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“This corridor of shame that I call Van Ness and Market is just a spectacular example of failed urban planning.” [...]
“In the built environment, as one writer puts it, all our warts and our glories are there,” says Paul Groth, an architectural historian at UC Berkeley. “You can tell how we’re treating our fellow humans in the built environment. It really is an autobiography.”
So, what does Groth think our current architecture says?
“Greed.”
— KQED
Related: San Francisco is quick to poke fun of Snøhetta's new One Van Ness tower design View full entry
Al describes CityCenter as the product of “the Bilbao effect: the notion that buildings designed by celebrity architects bring in tourists, and in particular a higher-end type of visitor”. MGM’s version was to bring in name-brand architects such as Daniel Libeskind, Helmut Jahn and Norman Foster [...].
“It goes against the casino design convention,” Al says, “by having towers that let in natural light and meet the street the way buildings do in other cities” – with retail spaces, not gaming.
— theguardian.com
Is this the promising future of Giza 2030? What is the status of Giza 2030 after the Egyptian Revolution in 2011? Would it be a curse or a blessing if I were from Giza? And my message to the current Egyptian regime is this: if this is the future of Egyptian cities, please leave the situation as it is. — thisbigcity.net
Related: Photographer documents Egypt's monumental housing developments in the desert View full entry
Prince Charles urges architects to place pedestrians “at the centre of the design process” as part of a 10-point “master plan” he has devised for the developments of towns and cities.
He also calls for many street signs to be removed. “Slow” and “Reduce Speed Now” signs, for example, should be taken down and replaced by features such as squares, bends and trees that “naturally” encourage motorists to reduce their speed.
— telegraph.co.uk
[...] Argonne scientists are taking on a challenge not usually associated with sophisticated computing: urban design. They say that for such large-scale developments, expert opinions, or even standard modeling, will no longer do. Instead, we need detailed simulations that will integrate immense amounts of data into one framework and project different scenarios for the designers to consider. Their initial prototype, called LakeSim, focuses on Chicago Lakeside. — nextcity.org
"It's like creating a contemporary cathedral in some ways [...]"
"Often the stadium is meant to become the pride of a city, a landmark object, and as such, a monument representing the latest achievements in architecture."
Since ancient Greeks built the first Olympic stadium in fine white marble, the arena has been as much about inspiring awe, as staging competition.
Today's architects must go even further.
— cnn.com
Related: Hadid and Japanese at loggerheads over ‘turtle-like’ Olympic stadium View full entry
Ahead of a special Guardian Cities event, the renowned urban ‘rethinker’ says cities should be six or seven storeys high, Helsinki is on the verge of revolution, and that he’s sceptical of London’s cycle superhighway plans [...]
Practice partner Søholt puts forward one way of improving a city’s liveability: “Mix the city and assemble the people rather than dispersing them.”
— theguardian.com
Daniel Campo, an urban planner and professor of planning at Morgan State University, is particularly interested in those recreational spaces that aren’t planned or designed, but are appropriated by residents for their own purposes. [...]
Dylan Gauthier, a public artist, educator, and writer based in North Brooklyn, walked around these parks with Campo to discuss the benefits of unplanned spaces for recreation [...].
— urbanomnibus.net
Luxury brand Porsche Design recently launched a closed invite-only competition to find the architect for their Porsche Design Tower in Frankfurt, Germany. The winning proposal will have the most fitting urban architectural concept along with ideas for the surrounding outdoor spaces. The project will be Porsche's debut in real estate in Europe. — bustler.net
Out of a goal of 20 participating architecture teams, the first six firms to compete are: Delugan Meissl Associated Architects, Vienna (Austria) 3XN, Copenhagen (Denmark) Neutelings Riedijk Architecten, Rotterdam (The Netherlands) Stefano Boeri Architetti, Milan... View full entry
While the cult of the star architect has soared over the decades and property developers have displaced bankers as the new super-rich, the figure of the local town planner has become comic shorthand for a certain kind of faceless, under-whelming dullard. [...]
“Planning has become unpopular, disconnected from the public and increasingly beholden to the developer rather than the people it is meant to serve.”
— theguardian.com
At the broadest level, it's fair to say that urban mobility didn't have the most encouraging day. In recent years, conservative transportation policy has been much more inclined to favor highways serving rural and outer suburban regions than alternative modes that boost balanced city networks [...] But at the city and county level, where most transit initiatives occur, the midterms yielded a number of big victories, in keeping with the general success of transit ballot measures in recent years. — citylab.com
Beavercreek, Ohio, nabbed its own infamous place in civil rights history last year, when the Federal Highway Administration ruled that the suburb had violated anti-discrimination laws by blocking bus service from nearby Dayton. [...]
The Beavercreek case illustrates larger, more widespread problems with America’s transportation system [...]. The Kirwan Institute is producing a one-hour documentary exploring the Beavercreek case and how racism can influence transportation decision making.
— usa.streetsblog.org
Los Angeles' vast freeway system is incomplete — at least by the standards of its architects. In the 1940s, freeways were sketched through Santa Monica Boulevard, along Melrose, Highland and La Brea avenues, and near the Griffith Observatory. Many of L.A.'s freeways were built during the 1960s, but a combination of a freeway revolt, skyrocketing costs and a failure to increase the gas tax doomed the expansion of the freeway system during the 1970s. — LA Times
Whew. View full entry
OMA and OLIN Studio have been selected to design the new 11th Street Bridge Park in Washington D.C. The competition was held as part of the 11th Street Bridge Park project initiative, which will transform an old freeway bridge into D.C.'s first elevated park. From the six shortlisted teams in phase one of the nationwide competition, and down to four finalists, OMA + OLIN won with their proposal, "Anacostia Crossing." — bustler.net
Dig into the details over at Bustler. View full entry
Joel Kotkin, a fellow at Chapman University and an untiring defender of the suburbs, begins a recent column in the Washington Post with a valid question: “What is a city for?” He then proceeds to get that question completely wrong. But really, we should be thanking him. In his article, he neatly sums up many of the key myths emerging from the anti-urbanism set, making my job of debunking these myths a lot easier. — thisbigcity.net
The aforementioned WP column already managed to spark a lively discussion last month here on Archinect. View full entry