For more than a century, [Helsinki] has funded its own statistics bureaus to keep data on the population, businesses, building permits, and most other things you can think of. [...]
Helsinki and three of its neighboring cities are now banding together... Through an entity called Helsinki Region Infoshare, they are bringing together their data so that a fuller picture of the metro area can come into view.
— citiscope.org
As city governments become stronger drivers of infrastructural change, and the idea of a "connected city" becomes imminent, cities must learn how to manage and wield the vast amount of data collected. Parallel developments in city demographics, creating stronger links between cities within a... View full entry
In a series of photos taken over seven years, now published in a new book called Ciphers, photographer Christoph Gielen shows a different perspective on sprawl, intended to get more people to question typical patterns of development.
"I meant for Ciphers to be provocative at a time when we are witnessing a phenomenal escalation in urban construction ... when entire cities are emerging fully formed in India and China, rather than slowly evolving," says Gielen.
— fastcoexist.com
Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City was the densest place on the planet before it was torn down 20 years ago. In this Wall Street Journal interactive, you can take a trip through the city, explore its history and hear from the people who lived there.
The WSJ has developed an impressive rich-media piece on the Kowloon Walled City using photography, video, audio, text and interactive features to tell the stories of the history, environment and inhabitants. View full entry
When all stages are completed, the 65,000 people daily who pass through the Hudson Yards’ office towers, residences, shops, restaurants, hotel, public school, and public open space will contribute to a massive stream of data intended to help answer the big questions about how cities of the future should be managed. [...]
“It really started from the question: If we could know anything about the city, what would we want to know and how could we do a better job at measuring the pace of life?”
— fastcoexist.com
Our technology-first approach has failed the city of the future. So-called “smart cities,” powered by technology, carry the promise of responding to the great pressures of our time, such as urban population growth, climate instability, and fiscal uncertainty. But by focusing on the cutting-edge technologies themselves and relying on private companies to move forward, we have lost sight of what we even want our cities to achieve with all that tech. — wired.com
From pedestrian bridges to city centre waterslides, sculpture parks to public pianos, here are some of the smartest and wackiest crowdfunded projects for urban improvement — theguardian.com
“At the end of the day, we’re going to be in a better spot...You just stepped the entire gentrification of Ortley Beach forward five years because everything had to be rebuilt" - Eric J. Birchler, the owner of Birchler Realtors — NYT
Ronda Kaysen examines how Hurricane Sandy hit the reset button on the Jersey Shore. Post - Sandy redevelopment is booming. Though some worry about loosing the "blue-collar flavor in the area" and others caution that buyers "are taking some real risk" by not worrying about long-term effects of... View full entry
With billions in federal, charity and insurance dollars flowing in after [Hurricane Katrina], there were suddenly resources for change.
“The city essentially got the opportunity to do a do-over,” said Carol Bebelle, a lifelong New Orleanian and executive director of Ashé Cultural Arts Center. [...]
In many ways, it was a top-to-bottom re-imagining of the cityscape.
So, is the city in a better place than it was nearly nine years ago? It depends on how closely you look.
— equalvoiceforfamilies.org
Forty-seven miles of the 400-mile California Aqueduct could have their flow reversed this summer to bring water to dry Central California districts with dangerously low supplies, reports KQED. As this megadrought's persisted and worsened, it's come to light that many water districts, especially the smaller ones, haven't had the chance (read: the money) to stockpile water as we do here in SoCal. — la.curbed.com
Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition! View full entry
It's the urban planning equivalent of Rinaldo. Except instead of the siege of Jerusalem, it's the battle for Greenwich Village.
The legendary 1960s struggle pitted planning czar Robert Moses against neighborhood activist Jane Jacobs. Moses wanted to make the city easily navigable by car [...]
But the powerful planner met his match when he proposed an expressway through Lower Manhattan. Though she had little institutional support, Jacobs built a citizen coalition that ultimately defeated Moses.
— theatlanticcities.com
It was 75 years ago—the year Gone With the Wind and The Wizard of Oz were released and World War II began—that Los Angeles's lovely Union Station first opened for business. There was a big Downtown celebration on May 3, 1939 to mark the opening of what is viewed as the nation's last great rail station, and Ward Kimball, an award-winning Disney animator and part-time rail nerd (one of Disney's Nine Old Men and the man who created Tweedledee/Tweedledum and Jiminy Cricket), filmed the occasion. — la.curbed.com
The NYPD said the balloon would remain aloft for about nine hours Sunday in lower Manhattan and more than 13 hours Monday in Midtown.
Police said the balloon will be about 800 feet in the air as it collects data for a private architecture firm conducting height surveys of Manhattan buildings.
— nydailynews.com
If there is any one lesson that I have learned in my life as a city planner, it is that public spaces have power. It's not just the number of people using them, it's the even greater number of people who feel better about their city just knowing that they are there.
Public space can change how you live in a city, how you feel about a city, whether you choose one city over another, and public space is one of the most important reasons why you stay in a city.
— TED
Amanda Burden served as New York City's chief planner under Mayor Bloomberg, leading such revitalization projects as the High Line and Brooklyn's waterfront. You can watch the full TED talk below, or read the complete transcript here. View full entry
Last week I attended the seventh World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia, where more than 20,000 city leaders, urbanists, and planners from more than 160 countries met to discuss the future of cities across the globe. [...]
Unfortunately, a number of important countries, the U.S. and Canada among them, remain worryingly undecided about joining this widespread call for a city-specific SDG from countries as diverse as Germany, Colombia, and Ghana.
— theatlanticcities.com
In so-called hot cities [...] battles are raging over height limits and urban density, all on the basis of two premises: 1) that building all these towers will increase the supply of housing and therefore reduce its costs; 2) that increasing density is the green, sustainable thing to do and that towers are the best way to do it.
I am not sure that either is true.
— theguardian.com
