,000, luxury S.U.V. for $19,000.) |
|
Urbanites head for new life in suburbs With an overall population density of more than 2,800 people per square kilometre, compared with 900 in Beijing and fewer than 400 in Chongqing, Shanghai's central Huangpu district has a whopping 126,500 people per square kilometre; giving each person less than 8 square metres. So many people living in such a small space places enormous pressures on basic amenities. To alleviate this pressure and to prevent the problem spreading, planning authorities have been following a strategy of suburbanization moving people out of ageing low-rise buildings in the city centre to newly built suburbs farther out of town. |
[Archives]
Search entries: