Posts tagged urban design

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Posted 1 year ago
In transportation, we are shying away from major new projects like high-speed rail because they do not fit in with contemporary American commuting trends — forgetting the fact that the U.S. car reliance is a constructed one. We spent massively to create the highway network, and the result is that it is now the backbone of most Americans’ daily commutes. There was nothing natural about that process, and no reason to think that it cannot be reversed if we thought differently about our transportation system development. We are adding population at such a quick rate that we could encourage different commuting trends if we want to, but only if we invest the resources to do so.
Yonah Freemark, “A Note on the Future of American Transportation”
Quote 34
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Posted 1 year ago
This brings us to the first of the three legacies of the Jacobsian turn: It diminished the disciplinary identity of planning. While the expanded range of scholarship and practice in the post-urban renewal era diversified the field, that diversification came at the expense of an established expertise — strong, centralized physical planning — that had given the profession visibility and identity both within academia and among “place” professions such as architecture and landscape architecture. My students are always astonished to learn just how toxic and stigmatized physical planning — today a popular concentration — had become by the 1970s. Like a well-meaning surgeon who botches an operation, planners were (correctly) blamed for the excesses of urban renewal and many other problems then facing American cities. But the planning baby was thrown out with the urban-renewal bathwater. And once the traditional focus of physical planning was lost, the profession was effectively without a keel. It became fragmented and balkanized, which has since created a kind of chronic identity crisis — a nagging uncertainty about purpose and relevance. Certainly in the popular imagination, physical planning was what planners did — they choreographed the buildings and infrastructure on the land. By the mid-1970s, however, even educated laypersons would have difficulty understanding what the profession was all about. Today, planners themselves often have a hard time explaining the purpose of their profession. By forgoing its traditional focus and expanding too quickly, planning became a jack-of-all-trades, master of none. And so it remains.
Thomas J. Campanella, “Jane Jacobs and the Death and Life of American Planning,” Design Observer

(Source: utnereader)

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Posted 1 year ago

Polis | Interview with Peter Marcuse: Critical Urban Theory & The Right to the City

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Posted 1 year ago
In retrospect I understand that this was utter insanity. Wider, faster, treeless roads not only ruin our public places, they kill people. Taking highway standards and applying them to urban and suburban streets, and even county roads, costs us thousands of lives every year. There is no earthly reason why an engineer would ever design a fourteen foot lane for a city block, yet we do it continuously.
Why? The answer is utterly shameful: Because that is the standard.
Confessions of a Recovering Engineer - Strong Towns Blog - Strong Towns (via urbanerds)
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Posted 1 year ago

Wikipedia | Rede Integrada de Transporte

Rede Integrada de Transporte (also known as RIT, Portuguese: Integrated Transportation Network) is a bus rapid transit system in Curitiba, Brazil.

Curitiba has a well planned transportation system, which includes dedicated lanes on major streets for a bus rapid transit system.[1] The buses are long, split into three sections (bi-articulated), and stop at designated elevated tubes, complete with handicapped access.[2] The system, used by 85% of Curitiba’s population (2.3 Million passengers a day),[3][4] is the source of inspiration[5] for the TransMilenio in Bogotá, Colombia, Metrovia in Guayaquil, Ecuador as well as the Emerald Express (EmX) ofEugene, Oregon and Orange Line of the Los Angeles, California, and for a future transportation system in Panama City, Panama, Transmetro system in Guatemala City,Guatemala, the Metrobús of Mexico City and Buenos Aires[6], Argentina, and for the city of Bangalore.

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Posted 1 year ago

Put simply, if everyday users of everyday architecture don’t realize that Home Depot, Best Buy, WalMart, even Tesco, Sainsbury’s, and Waitrose, can be criticized – if people don’t realize that even suburbs and shopping malls and parking garages can be criticized – then you end up with the architectural situation we have today: low-quality, badly situated housing stock, illogically designed and full of uncomfortable amounts of excess closet space.

And no one says a thing.

Geoff Manaugh, “Architectural Criticism”
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Posted 1 year ago
I agree wholeheartedly that a more vigorous critique of the built environment is needed, as it will always be; I’ve said this before, in fact, and I have not changed my mind since then. Infrastructure, the growth of police power in urban space, pedestrianization and mass transit schemes, improved access to cultural institutions, the politics of military landscapes, healthy housing projects, aging and the city—all of these topics need more coverage and broader public discussion.
Geoff Manaugh, “Critical Condition”
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Posted 1 year ago

Parkchester

I used to live in a planned community called Parkchester in the Bronx when I was very small. It is walkable, has lots of green space, and is very neatly integrated with mass transit. The more I learn about the place, the more interesting (and problematic) it becomes. It was once very indicative of institutionalized racism: an enormous whites-only complex in the middle of the Bronx, but it was successfully integrated and remains diverse today. Despite this success, the abandonment of many inner-city areas by the American political process caused it to go into decline for a while. It has since seen a recovery. I’d like to do a case study on it, focusing on the possibilities and challenges that surround the use of space in the built environment. In many ways it could be seen as a successful appropriation of what once was a thoroughly racist institution.

The only problem, of course, is finding the time to write this hypothetical paper.

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Posted 1 year ago

Model City of New Urbanism . . . Waco, TX? (Yeah, that Waco.)

utnereader:

In a move not usually linked with areas that have large expanses of open space and strong views on property rights, this central Texas city of about 125,000 is embracing innovative urban concepts. Waco is close to adopting a plan that includes mixed retail and residential downtown development, green construction and high-density, “walkable” communities that discourage driving.

via utnereader
Photo 27
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Posted 1 year ago
Five years ago I began work on my first documentary, Helvetica, which looked at the worlds of typography and graphic design, and their impact on our visual environment. After Helvetica was released in 2007, I had the idea for a second film, Objectified, which focused on industrial design and product design, and our relationship with the manufactured objects that surround us. While working on Objectified, I realized I wanted to make a third film that would also examine how design affects our lives, and began thinking of the films as a “design trilogy” of sorts. The third documentary in this trilogy is about the design of cities.Urbanized looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain. Zoom

Five years ago I began work on my first documentary, Helvetica, which looked at the worlds of typography and graphic design, and their impact on our visual environment. After Helvetica was released in 2007, I had the idea for a second film, Objectified, which focused on industrial design and product design, and our relationship with the manufactured objects that surround us. While working on Objectified, I realized I wanted to make a third film that would also examine how design affects our lives, and began thinking of the films as a “design trilogy” of sorts. 

The third documentary in this trilogy is about the design of cities.Urbanized looks at the issues and strategies behind urban design, featuring some of the world’s foremost architects, planners, policymakers, builders, and thinkers. Over half the world’s population now lives in an urban area, and 75% will call a city home by 2050. But while some cities are experiencing explosive growth, others are shrinking. The challenges of balancing housing, mobility, public space, civic engagement, economic development, and environmental policy are fast becoming universal concerns. Yet much of the dialogue on these issues is disconnected from the public domain.