Archinect - News

Building a better big box

2013-04-03T16:41:00-04:00

D’Hooghe, a Belgian-born architect and director of the Center for Advanced Urbanism at MIT, cares deeply about urban form and the large-scale issues cities face in achieving more efficient energy use, better transportation and less congestion. One of his main concerns is better integrating suburbs with the larger metropolitan areas in which they exist.

Creating Hipsturbia

2013-02-16T18:36:00-05:00

As formerly boho environs of Brooklyn become unattainable due to creeping Manhattanization and seven-figure real estate prices, creative professionals of child-rearing age — the type of alt-culture-allegiant urbanites who once considered themselves too cool to ever leave the city — are starting to ponder the unthinkable: a move to the suburbs.

Broad Minded City Documentary Film looking for a venue

2012-11-29T14:59:00-05:00

Broad Minded City is a Documentary about Urban Planning, Design and Architecture focusing on the current issues facing cities in development, issues like sustainability, culture identity, infrastructure, transportation and preservation. It's a multidisciplinary approach loosely based on Frank Lloyd Wright's urban model "Broadacre City" to show the difference between Broadacre City and Urban Sprawl as we know it today.

Right now, we are looking to share a 10-15 min short film of Broad Minded City to the public in a venue. The initial screening will mostly happen in the Los Angeles area, but not against screening on other cities interested in this subject matter. The hope is to make the documentary into a full-feature film (90 mins. or longer).

If anyone is interested in screening in their gallery space or movie venue, please contact or you have different suggestions on a idea venue. The documentary is not only for the architect, developer, planner & designer, but to the broader audience who have an interest or a belief that cities and the urban environment should have better planning, transparency & design, that the design of buildings and spaces should be an everyday experience.

Suburban Kansas Dream: Museum of Suburbia

2012-10-11T23:23:00-04:00

Museum officials in Johnson County, Kan., propose spending $34 million to create the National Museum of Suburbia, a faux suburb where visitors could wander through a model ranch-style home, wonder at an exhibit of lawn furniture and topple pins on a re-created bowling lane.

Reality Check: Developers React to MoMA’s Show, “Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream”

2012-03-27T00:44:00-04:00

Though the panelists agreed that the foreclosure crisis will lead to major changes in suburban development, they all thought new patterns are less likely to be brought about by a revised American dream than by economic and demographic factors. And all said it would be very difficult to change zoning laws to permit denser new development patterns, especially in existing “inner-ring” suburbs.

On Archinect: The CRIT: Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream

The Roots of Sprawl: Why We Don't Live Where We Work

2012-03-20T11:54:00-04:00

Los Angeles was one of the first large cities in the U.S. to adopt a kind of modern zoning to keep the industrial away from the residential. If the city would have more mixed use, with people living closer to retail and workplaces, Los Angeles would feel like another city, with less of its land area dedicated to low density, single family residential neighborhoods, and more streets with shops and businesses on the ground floor and homes above.

"The Laws That Shaped L.A." is a weekly series on LA-based radio station KCET, spotlighting regulations that have played a significant role in the development of contemporary Los Angeles. These laws - as nominated and explained each week by a locally-based expert - may be civil or criminal, and they may have been put into practice by city, county, state, federal or even international authority.

Can US communities learn from this European suburban retrofit?

2012-02-22T15:15:59-05:00

In 2008, the substantially updated town center of Plessis-Robinson, a suburb of Paris, was named “the best urban neighborhood built in the last 25 years” by the European Architecture Foundation. A composite of six connected districts ranging in size from 5.6 to 59 acres, the revitalization comprises public buildings, retail, market-rate and subsidized affordable housing, parks, schools, gardens, sports facilities, and a hospital. Construction was begun in 1990 and took a decade to complete.

Sympathy for the Suburbs

2012-02-21T12:20:00-05:00

Foreclosed, a new exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art, shows ways of radically rethinking suburbia, homeownership and housing. But are such drastic measures what the suburbs really need?

Also, see on Archinect: The CRIT: Thoughts on MoMA's Foreclosed: Rehousing the American Dream

Dublin Ohio Plans 1000-acre Urban Development in the Heart of Suburbia

2012-02-04T15:26:00-05:00

The City of Dublin, Ohio is an affluent Columbus suburb typically known for it’s good schools, easy access to jobs, and low density housing and retail developments that have rapidly sprawled outward over the past forty years. Fast forward another forty years and things may look drastically different. Officials with the city’s planning department have been steadily working on the Bridge Street Corridor plan, which calls for the redevelopment of 1,000 acres located at the core of Dublin.

One of the largest suburbs of Columbus, Ohio is planning to give itself an urban face lift with a new long term redevelopment plan. In addition to increase residential density to over 5000 people per square mile, the plan calls for the eventual installation of light rail light to serve local and regional commuters.

Hottest new development trend: Broadacre City

2011-09-15T11:44:17-04:00

In a movement propelled by environmental concern, nostalgia for a simpler life and a dollop of marketing savvy, developers are increasingly laying out their cul-de-sacs around organic farms, cattle ranches, vineyards and other agricultural ventures.

via Planetizen

Beyond Foreclosure: The Future of Suburban Housing

2011-09-14T17:24:44-04:00

The accelerating decline of suburban neighborhoods from Florida to California suggests that the contradictions of the system are finally catching up with it. The Great Recession is challenging not only the economics of homebuilding but also the essence of the suburban dream. Residential construction has slowed dramatically, and yet there remains a massive oversupply of single-family houses, especially on large lots.