Urbanism News

Urbanism News

Wednesday, August 31, 2005

Urban Nomad Shelter

First off, note that Cameron McNall and Damon Seeley didn't call their submission a homeless shelter. In name and form, the vivid inflatable contradicts a stereotype of cardboard-box vagrancy. The two partners of the Los Angeles-based Electroland conceived the Urban Nomad Shelter as both a "humanitarian act and as a social provocation." They created a cushion from the ground that also serves as a census taker for an itinerant population that is hard to count and even harder to countenance.

New City Hall plaza works on several levels but fails to make a big splash

There's something downtown Seattle needs more urgently than a monorail, taller skyscrapers or a burrow for the Alaskan Way Viaduct: a dramatic, all-things-to-all-people plaza that's equally suited to private contemplation or noisy demonstrations.

The Smart Sprawl Strategy

How do we retrofit America's sprawl to prepare for a post-oil world? In this week's Op-Ed Wally Siembab proposes a strategy of "smart sprawl" -- retrofitting suburbs of any density so that residents can shop, obtain services and work all within a mile or two of their home.

Shrinking La. Coastline Contributes To Flooding

Two months ago, Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) told an audience of congressional staffers and scientific experts the federal government needs to spend billions of dollars over the next two decades to restore her state's wetlands. She warned that intentional rerouting of the Mississippi River over the past century, coupled with rising sea levels due to climate change, had eroded Louisiana's natural buffer against massive storms.

"This is not Disneyland. This is the real deal," Landrieu said, referring to New Orleans's vulnerability to hurricanes. "The French Quarter could be under 18 feet of water. It would be lost forever."

Beijing's Quest for 2008: To Become Simply Livable

There is a placard beside Tiananmen Square that counts the days until the 2008 Summer Olympics, and every one of them would seem precious: Beijing must build or renovate 72 sports stadiums and training facilities, lay asphalt for 59 new roads and complete three new bridges by the opening ceremony.

It is a task that would overwhelm most cities, but Beijing is so efficient at pouring concrete that the International Olympic Committee has asked it to slow down rather than finish construction too soon. Far more difficult will be fulfilling Beijing's promise of playing host to a "green" Olympics as well as meeting a new goal in the city's revised master plan - to become "a city suitable for living."

Environmental scientists warn about the consequences of unchecked land use

The massive conversion of the world's natural landscapes to agriculture and other human uses may soon undermine the capacity of the planet's ecosystems to sustain a burgeoning human population, according to a new report in the journal Science.

The battle of New Orleans

Long before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans was in a precarious state -- caught in an ongoing war with the mighty Mississippi River.

Tuesday, August 30, 2005

Swede dreams

Malmo's new neighbourhood is funky, environmentally friendly and the envy of architects worldwide. There's just one problem. The locals hate it.

America’s Fading Dream: Homeownership for Working People

According to The State of the Nation’s Housing, a report by the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University, during the past 20 years average housing prices rose between 30 and 100 percent faster than average incomes in 63 of the 153 metropolitan areas studied. As a result, the report said, more than 28 million people in the lower half of the nation’s workers spend too much of their income — 30 percent or more — on housing.

How Far Is Too Far? Developer Plans 4,300 Homes 100 Miles From D.C.

To what lengths will they go? How far are people willing to drive for the privilege of working in the metropolitan area while living in more affordable housing in a more rustic setting?

Monday, August 29, 2005

Land Gluttony

With so much attention to the invasion of illegal immigrants and skyrocketing gasoline prices it is hard to get people worked up about another out-of-control problem. We're running out of land.

James Howard Kunstler interview with Robert Birnbaum

An intense chat with author James Howard Kunstler about the chaos that will rattle our society once the energy disaster takes hold.

Pedal power

Going to work is getting healthier for a growing group of Staten Islanders who prefer bicycles to trains and cars.

Shaping China's Skylines

S.F. architects retool classic formula for Chinese environment as designers worldwide help transform cities of rising superpower.

Sunday, August 28, 2005

Hi, Gorgeous. Haven't I Seen You Somewhere?

Copying in architecture is at least as old as tracing paper. Thomas Jefferson's University of Virginia was an effort to import Palladio's neo-Roman vision to the New World. And the first United States copyright act, passed in 1790, made no provision for architecture. It wasn't until 200 years later, in 1990, that the United States added buildings to the list of things - including movies, books and recordings - that qualify for copyright protection. But even among architects with instantly recognizable styles, it's rarely possible to state with certainty which similarities result from direct imitation and which are coincidental.

The Climax of Humanity

Demographically and economically, our era is unique in human history. Depending on how we manage the next few decades, we could usher in environmental sustainability--or collapse.

Saturday, August 27, 2005

City Councilman Unearths Magical Zoning Amulet

After years spent poring over mysterious and arcane plat sheets and deciphering long-forgotten building codes, city councilmember Mike LaMere unearthed the mysterious City Zoning Amulet Friday.

Obituary: Urban Explorer "Ninjalicious"

On Tuesday, Toronto lost "Ninjalicious" to cancer at the age of 31. His real name was Jeff Chapman, and since 1996 he had published Infiltration, "the zine about going places you're not supposed to go." The self-published magazine was about the behind-the-scenes places most Torontonians never get to see. Ninjalicious, the name he wrote and published under, is legendary in the zine world and in Urban Exploration circles. Tribute.

White Collar Skated: Fighting the stereotype of the brutish skateboarder

The only physical characteristic that might betray Michael Leckie's previous life is his slightly shaggy hair.

But that's only if you're clinging to the outdated skateboarder stereotype, which generally includes a shock of hair in the eyes, ripped and ill-fitting clothing, a can of spray paint hanging out of a back pocket, and perhaps some rolling papers tucked into a front pocket.

Friday, August 26, 2005

Get out of Your Car

The two most famous Texan cyclists rode together last weekend when Lance Armstrong joined President Bush for some mountain biking. Had they raced, it would have been an interesting competition. Lance is the stronger cyclist but Bush has the better-armed peloton.

Some people criticize Bush for riding his bike too much these days -- he rode for two hours one day last weekend -- but I'm not one of them. I applaud his bike riding, as well as his position that it's a good exercise and a healthy alternative to running.

The Endless Night: Hanging Out in Cars With Boys, and Girls

IT was midnight on a Friday in August, but where was everybody?

Check the Dunkin' Donuts parking lot, said a carload of teenagers in the Taco Bell parking lot on Hempstead Turnpike, over the border in Levittown.

But the police had just cleared out the Dunkin' Donuts lot. A few stragglers there said the others would be at the old reservoir in Sand Hill Park, or in the woods behind Burger King, where they like to climb the trees with their beer to avoid the police searchlights.

Smart Growth and the Internet

Congested roads and highways, long commutes, smog, pollution and loss of productivity are often cited for America's economic woes and the gradual decline in that elusive "quality of life" aspect of living in some of our finest cities.

Berlin's Indoor Mountain of Art and Protest

Days before the end of a mammoth protest exhibition, government officials on Wednesday unveiled the results of a feasibility study to raze the crumbling old East German parliament building and make way for a replica of a Prussian castle that would house a five-star hotel and big museum collection.

The Secret Jardin

HOW will it feel to meander through a park 30 feet above the streets of Chelsea? Thanks to a recent decision by a federal agency giving the city an important green light to create just such a park along the High Line, the long-unused elevated railroad bed that snakes through the lower West Side, New Yorkers may well find out. People will not be able to stroll along that viaduct until 2007, when the first segment of the refurbished High Line is scheduled to open. For a quicker taste of what the future may hold, here is the story of another such midair park - the only other one, in fact. It is called the Promenade Plantée, and it is in Paris.

Sense of the City at Canadian Centre for Architecture

This fall, the Canadian Centre for Architecture invites the public to experience the city like never before. In a major exhibition entitled Sense of the City, visitors can explore sensory perception in the urban environment and discover hidden qualities of the city.

Ha Noi’s new urban zone to accommodate 78,000 by 2010

In order to meet the goal of sustainable development of Ha Noi in a harmony with building a modern urban centre, the new urban zone is planned in three major areas, a new central area, a resettlement area and an upgraded and rebuilt area. The 260-ha centre is planned to have two parks and a new zone developing towards West Lake and serving tourism and cultural activities, international trade and finance, and governmental administration. The central area will also includes homes of average standard.

Thursday, August 25, 2005

America's Top 10 Green Schools

The early-American school kids swaddled with scarves to within a breath of suffocating as they hiked to the little red school house didn't know that their classrooms suffered from faulty insulation and bad air. But that's because no one thought much about the coal fire's smoke, the oil lantern's lung-clogging potential, the dank air's capacity to promote mildew and molds, or the contaminated water from the well.

Smog Cops to Look for Emissions of Guilt

For anyone who has ever been stuck behind a car belching thick black plumes of pollution, Southern California's smog cops have a message that some will find reassuring: They will soon be scanning the streets for smoky clunkers.

Urban Worlds Meeting

The UIA XXII World Congress of Architecture was held in the historic city of Istanbul, Turkey in July 2005. The week-long conference, with the theme Cities: the Grand Bazaar of ArchitectureS, stimulated ideas about designer responsibility and about how new architecture might be conceived for the 21st century.

The Sky Is Not Falling On Cities

Cities aren't in decline. The way population change is "measured" by the Census Bureau leaves much to be desired, writes Carol Coletta in this week's Op-Ed. But even if cities were in decline, a city's population is no longer tied to its economic success. What is ironic about these estimates and the misleading story of decline that has been spun around them is the fact that cities no longer have to grow big to grow wealthy. For the first time, according to research from CEOs for Cities, a city's population is no longer tied to its economic success.

What's wrong with cities? Nothing walking won't solve.

This spring the Washington Post, ABC News and Time magazine jointly conducted a study of commuter traffic in major U.S. cities. The results were surprising. And not.

Polls show that in major metropolitan areas, traffic has gotten significantly worse over the past five years; yet, as congestion on the freeways increases, commuters become more wedded to their cars. Sixty percent of people interviewed in the Washington area say they "dislike" commuting, but 83 percent drive to work, almost always alone.

The Ecological Effects of Roads

Although the effects of different types of roads vary, virtually all are bad, and the net effect of all roads is nothing short of catastrophic.

Shanghai skyline's splash of color

"It's a city that's measured by its vertical dimension," he says. "Our desire was to make a new urbanism on the site and to add an horizontal dimension to the city. The big idea here was to make a counterpoint to these high rise buildings." [via]

Greening Greenport

Here is a 21st century reality that will keep American architects and planners employed for decades to come: Wherever there are towns on water, there are noxious messes to be fixed. For every picturesque marina and cafe with a view of fuchsia sunsets, there are innumerable thousands of derelict piers and oil-soaked shores.

Wednesday, August 24, 2005

You Are Here (We Think ...)

In fast-growing areas, outdated maps can leave residents feeling, well, uncoordinated.

Oregon's Obesity Rate Remains Steady

To shed the pounds that crept around her waistline, Linda Ginenthal began riding her bike to work _ an easy 3 1/2-mile trip.

It's not a marathon, nor is it a grueling hike. Yet diet experts say it's the kind of daily activity that could hold the secret to why Oregon is the only state in the nation where the obesity rate did not increase in the past year.

As gasoline prices rise, businesses get creative

Firms offer telecommuting, van pools, and more to help workers spend less.

Developmentally Challenged

Developers have been catching on that brand-name architects and community outreach can add dollar value to their projects. That’s a big development in itself, but doesn’t always translate to good development.

All Rise

New Yorkers have always been real-estate obsessed, and as housing price records are broken on what seems like a weekly basis, the conventional wisdom is that everyone should get in while they still can—it’s not a bubble, it’s New York City. There is logic to the sentiment, of course: While the space is finite, the demand doesn’t appear to be.

Architects Turned Developers

With a booming real estate market and an ever-increasing general appreciation for good design, more and more architects are betting their own hard-earned cash that their skills will pay off in the development business.

Practically Ready

Studying with a developer, Yale architecture students get a workout—and a jump on the job market.

Great architecture, clean streets, culture -- it must be Minneapolis

Everything I know about cities was confirmed this month by a visit to Minneapolis:

Street life thrives if you give it a chance.

The Climax of Humanity

The 21st century feels like a letdown. We were promised flying cars, space colonies and 15-hour workweeks. Robots were supposed to do our chores, except when they were organizing rebellions; children were supposed to learn about disease from history books; portable fusion reactors were supposed to be on sale at the Home Depot. Even dystopian visions of the future predicted leaps of technology and social organization that leave our era in the dust.

Prescott to make streets 'women friendly'

Britain's streets are set to be made more “female friendly” as part of plans by John Prescott’s department to civilise city centres. Ideas being considered include crèches in nightclubs, separate areas for women on trains and buses and hairdryers in public conveniences.

Tuesday, August 23, 2005

One Happy Big-Box Wasteland

Oh my yes, there is indeed one force that is eating away the American soul like a cancer.

Remote Controlled

Will a new generation of curbside sensors end our parking problems -- or help the government monitor our every move?

Surviving The Flood

A Review of the Rotterdam Architecture Biennale.

Behold the All-Seeing, Self-Parking, Safety-Enforcing, Networked Automobile

Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other embedded tech will enable our cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver’s seat?

Monday, August 22, 2005

World Running Out of Time for Oil Alternatives

The world could run out of time to develop cleaner alternatives to oil and other fossil fuels before depletion drives prices through the roof, a leading Dutch energy researcher said on Thursday.

New York's New Architecture District

Noses to the grindstone, they seem intently focused on their own separate projects. But at the same time, the neighborhood has become something of a creative incubator, with architects collaborating on and competing for commissions, enlisting one another to serve on peer review panels at the graduate schools where they teach, and helping out when someone runs low on printer paper.

In Florida, a Big Developer Is Counting on Rural Chic

What is a striving Florida developer to do when most of its vast holdings are not beach chic but rural, remote and mosquitoey?

The company, Florida's largest private landowner, is pushing "new ruralism," a concept it hopes will entice city and suburban dwellers who are weary of civilization and long to own a tractor, a pickup truck, or at least a kayak and a few large dogs.

'Mixed-Use Districts' Often Get Mixed Reviews

"I tend to view these things as transitional developments," said James Howard Kunstler, who has written several books on suburbia, sprawl and economics. "They represent a recognition that we have to do things differently, but they're still very much hostage to our current habits and practices, including excessive motoring."

A P2P Network for Bikes

Thousands of commuters in Lyon, France, are using pedal power instead of gas, under an ambitious new program that lets people rent bikes from public racks at low cost.

It's kind of like peer to peer for public transport.

Sustainable by design

What does gardening have to do with architecture?

A lot, actually, as environmental design students are finding out. In May, CU students and faculty built a garden on the east side of the Environmental Design building (also known as the Architecture and Planning building) to grow vegetables and herbs for impoverished Boulder residents and to learn a thing or two about the principles of sustainable living.

Saturday, August 20, 2005

Video Surveillance Cuts Graffiti by 60%

A video surveillance camera installed at Lake Street Park as part of an aggressive neighborhood graffiti abatement program has been so successful that Los Angeles police and city officials said Monday they want to expand it citywide.

Beneath Moscow, a stunning subway tour

The city is celebrating the 70th anniversary of its subway system this year. If you think of underground stations as barely hospitable spaces that you tolerate in order to get from one place to another, think again.

Graffiti, Litter May Help Spur Obesity

People who live in city areas with little green space, lots of graffiti and litter are more likely to be obese, compared with people living in city areas with lots of greenery, the researchers claim in a new report.

Fashion company sues New York over graffiti party

Fashion company Ecko Unlimited sued New York City and Mayor Michael Bloomberg on Friday after the city barred the company from holding a street party featuring artists spray-painting graffiti on replicas of subway cars.

Vista of the good city life

Homes have sprouted up on the rooftops of drab Manhattan buildings; homes such as solid Dutch Colonials and capes, sleek chalets, modern Decos, and even log cabins. Some stand out, while others blend in architecturally with the buildings at their base.

But they all afford their owners something similar: stunning views and entry into Manhattan's culture of rooftop living. It's one that is becoming more accessible as undeveloped land grows scarce and construction on rooftops becomes widespread.

Friday, August 19, 2005

Can a place be too perfect?

In recent years, Portland, Oregon, has acquired a reputation as a big city with a small-town quality of life: The air is fresh, the food is organic, the streets are paved with good intentions.

Prevalant Type Of Family: Singles

For the first time, single adults outnumber couples with children as the most common type of household in the United States, according to figures from the 2000 Census.

One site, 137 wild ideas

But that's the good thing about cyber-Sydney. None of it really matters. It's not like they're going to build the winning scheme - are you kidding? - just spend another few hundred thou on a masterplan, which is easier than a metro strategy and, anyway, along with the entire state infrastructure, will self-destruct within the next 20 seconds ...

The Pennsylvania Turnbike

Within earshot of the Pennsylvania Turnpike, we were pedaling an empty eight-mile stretch of asphalt rolling through -- and under -- the Allegheny Mountains. Thanks to a local conservancy, bikers can cruise the Pike to Bike Trail, which used to be the turnpike -- the first limited-access superhighway in the country, no less. No EZ Pass is required (though, as we later found, the risk of a summons still exists). And off-highway, Bedford County offers miles of other pleasantly deserted routes to explore over a summer weekend of biking.

Bring out yer dead -- plague is already here

You want to feel as if you might as well be in Tucson or Boise or Modesto or Wichita or Muncie and it no longer freakin' matters because we as a nation have lost all sense of community and place? Why, just pull over, baby. Take the next exit. Right here, this very one.

There it is, yet another big-box mega strip mall, a giant beacon of glorious community decay, a wilted exclamation point of consumerism gone wild. This is America. You have arrived. You are home. Eat it and smile.

Bicycle chosen as best invention

The humble bicycle has won a UK national survey of people's favourite inventions.

Thursday, August 18, 2005

Sense of the City: An Alternate Approach to Urbanism

From October 26, 2005 to September 10, 2006, the Canadian Centre for Architecture presents Sense of the City, a major exhibition dedicated to the theme of urban phenomena and perceptions which have traditionally been ignored, repressed or maligned. Challenging the dominance of the visual in the urban environment, the exhibition proposes a rethinking of latent qualities of the city, offering complex analyses of the comforts, communication systems, and sensory dimensions of urban life – thus advancing a new spectrum of experience and engagement.

Subways need not be boring or dreary!

Many operators of metros, subways or underground railways want to attract more passengers with good station design. This often means extra effort and higher costs for the metro operators but it seems to pay when a metro is more than only a means of traffic but something the population can be proud of.

Booming economic cycle drives a giant of the road into bankruptcy

Beijing used to be overwhelmed by cyclists, with one lane of every road set aside for them. Cycle lanes survive in Beijing, but only just. They are now crowded with cars that edge the brave few cyclists on to the pavement. Cyclists have become almost an oddity, although knife sharpeners still ride the narrow lanes and the leak-fixer flaunts his services on street corners.

Reach for the sky: who's the tallest and fairest of them all?

Britain is going skyscraper-crazy, with plans for higher and higher towers. Without strict rules they will change the face of our cities.

Wednesday, August 17, 2005

Foodie heaven

Like their Scottish Parliament building, Enric Miralles and Benedetta Tagliabue's Barcelona market took a very long time to construct. But it is another outstanding piece of architecture.

Tuesday, August 16, 2005

Credit or debit ... or planet card?

What would you be willing to do to slow climate change?

Oh sure, you might drive and fly less. You might already have, like me, signed up for a green-energy plan. But would you hand over an ID card every time you filled up your gas tank? Would you let the government track each time you turned on your washing machine or computer? How about your nose-hair trimmer?

Rentabike moves up a gear from curiosity to runaway success

The French are not short of groundbreaking cheap and efficient public transport. But now the Paris Metro and the high-speed TGV have a more humble, although no less hi-tech, equal - the Lyon rentabike.

Less than three months after its launch, the city's Vélo'v scheme, reportedly the largest of its kind in the world, is a runaway success. "Very quickly, we've moved from being a curiosity to a genuine new urban transport mode," said Gilles Vesco of the city council.

Wal-Mart Says Oil Prices Held Down Profits for Quarter

Citing high oil prices, Wal-Mart, the nation's largest retailer, announced its smallest quarterly profit growth in four years today, missing Wall Street's earnings forecast.

Windmills in the Sky

Australian engineer Bryan Roberts wants to build a power station in the sky -- a cluster of flying windmills soaring 15,000 feet in the air -- but is having trouble raising enough money to get the project off the ground.

A Neighborhood In North Carolina Is Put Up for Sale

In many parts of the country, developers are buying up older homes, tearing them down and building million-dollar mansions in their place.

Now, 22 homeowners here are taking matters into their own hands with an unusual marketing proposal.

They've put their entire neighborhood up for sale.

Homeowners in Sherbrooke, a neighborhood about six miles from downtown, are betting that a developer will pay a premium for 15 acres of prime real estate under their 1950's ranch houses. Their asking price: about $700,000 a lot, triple the individual value of most of their homes.

Monday, August 15, 2005

Living Large, by Design, in the Middle of Nowhere

Its square mile of tightly packed homes is the outer crest of Tampa's residential swell, four miles from the nearest grocery store and 30 minutes from the nearest major mall. Just down the road, beyond some orange groves, cattle graze languorously amid the insect hum of a sun-baked field, and only a few mobile home parks and a roadside stand selling tiki huts interrupt the vast sea of pine, palmetto and dense thatch.

The New City Beautiful

It can happen in your town: Streetscapes blooming with wildflowers, industrial waterfronts transformed into parks, and creeks once again dancing with salmon. A green urban renaissance is growing

Healthy By Design

Any busy downtown sidewalk will reveal the mystery of why Vancouverites are an uncommonly vigorous and healthy bunch and why their city is so widely admired.

Stand on Robson Street for five minutes on a weekday afternoon. Count the people walking past: 346. Note the number who are obviously overweight: 2. Estimate the number wearing backpacks: 100. Now take another five minutes to count the cars moving steadily and easily past: 74 (plus two trucks and three buses). Reach for your calculator: 4.5 pedestrians for every car.

Chasing Buzz

Toronto's poet laureate recently joined a delegation of city officials on a one-week mission to Europe to find out what makes cities attractive to tourists and investors.

I don't drive; why should I care about oil prices?

"If you take buses, trains or planes, you will be paying more for your fare. And our shops are filled with plastics, which are oil-based products," says Roy Holloway, the director of the Petrol Retailers' Association. "When producing - and delivering - these household goods gets more expensive, consumers will bear the brunt."

No Drive to Mass Transit

Motorists are more likely to reduce gas consumption on the weekends than change their commuting habits, experts say.

San Diego's Public Landscape: How Do We Get Beyond the 'Black Hat of Puritanism'?

How do you lose a perfect landscape -- in a region blessed with hills that cascade toward a stunning bay, against a backdrop of blue skies and mild summer breezes? How do you dullify a cityscape on the Pacific Ocean?

Travel vandals: the Grand Tour has gone sour

Cultural travel, once the privilege of the elite few, is now the right of the masses—but sites cannot cope with the crowds.

Ugly or not, our buildings shouldn't face trial by TV

Gateshead's brutalist concrete highrise car park, now a urine-stained hulk, but once the unacknowledged star of Get Carter, the sharpest British gangster film ever made, has become something of a litmus test for architectural taste. It serves to provide a precise definition of the shifting borderline that divides eyesore from heritage. For my money, the film's best moment comes immediately after Michael Caine has hurled a local Geordie crime boss off the top floor. Two architects, whose presentation of a design for a new restaurant to the crime boss has been terminated by Caine's eruption, turn to each other. 'You know, something tells me we are going to have trouble getting our fees on this job', says one meditatively.

Sunday, August 14, 2005

Getaway car: Vehicles can double as a refuge

Commuters — who already average 260 hours a year in their vehicles — are finding an oasis in the oddest of places.

They're choosing to stay in their rides even longer — after a grueling ride home from work or an exasperating afternoon running to soccer practice. Already cozied up with leather seats, DVD players and iPods, their cars are convenient and private decompression chambers — relaxing transitions from task to task.

Hack Sabbath

Hasidic Jews are way cooler than you, and it has to do with something called 'psychogeography'.

Saturday, August 13, 2005

Out West, a Paradox: Densely Packed Sprawl

The urbanized area in and around Los Angeles has become the most densely populated place in the continental United States, according to the Census Bureau. Its density is 25 percent higher than that of New York, twice that of Washington and four times that of Atlanta, as measured by residents per square mile of urban land.

"McMansions" remind some neighbours of architectural junk food

According to the U.S. Census Bureau, the size of U.S. houses has grown from an average of 105 square metres 50 years ago to about 200 square metres today. Two years ago, a third of the new houses built had more than 222 square metres of living space, according to the National Association of Home Builders.

"Floating Island" to Round Manhattan Next Month

The brainchild of the late earthwork artist Robert Smithson, most famous for Spiral Jetty in Utah, the flat-deck barge will hold earth, shrubs, rocks and seven specimens of trees native to the region that will rise 30 to 35 feet.

New Urban design

Visions by such celebrated architects as Michael Graves and Daniel Libeskind will likely change the skylines of many American cities, as developers increasingly turn to designers known more for their work on museums and other public buildings than condominiums and luxury housing.

Eiffel Tower of the East

A British based team lead by Alsop Design and Arup are to create a landmark structure to attract visitors to the World Expo 2010. Located on the Puxi side of the Huangpu River, the 250 m tall “Towering Kiss” will offer panoramic views over the historic Bund and the ‘Bladerunner’ vista of Pudong. Alsop Director Stephen Pimbley outlines the project, “The sculptural tower is set to rotate every 4 hours whilst a series of visitor pods travel up and around the legs offering unique and exciting views which will be forever changing as the kiss rotates and as the city of Shanghai evolves.”

Friday, August 12, 2005

Future Power - Where will the World Get its Next Energy Fix

Freedom!

I stand in a cluttered room surrounded by the debris of electrical enthusiasm: wire peelings, snippets of copper, yellow connectors, insulated pliers. For me these are the tools of freedom. I have just installed a dozen solar panels on my roof, and they work. A meter shows that 1,285 watts of power are blasting straight from the sun into my system, charging my batteries, cooling my refrigerator, humming through my computer, liberating my life.

The future of the human race depends on public spaces. They are the starting point for all community, commerce and democracy

People have withdrawn from the public realm in this era of rampant traffic and overblown security measures. A vibrant street life would bring them back into the open and make them feel they belong.

A Communist Block House Renaissance

Eastern Germany's population is shrinking and leaving hundreds of thousands of empty buildings behind. With plans afoot to demolish 350,000 apartments worth of hideous, communist-era buildings made from pre-fab concrete, a Berlin architectural firm is recycling the material into immensely livable single-family homes.

Downtown Vancouver's Last Resort: How Did "Living First" Become "Condos Only?"

Restaurants are full, tourists pack the sidewalks, and the blunted vaults of condo towers rise ever skyward.

Downtown Vancouver appears to prosper, but in the complex world of city building, appearances can be deceiving. I am not for a moment questioning the prospering part – the whole world is scrambling to live and play on our downtown peninsula, with its paradisiacal combination of mountain and ocean vistas, parks, and urbanity.

Highway Bill Sends Billions to Bike Trails

hen Erika Sass moved here from Washington state, she had a choice of how to get to work: hop in the car and drive 15 minutes or get on her bike and pedal an hour.

She chose the bike.

A mobile tale of three cities

With more than 1 billion cellphones in circulation around the world, the questions of how, when and why people use them have turned from matters of curiosity and conversation into serious subjects of academic research.

Warming hits 'tipping point'

Siberia feels the heat It's a frozen peat bog the size of France and Germany combined, contains billions of tonnes of greenhouse gas and, for the first time since the ice age, it is melting.

Thursday, August 11, 2005

Blocking All Lanes

The word traffic is always a little slippery, one of those words that escapes us when we try to pin it down. When engineers say traffic, they mean the movement of vehicles along a roadway, or what you'd find if you asked a dictionary. For the rest of us civilians, however, traffic has come to mean the exact opposite: that phenomenon of vehicles crowding a roadway until everything slows down to a frustrating crawl.

Vulgaria: The Re-Enchantment of Suburbia

They are landscapes of bigness and spectacle, characterized by packaged developments, simulated settings, and conspicuous consumption, and they have naturalized an ideology of competitive consumption, moral minimalism, and disengagement from notions of social justice and civil society.

High and rising

Calcutta’s skyline is being altered so dramatically that some can scarcely believe the transformation that’s underway.

A Roof Garden? It's Much More Than That

As temperatures soared over 90 degrees and New York City broke records for electricity use at the end of July, landscapers were installing a "green" roof at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens, where parts of the HBO series "The Sopranos" are filmed.

Above Tony Soprano's head will be New York City's largest green roof, a thin layer of plants covering 35,000 square feet in a design that aims to reduce air pollution, control heating and cooling costs, and absorb storm water runoff.

America's Crumbling Infrastructure--And How to Fix It

Like most Americans, you probably don’t think about our nation’s infrastructure--the public works that serve as the backbone of our country--until something goes wrong: you find yourself snarled in a traffic jam, or hear a report about a possible contaminate in the water supply, or become frustrated at your plane's two-hour delay.

Learning to love our cities again

Like the allure of a persistent lover, Americans' long affair with the automobile may doom the reconciliation between them and their cities.

The Cadillac of Bicycles?

Cadillac admits the death of the luxury sedan and introduces a new bicycle line.

Housing Prices High for Low Income Workers

Housing prices are far outstripping salary increases for low- and moderate-income jobs, putting the American dream of owning a home beyond the reach of teachers, firefighters and other community workers in many cities, said a study being released Tuesday.

Light summer reading on cities

Pick up some light summer reading on cities, and you'll never see your surroundings the same again.

Roll right out of bed and into the mall

Condos, lofts going up at retail meccas around Valley in housing trend.

Wrecking crew

Channel 4's series Demolition proposes to find Britain's most-hated building and have it knocked down.

Wednesday, August 10, 2005

Wind from Highway could help power campus

A college in Toronto is exploring the idea of harnessing the power of Canada's busiest highway to create electricity.

The wind-tunnel effect created by the hundreds of thousands of cars and trucks that travel Highway 401 each day makes Centennial College's Scarborough campus an ideal location for a small wind turbine to feed power back to the school.

Silence of the Planners

Despite the biggest building boom in decades, Philadelphia's planning department has remained on the sidelines. Some neighborhoods are hiring their own consultants for big-picture planning.

'Green' roofs sprouting across U.S. skylines

As temperatures soared and New York City broke records for electricity use at the end of July, landscapers were installing a "green" roof at Silvercup Studios in Long Island City, Queens, where the television series "The Sopranos" is filmed.

'The closest thing to real rock in the city'

It's called buildering -- the scaling of structures such as buildings and statues, usually without ropes or protective gear -- and if you wander a university campus this summer, you just might come across signs of it. If you don't see the climbers themselves, you may see their telltale traces: handprints left on walls from the chalk they use to ensure a good grip.

Games without frontiers

Life-sized games of Capture the Flag, Scotland Yard, Manhunt and Pac-Man have hit the streets. It's not just adults refusing to grow up — it's about making better use of public spaces.

Tuesday, August 9, 2005

Big Mellow Taxi - Meet the world's first hybrid-cab driver

Like any self-respecting cabbie, Andrew Grant has a talent for small talk. But when the conversation turns to his prized 2004 Toyota Prius, things get a bit more animated.

Bicycles Selling Like Hotcakes in US Stores

The struggling US automobile industry may do well to take some lessons from its non-motorized brethren because bicycles are selling like hotcakes.

A European Sahara?

With bursting thermometers, historic droughts and dozens of fires raging from Portugal to Greece, it isn't hard to imagine an apocalyptic future for southern Europe, almost as if the vast Sahara Desert were reaching out across the Mediterranean. Is this merely a long, hot summer, or are these the initial symptoms of enduring climate change, exacerbated by overpopulation and overdevelopment of a fragile ecological landscape? Evidence is mounting to support just such fears.

In Outer Suburbs, Lighting Up the Night

Patricia Meagher decided the newcomers flooding into Calvert County had finally gone too far when a blinding light woke her in the middle of the night. It turned out a new neighbor had installed a security lamp so bright that it seemed to her like midafternoon.

"My thought was: I'd like to take a gun and shoot that thing out," said Meagher, who is in her seventies and has watched tens of thousands of city residents and suburbanites move into this once-sleepy Southern Maryland county over the past 30 years. "This is a rural county. Why does he want to make it all lit up like Alexandria?"

L.A. all over again

As the world's most populous nation grows richer, suburbs sprawl and pollution spews, spurring ideas and riots.

Blueprint for Building a Better World

It's not easy being the Bob Geldof of architecture. But Cameron Sinclair is doing his best to save the world, one emergency shelter and mobile AIDS clinic at a time.

Low-Income Housing With Emphasis on Design

By launching the Clancy award program nationally rather than just locally, the Boston Society of Architects not only is inaugurating a new award program, but also is telling the public as well as professionals that "socially responsible" housing can be designed as artfully as any other buildings.

Record-breaking buildings often slim down off drawing board

The architect's concept is breathtaking: A spiraling, 115-story tower that would pierce the sky along Chicago's lakefront and grab the title of the nation's tallest building.

Off the drawing board, though, history shows such plans often fail to live up to their record-breaking aspirations.

Holzer produces a provocative piece 'For Pittsburgh'

"For Pittsburgh," for sure, doesn't have the acerbic bite and one-liner accessibility of the truisms for which Holzer is known. They came out of her upbringing in Ohio, where maxims like "Children should be seen and not heard" were part of the wallpaper of life. Holzer made up her own truisms, distributing them first as guerrilla art pasted on telephone poles in New York in the 1970s.

Jian Wai SOHO

Not only is China building like crazy these day, they are building BIG. The most populous country in the world is undertaking large-scale "mega-projects" in an effort to rapidly industrialize and modernize.

The Beautiful People

A lot of cities make a spectator sport of their street life. What distinguishes New York’s are the extremes of self-awareness that go along with it.

The Magicbike

The Magicbike "is a mobile WiFi (wireless Internet) hotspot that gives free Internet connectivity wherever its ridden or parked. By turning a common bicycle into a wireless hotspot,Magicbike explores new delivery and use strategies for wireless networks and modern-day urbanites.Wireless bicycles disappear into the urban fabric and bring Internet to yet unserved spaces and communities.Mixing public art with techno-activism,Magicbikes are perfect for setting up adhoc Internet connectivity for art and culture events,emergency access,public demonstrations,and communities on the struggling end of the digital-divide".

Monday, August 8, 2005

Riding With the Urban Mappers

Dorfman and Caro-Brice are part of the small team responsible for the block-view technology A9.com launched this spring, which allows users to virtually stroll city streets to get directions and identify local businesses. The vehicle they drive is a prototype for the mini-fleet currently crisscrossing the United States in a photographing spree, racing to put a visual Yellow Pages online.

Sim civics

New game-like computer software is empowering ordinary citizens to help design better cities. Can the professionals and the public learn to play well together?

'Starchitects' can't be ignored

At the age of 76, Frank Gehry may be changing the rules of architecture yet again.

To Advocates, Money Does Grow on Trees

"We would like to see the city talk about trees, think about trees in the same way they talk about transportation systems, improved schools and public housing," said Jim Lyons, executive director of the Casey Trees Endowment Fund.

Downtown Housing Demand Feeds a Bloom in High-Rises

Downtown Los Angeles — which hasn't seen a skyscraper built since Tom Bradley was mayor and the Raiders were playing at the Coliseum — is in the midst of a growth spurt that promises to significantly alter its skyline in the coming years.

When Pigs Wi-Fi

We need to envision broadband Internet access as just another utility, like electricity or water. Often the best way to provide that will be to blanket a region with Wi-Fi coverage to create wireless computer networks, rather than running D.S.L., cable or fiber-optic lines to every home.

Sky High

There's something romantic about New York's rooftops; they evoke a certain grittiness that is gradually disappearing from the city -- particularly as more and more low-rise buildings give way to high-rises. But then, if you are lucky enough to have a rooftop, how gritty do you really want it to be?

Urban redevelopment with an edge

A massive building project in downtown Vancouver hopes to integrate drug addicts, businesses and middle-income earners in one of Canada's most disturbing neighbourhoods.

Sunday, August 7, 2005

The Future of Transportation is Now

Gary Toth and PPS are putting a new paradigm of street design and land use to work in New Jersey.

Saturday, August 6, 2005

RV campers discover Wal-Mart lots

It's not what you'd call a back-to-nature experience, but RV campers travelling the Maritimes say nothing beats a Wal-Mart parking lot for convenience – and price.

Mullets. White jeans. Architecture?

As with fashion, styles come and go in buildings. With the haircuts, clothes and music of the 1980s making a comeback, is its architecture due a revival?

'Gang of Four' architects take on old guard

The ascendancy of Lord Rogers and Lord Foster is under challenge from practices saying they seek a more open attitude.

Pleasure palaces

They are the elegant relics of Britain's 1930s seaside heyday. Now the coast's modernist masterpieces are receiving a new lease of life.

Design pugilist must prove he is a heavyweight

Stung, perhaps, by accusations that he has become architecture's Mr Blobby, urban planning's Ali G, Will Alsop has decided to ring himself around with a posse of like-minded professional pugilists. Neither Alsop, Branson Coates Architecture, FAT, nor AOC are designers scared of metaphorical fisticuffs: their designs are colourful and lippy, and so are they.

Planners with designs on Harbour's darling

Five designs for the 22 ha East Darling Harbour site went on public display yesterday.

The competition received 137 entries, making it the most hotly-contested since architects tendered for the Sydney Opera House in the 1950s.

Building on water in Hamburg

The German city is undergoing a makeover as the continent's largest construction project transforms its riverfront -- and its reputation -- with contemporary buildings and refurbished warehouses.

Friday, August 5, 2005

How to Live Without Oil

New energy sources and efficiency could make petroleum obsolete.

A flâneur manifesto

We're told, over and over, that Toronto is not Paris, New York, London or Tokyo. We're trained to be underwhelmed. Will Alsop told The Globe and Mail earlier this year that when he first came to Toronto he found it "unbelievably ugly." He's sort of right. Toronto seems to exist without design or reason. We don't expect to turn the corner and see beauty or to be amazed. Why then, are so many people amazed about being Torontonian right now?

Nature Deficit Disorder

Condominium developers in this city's bustling downtown are required to build dining room floors with washable hard surfaces -- easy to clean when kids spill juice or cereal.

Malls, alfresco

Quaint stores, shaded walkways, and grass update shopping centers.