In the quest to make parking suck less, there are apps that help you find a space, and meters where you can pay with a swipe of your credit card. But LA has launched a simple, low-tech solution to make parking better: Well-designed signage that offers no ambiguity whatsoever when it comes to where you can park, when you can park there, and how much it will cost. — Gizmodo
I had doubts about accepting this project. I didn’t want to become a pawn for politicians, but the residents gave me a mandate. The public understood that it could act collectively in order to improve its situation - Architect — Haaretz
Project's architect Senan Abdelkader is well known to NY Times a few years back via Nicolai Ouroussoff. A distinct aesthetic language from Senan Abdelkader: an apartment building in an Arab neighborhood near Bethlehem.An apartment building, designed by Senan Abdelkader, in an Arab neighborhood... View full entry
Alastair Graham hopes Violence Prevention Through Urban Upgrading, an initiative of the government of Cape Town, South Africa, will end better. He calls the effort, which has been revamping areas around train stations since 2006, part of “a package of potential solutions … either improving safety, or improving socioeconomic situation, or improving quality of life.” The project is aimed at curbing violence by augmenting the public spaces in which violent crime frequently occurs [...]. — nextcity.org
...Fernando Casado and Paula García, the founders of the Towards the Human City project, [are] travelling the world to find how cities are trying to be more people-oriented...Trends like smart cities make us believe that large structures are needed to change urban spaces, yet there are countless examples of transformative bottom-up initiatives that have come from a simple idea and flourished without public money. It is this citizen-led type of urbanism that they hope to highlight and champion. — The Guardian
After 41 years of teaching at UCLA, Donald Shoup, Distinguished Professor of Urban Planning at the UCLA Luskin School of Public Affairs, will retire on June 30. [...]
Shoup is widely known as the “parking guru” whose ideas on parking policies have been implemented in cities around the world. His influential book, "The High Cost of Free Parking" ... has led a growing number of cities to adapt new policies for parking requirements and to charge fair market prices for curb parking.
— newsroom.ucla.edu
Parking is a gigantic factor in determining how cities in the U.S. look and function, and no one knows that better than Donald Shoup. Any parking study worth its salt is indebted to Shoup's research. View full entry
Because of its size and intense radiation, Texas leads the nation in solar energy potential, but the solar industry has long struggled to get a foothold in the state... and solar energy currently makes up a tiny percentage of the state’s energy portfolio. That’s beginning to change. Improving technology has driven down the price of solar power, making it more competitive with other resources — even without incentives, developers say. — The Texas Tribune
The municipal utility of Georgetown, a Texan city of about 55,000, recently signed a 25-year contract with SunEdison to buy 150 megawatts of solar power as well as 144 megawatts of wind power from the EDF Renewables wind farm through 2039 -- reportedly being the first city-owned utility to take... View full entry
"The public sector stopped making public space a long time ago," Los Angeles architect Jon Jerde told Wired magazine rather matter-of-factly in 1999. [...]
A little more than two decades later, there is something quaintly fatalistic about Jerde's attitude toward the frail state of public space. In Los Angeles, at least, it has returned pretty dramatically to health.
— latimes.com
[RIBA] has launched the contest to create a self-sustainable future for those living on Tristan, a tiny community “ruled by the weather”, part of the Tristan da Cunha group of islands. [...]
Tristan’s government, led by Alex Mitham, called in Riba to manage the process of finding an architect to overhaul residential property as well as carry out urgent replacement of the government buildings, currently little more than agricultural sheds which “are nearing the end of their useful life”.
— independent.co.uk
As the Vision Zero conversation widens, a new dimension is emerging to the approach. Increasingly, planners and advocates are talking about creating cities rich in human interaction, cities that provide a healthier environment that puts people above cars in a variety of ways...[At the same time,] Stockholm is already focusing on walkability, even if not under the Vision Zero rubric. — CityLab
Related:Study Links Walkable Neighborhoods to Prevention of Cognitive DeclineLos Angeles on cusp of becoming 'major' walkable city, study saysTulsa Mayor Hasn’t Ruled Out a Sidewalk Next to New Flagship Park View full entry
Bonus: BoozeTown, the Crazy-Ass Town of Drunks — io9
It is still up for debate, but I will say real estate ownership might be abolished and become irrelevant. View full entry
Proponents of the Underline bicycle route and linear park that would replace the threadbare M-Path under the Metrorail tracks from Dadeland to the Miami River have picked the co-designer of the wildly popular elevated High Line in Manhattan to draw up a master plan for their idea.
James Corner Field Operations was selected by a local jury from among 19 architectural teams that submitted entries in a competition.
— Miami Herald
To establish a use case it is essential to understand the ‘users’; the human beings who a service is supposed to help. This means really getting to know those people. The service should be built around their needs, not those of the city government or technology provider. — Ross Atkin
Written (at the suggestion of Bruce Sterling) at South By South West 2015. It is based on reflections on building several connected city services. h/t @Bruce Sterling View full entry
...last week at an economic development conference, the Egyptian government announced it was planning a giant new building project to the east of Cairo. The new city, which could eventually cover 700 km sq, doesn't currently have a name, and is being referred to simply as "The Capital"...If all goes to plan, the city will serve as the new administrative and financial capital of Egypt. — City Metric
A new analysis authored by Todd Litman at the Victoria Transport Policy Institute concludes that sprawl costs the U.S. economy more than $1 trillion every year. [...]
The optimal density Litman uses in the report is only about 23 people per hectare. Add those 2.2 billion people to global cities at a density of about Atlanta, and we'd need the equivalent of all the land in India to accommodate them.
— washingtonpost.com
Previously: The true costs of sprawlHere's a direct link to Todd Litman's study Analysis of Public Policies that Unintentionally Encourage and Subsidize Sprawl. View full entry
Creating a massive new city that is able to encourage enterprise in a practical way has up-ended the usual rigmarole of applying for permissions. — BBC News
Sylvia Smith reports on Saudi Arabia's new desert "megacity". View full entry