Urbanism News
Saturday, August 30, 2008
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Anthropologists Find New Type of Urbanism in Amazon Jungles Recently-discovered Amazonian settlements could be a new type of metropolis, unseen elsewhere in the world and hidden until recently in the Kuikuro jungle, say anthropologists. |
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Country, the City Version: Farms in the Sky Gain New Interest What if eating local in Shanghai or New York meant getting your fresh produce from five blocks away? And what if skyscrapers grew off the grid, as verdant, self-sustaining towers where city slickers cultivated their own food? |
Thursday, August 28, 2008
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Eric Lombardi's Zero Waste Park Eric Lombardi, the waste-management guru behind Boulder, Colo.-based recycler Eco-Cycle, is fighting incinerators around the world with a vision. Although his Zero-Waste Park may never be built, he has been able to use the artistic plan as an effective tool for discussion that has allowed city planners to consider alternative solutions. |
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Green Roofs Offer More Than Color for the Skyline The thousands of recently planted green and purple shrublike sedum lining the roof of Con Edisons training center in Long Island City look a bit out of place in the shadow of Manhattans skyline. But the tiny absorbent leaves and modest but hardy roots of the sedum typically found in desert climates are at the center of a growing effort to reduce greenhouse gases, rainwater runoff and electricity demand in New York. |
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Communities Become Home Buyers to Fight Decay As a wave of home foreclosures courses through the United States, some of the nations hardest hit cities think they have found a way to ease the blight left on their communities by the crisis. |
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Towns recycle abandoned stores Wisconsin Rapids, one of Wisconsin's old paper-mill towns, had never fought to keep Wal-Marts and other big-box retailers out. Quite the opposite. The city was so welcoming that it got a state grant to meet Wal-Mart's parking needs in the 1980s. |
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Time to Forget Everything You Know? Does the general public care whether their urban spaces have the elements landscape architects are taught to provideseating and shade, for example, or plants? What I saw yesterday evening in Silver Spring, Maryland, an older edge city bordering Washington, D.C., made me have my doubts. Silver Spring hires landscape architects to design some of its outdoor spaces, and Id heard that they offer interesting contrasts. I went to see for myself. |
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Front-Row Seats on Broadway, if You Dare As if New York wasnt stimulating enough already, the city has provided a new kind of thrill right in the heart of Midtown: an esplanade carved into Broadway where people can sit and relax as cars and trucks whiz by. |
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Newcomers Adjust, Eventually, to New York Sometime over the course of a persons first year in New York, there usually comes that moment. It can happen in the first days or weeks, or after 10 months. It can happen repeatedly, or without people noticing, at least not at first. |
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Public Art, Eyesore to Eye Candy Art adores a vacuum. Thats why styles, genres and mediums left for dead by one generation are often revived by subsequent ones. In the 1960s and 70s public sculpture was contemporary arts foremost fatality deader than painting actually. The corpse generally took the form of corporate, pseudo-Minimalist plop art. It was ignored by the general public and despised by the art world. |
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The Angel of the North: welcome to the age of the 'enginartist' A stunning giant sculpture three times the size of 'The Angel of the North' will for the first time see an engineer given equal billing with an artist. |
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A Garden Grows in Oakland West Oakland, a historically industrial and impoverished neighborhood, has become an unlikely host to the eco-foods movement. |
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Venice cancels opening ceremony for hated Santiago Calatrava bridge The Mayor of Venice defended a controversial new bridge over the Grand Canal as Italys most important contemporary architectural achievement of recent decades yesterday despite complaints that it was unnecessary, unsuitable and four times over budget. |
Wednesday, August 27, 2008
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Cities look better than ever City or suburb? For decades that's been the choice for most Americans. Suburbs have been the hands-down winners -- by the millions, we've rushed to the urban edge. |
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The Olympics and urban planning In contrast to Beijing's monumental building projects, future Olympic hosts like London shouldn't think that bigger is better. |
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Who's poor? It depends on where you live, some say. New York officials have unveiled a first-of-its-kind poverty measure that includes the city's actual costs of living. |
Tuesday, August 26, 2008
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Going to the End of the Line For those subway riders who get off before the last stop almost everyone the end is just a sign on the train. What's there, anyway? It turns out there is often mystery, lonesomeness and beauty. Explore through photographs and video below. |
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Skyscrapers as Economic Indicators Ever hear of interesting economic indicators such as the correlation beween the economy and length of skirts? Heres one urbanists should appreciate: the skyscraper index, which shows strong correlation between the completion of worlds tallest buildings and downturns in the business cycle. |
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Sad City Ours is one of the most beautiful, vibrant, and livable cities in the world. Why arent we happy? |
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Following the Kids to College Real estate professionals were the first to figure out that parental purchases of kiddie condos for college students, in lieu of paying for dorms, made sound economic sense. That practice is now common. But some parents are investing in college towns in an unexpected new way: theyre following their kids to college. From South Bend, Ind., to Oxford, Miss., from Hanover, N.H., to Knoxville, Tenn., they are buying second homes for themselves near campuses where their children are enrolled. |
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The man who saw the future In the 1970s, visionary architect Paolo Soleri built an extraordinary eco-city in the Arizona desert. Did it work? |
Monday, August 25, 2008
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Former suburbanites are flocking back to cities all across the nation City or suburb? For decades, that's been the choice for most Americans. Suburbs have been the hands-down winners –– by the millions, we've rushed to the urban edge. |
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Structures so green they give back to the environment Forget simply cutting a building's footprint. A new wave or architectural thinkers wants to create buildings that help regenerate the planet like living organisms. |
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The Traffic Guru If you were asked to name a famous traffic engineer, in some pub quiz gone horribly wrong, chances are slight you could hazard a good guess. It is true that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, president of Iran, was trained as a traffic engineer, but his notoriety does not derive from tinkering with the streetlights in Tehran. Bill Gates got his start developing software for a device to count car traffic, but he was a computer boffin more interested in the technology than the traffic. Your memory might flicker in recognition at the names of William Phelps Eno, the putative “father” of traffic control, or Henry Barnes, the onetime New York City traffic czar credited with inventing the “Barnes Dance,” wherein an entire intersection, for a moment, is given over to a four-way pedestrian crossing. |
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The Social Functions of NIMBYism Matthew J. Kiefer observes the full flower of NIMBYism today- no longer just satisfied with their backyard, NIMBYs have become NOPEs (Not On Planet Earth). |
Sunday, August 24, 2008
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Chicago's Riverwalk complements the waterway at every turn To make Chicago's "second lakefront" -- as Mayor Daley calls it -- more enjoyable, the city has been progressively working on a plan that envisions creating a continuous riverwalk on the south bank from Michigan Avenue to Lake Street. Already, you can start at Lake Shore Drive and head west to just about Wacker. But, you get stuck at the bridges. |
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What are bridges for these days? No longer solely in the business of getting people from A to B across a waterway, bridges are now also about putting a place on the map and kick-starting wider investment. |
Saturday, August 23, 2008
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San Francisco Ponders: Could Bike Lanes Cause Pollution? Mr. Anderson disagrees. Cars always will vastly outnumber bikes, he reasons, so allotting more street space to cyclists could cause more traffic jams, more idling and more pollution. Mr. Anderson says the city has been blinded by political correctness. It's an "attempt by the anti-car fanatics to screw up our traffic on behalf of the bicycle fantasy," he wrote in his blog this month. |
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New York mayor tilts at windmills Some time in the past year, New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg morphed into Captain Green, a crusading environmentalist determined to quench New York's insatiable thirst for energy. But yesterday, after unveiling the most radical proposal yet in his expanding green revolution, some observers were quick to suggest an alternate nickname: Mayor Quixote. |
Wednesday, August 20, 2008
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Trading Places In the past three decades, Chicago has undergone changes that are routinely described as gentrification, but are in fact more complicated and more profound than the process that term suggests. A better description would be "demographic inversion." Chicago is gradually coming to resemble a traditional European city--Vienna or Paris in the nineteenth century, or, for that matter, Paris today. The poor and the newcomers are living on the outskirts. The people who live near the center--some of them black or Hispanic but most of them white--are those who can afford to do so. |
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Just right for the garden: a mini-cow Miniature cattle farming is catching on with families trying to stay ahead of rising food prices. |
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Mmmmmmm, ripe, juicy bicycles! Blog Guy, I want to buy a really good bicycle. Who makes the very best? Boy, are you behind the times! The best bikes are no longer made, they’re GROWN, mostly in Asia. Indeed, Indonesia’s famous bicycle trees are bearing fruit right now, and the bikes are being hand-picked, ripened and shipped. |
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To Live & Buy in Vancouver With the median price of a single-family dwelling at around three-quarters of a million dollars, and a West Side home roughly twice that, people are coming up with some creative approaches to home ownership |
Tuesday, August 19, 2008
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Playful spaces by Bruno Taylor Recent Saint Martins graduate Bruno Taylor came up with two ways of injecting some fun into otherwise mundane surroundings with his 'playful spaces project'. The two scenarios found online show a swing installed in a bus shelter and a bouncing park bench. |
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A Stunning Work of Art, but Who's the Artist? You May Never Know. When buildings receive media attention, why do the architects who design them often go unmentioned? |
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Traffic stoppers An increasing number of cities are temporarily closing streets to cars and opening them to pedestrians and cyclists. It fosters a greater sense of community. |
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Cities ponder London's bottle ban The water fountain is about to make a comeback. Plastic water bottles are the focus of a growing national backlash that's turning them from a fashion accessory into the latest environmental taboo. The issue reached a head in London, Ont., Monday night after city council voted to eliminate sales of bottled water at all city-run facilities, including arenas and community centres, and possibly even golf courses. The issue, which engulfed London in debate, makes the city one of the first in Canada to adopt restrictions on bottled-water sales. |
Monday, August 18, 2008
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We Need More Adventurous Buildings Alain de Botton, presenter of The Perfect Home, explains why housing developers should stop relying on the past for inspiration and start being bold with our buildings. |
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Rapp & Rapp’s cutting-edge normality The solid massiveness of Rapp & Rapp’s mixed-use development for Ypenburg, a new district located on a former Nato airfield near The Hague, sits easily with the area’s suburban life, reports Biq Architects’ Hans van der Heijden. |
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Hiring Mother Earth To Do Her Thing Since Adam Smith wrote his famous tract, capitalism has maintained that land has no value until it is put to use by humans, which is why wetlands, prairies, and forests have been drained, paved over, and cut down in favor of shopping malls, office parks, and suburban homes. Now, thanks to an emerging field called “ecosystem services,” it’s beginning to look like there might actually be a buck to be made by letting pieces of land—or, more specifically, the ecosystems they contain—remain pristine. |
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The fastest dying cities in the United States The turmoil of the mortgage market granted a temporary reprieve from hearing about the woes of America's Rust Belt. That doesn't mean things are better. Despite a decade of national prosperity, the former manufacturing backbone of the U.S. is in rougher shape than ever, still searching for some way to replace its long-stilled smokestacks. |
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New York’s parking lot New residential developments — where zoning guidelines often require off-street parking — are turning New York into a car-centric suburbia, according to a report released yesterday by a transit advocacy group. |
Sunday, August 17, 2008
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Psycho Buildings: why artists should plan our cities. Nobody ever says - hey, let's go to the Hayward Gallery, the way they do of the Tate or the National Gallery or any museum. Apart from having no permanent display, the Hayward is strangely invisible, considering how powerful its Brutalist 1960s South Bank architecture is. It is not a marketable brand. So is it an insanely rash move for director/curator Ralph Rugoff to ask artists to respond to this gritty building in celebration of the Hayward Gallery's 40th birthday? No, it is not. Artists being alchemists, they have turned the weird concrete monolith into a palace of intriguing follies. |
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The Visionary Thinking of John Todd The winner of th Bukminster Fuller Challenge has a plan for Appalachia and it could be the design model of the future. |
Saturday, August 16, 2008
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Canada's poorest postal code in for an Olympic clean-up? Anne-Marie Monks, a 62-year-old homeless woman, recently had a tantalizing offer of a free trip away from the grittiest streets of Vancouver. Her welfare officer said she could have a bus ticket to visit her daughter in Kamloops. Good offers are as rare as three hot meals in her neighbourhood. But Ms. Monks declined. It was a one-way ticket, she said. This wasn't a visit, it was telling me to go away and never come back. |
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New cultural district for Oslo The city of Oslo has announced a plan to move several museums and its main library to a central waterside location near the harbour and close to the new NKr3.3bn ($500m) National Opera house. |
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Traffic: Why We Drive the Way We Do The New World army ant (Eciton burchelli) lives in colonies that can number over one million inhabitants. Each morning, by the hundreds of thousands, the ants stream out into the world along several wide corridors to hunt for food, which they must then carry back to their nest. Its a simple enough task, but all this coming and going presents a logistical problem: The ants weighed down with food move more slowly then the unencumbered outbound ants, which threatens to snarl the whole operation. |
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NYC kids build the world's loudest bicycles Sick of seeing their big brothers having all the fun with their pimped out car stereos, a group of kids in Queens, New York dubbed the Stereobike Crew, figured that with a little ingenuity they could put a thumpin' sound rig on their BMX bikes. |
Friday, August 15, 2008
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Urban competitiveness New York is the worlds most competitive city, according to the Global Urban Competitiveness Project. The study ranks 500 cities on their ability to attract and use resources to generate wealth. The cities are assessed on nine measures, including income, economic growth, innovation, jobs, prices and the presence of multinational firms. |
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For the children Until recently, the new urbanism and the sustainable cities movement have paid insufficient attention to the needs of children. There has been little in the way of research related to urban design and the environment of childhood, according to Robin Moore, professor of landscape architecture at North Carolina State University. |
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Crime and urban design: Oscar Newman 36 years later I recently read Oscar Newmans 1970s book on crime prevention, Defensible Space. In this book, Newman addressed the question of why some public housing projects are insanely dangerous, and others only moderately so. Although Newmans analysis is mostly confined to low-income housing, commentators of all stripes have relied on his work: new urbanist commentator Laurence Aurbach asserts that Newmans work supports new urbanists emphasis on heavily trafficked, walkable streets while Randall OToole considers Newman to be a defender of single-use, cul-de-sac sprawl. |
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Shipping Costs Start to Crimp Globalization When Tesla Motors, a pioneer in electric-powered cars, set out to make a luxury roadster for the American market, it had the global supply chain in mind. Tesla planned to manufacture 1,000-pound battery packs in Thailand, ship them to Britain for installation, then bring the mostly assembled cars back to the United States. But when it began production this spring, the company decided to make the batteries and assemble the cars near its home base in California, cutting more than 5,000 miles from the shipping bill for each vehicle. |
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What's after prefab? In his 2006 Cal Poly Lecture, architect and filmmaker Bill Ferehawk critiqued the development of prefab housing solution and combed the subject via psychological, technological, economical and socio-political conditions that surround this type of housing to this day and beyond. This is the uncut version of his memorable lecture exclusively for elseplace. |
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Urban gardens gain ground
Bob McKenney drives up to Kinder Farm Park in Millersville three times a week to tend his squash, cucumbers, green beans, carrots, cantaloupes and watermelons. The Annapolis retiree lives in a condominium and doesn't have anywhere else to garden. |
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The end of the dream? The suburbs have been hit hard by the housing crisis. But reports of their death are exaggerated. |
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Creating solutions to a water crisis The first thing you see is shelf after shelf of plain glass bottles all containing different colored liquids. Some of the liquids are clear, and others whitish, yellowish, brownish, greenish, or almost black. The colors change daily, as does the consistency, and whatever is growing inside. |
Thursday, August 14, 2008
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Spatial History and the Mannahatta Project Time's insights flow in both directions: anticipating the future can help us remove contemporary blinders to understand the past in new ways, and delving into the past can give us fresh perspectives on what might be possible in the future. Or, as I wrote earlier, when trying to explain the importance of environmental history, "The past is still doing its work in the present, and understanding that past gives us leverage on the problems we face today. |
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A ‘Relaxing’ Ride, but Not for the Faint of Heart The idea was born of curiosity, but also a bit of conceit. Sure, an Olympic cyclist can finish a 152-mile road race in less than seven hours, but what would happen if you took away his finely tuned, aerodynamic, carbon-fiber racing bicycle and asked him to do battle on the streets of Beijing? |
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Downtowns Across the U.S. See Streetcars in Their Future From his months-old French bistro, Jean-Robert de Cavel sees restored Italianate row houses against a backdrop of rundown tenements in this city’s long-struggling Over-the-Rhine neighborhood. He also sees a turnaround for the district, thanks to plans to revive a transit system that was dismantled in the 1950s: the humble streetcar line. |
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World's most expensive stadiums Just as the Olympics occurring every two years is a sure thing, so is the fact that each new stadium construction project is seen as an opportunity to outdo everyone else. |
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Rome - eternal city or stuck in the past? Unlike the ancient landmarks around it, the Ara Pacis Museum, designed by US architect Richard Meier and unveiled two years ago, may not last – at least in its present form. |
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Why leave a city's designs in one man's hands? Edinburgh's celebrated skyline is threatened by a planning policy that puts mediocrity before imagination or beauty. |
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2030 For future reference, a fairly random selection of urban visions/strategy statements. Interesting how many are pinned on 2030. Far enough away to enable the magical convergence of speculation and possibility? |
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What Is the Future of Suburbia? A Freakonomics Quorum Why do you like suburbs over [the] city? Be honest please, I never understood it, still don’t. I might have serious problems, because I hate even looking at pictures of suburbs. |
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What our cities could be I always go on about how the current crisis in the habitat we depend upon for our health, happiness and security is full of opportunities for an improved way of life. What's good for the planet is often what is good for the people. |
Wednesday, August 13, 2008
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Why Safe Kids Are Becoming Fat Kids Just when we thought playgrounds were accident-proof -- no more merry-go-rounds, high slides, jungle gyms, seesaws or pretty much anything that's fun -- it turns out that safety itself can be dangerous. A recent heat wave in New York exposed a new playground risk: The ubiquitous rubber safety matting gets hot, not as hot as McDonald's coffee, but hot enough to scald tender feet. |
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The Locavore’s Dilemma: Finding Places to Plant On your left! Slow Food, coming up fast. A movement once associated with European elites will be convening in San Francisco over Labor Day weekend, bringing an advertised 50,000 devotees along to celebrate the virtues of thinking globally but eating locally. |
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Alain de Botton: Nice buildings don't always make us better people I remembered thinking that architecture really mattered quite a lot when I spent time in a building which perhaps taught me more about the power of architecture to influence who we are and how we feel than almost any other I have been in. |
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Good building design key to keeping bad guys away CPTED (Crime Prevention Through Environmental Design) an approach that originated in the 1960s, is based on a theory that the proper design and effective use of the built environment can reduce crime and the fear of crime. |
Tuesday, August 12, 2008
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Schools move to eject cars from campuses High schools and colleges are steering students away from cars to save money on gas, save the environment and promote physical fitness. |
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Newcomers transform city Fringe Benefits exhibit explores ways in which multiculturalism shapes architecture, design. |
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Giant Retailers Look to Sun for Energy Savings Retailers are typically obsessed with what to put under their roofs, not on them. Yet the nations biggest store chains are coming to see their immense, flat roofs as an untapped resource. |
Monday, August 11, 2008
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Turning Pavement Into Paradise Thirty-eight years after Joni Mitchell penned her lyrics about paving over paradise with a parking lot, two dozen summer internsgathered by planning and design firm EDAWhave helped plan a landscaped park over the mother of all parking lots. Namely, a bleak stretch of the 101 Freeway that slices through a trench in downtown Los Angeles, dividing some of the citys most walkable and historic areas like Olvera Street, Chinatown, and Union Station from the downtown government and business districts. |
Saturday, August 9, 2008
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German City Wonders How Green Is Too Green This fairy-tale town is stuck in the middle of a utopian struggle over renewable energy. The town councils decision to require solar-heating panels has thrown Marburg into a vehement debate over the boundaries of ecological good citizenship and led opponents to charge that their genteel town has turned into a green dictatorship. |
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Spandex-free cycling commute sells in Vancouver, importer finds If you like the idea of cycling to work but are loath to join Vancouver's growing army of two-wheeled, pedestrian-dispersing, 24-speed seawall warriors, there is an alternative. Go Dutch. |
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'Grass driveway' could reduce home's footprint "The grass driveway is very much a trial project," Mr. Marshall explains. It has to go at least through the winter to determine whether it's feasible and sustainable in Canada's climate, he says. |
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Home Energy Prices Are Expected to Soar In a season of roller-coaster energy costs, the drop in oil and natural gas prices in recent days was greeted as good news. But they remain so high that experts are predicting that heating bills this winter will far exceed those of last year. |
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Bikes, Copenhagen and Disneyland: what we have in common Hello, Los Angeles! Man, I've always wanted to say that. A warm hello from me in Copenhagen - the World's Cycling Capital. The sun is shining here in Copenhagen and the weather begs for a trip to the beach. It's a great city for cycling and on days like this you'll see over 50% of our population riding their bikes to work, school, the supermarket, the cafes and the beach. |
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'Place First' Parking Plans Parking has long been treated as a commodity of little value, one that is given away cheaply as part of the cost of running a city. In fact, most cities mandate a minimum level of parking in their zoning codes, in essence saying to developers go ahead and provide as much parking as you want just so long as there is enough to satisfy the demand. But, as we all now understand, this approach has had some unexpected and far-reaching consequences. As we begin once again to put a premium on urban places in the face of rising gas prices and global climate change, the long-standing approach of treating parking as a loss leader that can be overlooked is becoming increasingly untenable. We are at a turning point that provides an opportunity to craft parking policies that support the need for more vibrant cities. |
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The Future of Shopping Malls: An Image Essay Mall culture in the United States -- at least as we know it -- is coming to an end. Last month, the fall of Steve & Barry's became the next addition to a series of recent retailer bankruptcies we've been witnessing across the nation. This trend is likely to continue, as the U.S. economic downturn causes people to reduce their trips to stores and to shop less, forcing more shops to close and leaving malls deserted. |
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REACTIVATE!! Part 2, Instant urbanism REACTIVATE!! is a two-fold exhibition which runs until late August, at the Espai d' Art Contemporani de Castell, near Valencia in Spain. |
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Architects take Beijing's smog into account The relationship between smog and architecture is not one that critics or scholars -- or architects themselves, for that matter -- have traditionally given much thought. But in the pollution-clogged Chinese capital, the link is nearly impossible to ignore. |
Wednesday, August 6, 2008
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Living simply provides economic shelter Keri Rainsberger isn't rich. She works in the nonprofit world for a relatively low-profit salary. Yet, as many Americans are scrimping for every penny, she hardly feels the pinch. |
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A Guide to Making the Transition Away From Oil Rob Hopkins is a doctoral student at Plymouth University in England and the founder of the Transition movement—the transition he advocates is away from oil and toward self-sufficiency. He is a proponent of the theory of peak oil, which says that oil production will reach a high point, then begin a cruel decline, and he believes the peak is imminent. Most peak oilers are an apocalyptic lot, thinking that the end of oil will lead to some kind of Mad Max future. Mr. Hopkins, by comparison, is incredibly optimistic. |
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Fish Works On view till 27 September 2008 at Center for Architecture in New York are select entries from the South Street Seaport - Re-envisioning the Urban Edge competition. Unfortunately, no images are provided. Thankfully, N.E.E.D., whose entry was awarded First Place, provided us with images of their winning proposal: “an aquaculture-driven floating park, inlaid with combinational modules of public indoor programs.” |
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REACTIVATE!! Urban reanimations and the minimal intervention Curated by Francesca Ferguson in collaboration with Pepe Ballesteros, REACTIVATE!! is merging two exhibitions organized last year by the Swiss Architecture Museum in Basel (S AM). The resulting show brings together a cluster of recently-built projects which demonstrate how resourceful architects and designers can transform disused, outworn or inadequate urban spaces and buildings into efficient, and even aesthetically striking edifices. |
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New attitudes gaining toward transit, land use The rising cost of energy enhances ideas such as clustered housing and the revival of a trolley line. |
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Long Island Express: The Surprisingly Short Commutes of Suburban New Yorkers One of the most enduring urban myths suggests that most jobs are in the core of metropolitan areas, making commuting from the far suburbs more difficult. Thus, as fuel prices have increased, many have expected that people will begin moving from farther out in the suburbs to locations closer to the cores. Indeed, in some countries, such as Australia, much of the urban planning regime of the last decade has been based upon the assumption that urban areas must not be constrained because the residents on the fringe won’t be able to get to work. |
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The Dining Room Takes to the Streets There were 10 for dinner last Friday night, invited by Calvin Tsao and Zack McKown, partners in an architecture practice that has its offices on Vandam Street in Manhattan. A few of the guests were collaborating with the architects on a master plan for a city in China, 10 kilometers away from the epicenter of the recent earthquake, and they were exhausted from working nonstop. Still, they came, by subway and then on foot, meeting in the lee of the Manhattan-side tower of the Brooklyn Bridge. |
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Mystery of The Queensway poetry Driving along The Queensway, a candidate for the west end's most soulless street, you spot a sign at the streetcar's Humber loop, printed in neat block letters: "I love you not only for what you are but for what I am when I am with you." The traffic-hardened heart turns squishy. |
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
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S.F. streetcars too popular for their own good Twenty-five years ago, San Francisco put a fleet of quaint vintage streetcars on the train tracks along Market Street. Today those cars are still running on the F-line, which rolls down Market, past the Ferry Building, and up the Embarcadero to Fisherman's Wharf. They are beautifully restored, eye-catching tourist attractions, and a lot of fun. Unless you are actually trying to get somewhere. |
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Gas Prices Apply Brakes To Suburban Migration Cheap oil, which helped push the American Dream away from the city center, isn't so cheap anymore. As more and more families reconsider their dreams, land-use experts are beginning to ask whether $4-a-gallon gas is enough to change the way Americans have thought for half a century about where they live. |
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Like suburbs, large cities are rethinking growth patterns Outlying suburbs aren't the only places rethinking growth and development patterns amid mushrooming costs of gasoline and other energy sources. |
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