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Given current growth trends, the world's population is expected to reach 9 billion people by midcentury. That also means a quadrupling in the number of cars to 4 billion by 2050 -- and that, said Ford, is a recipe for global gridlock that he argues will become "a human rights issue, not just an inconvenience."
For Ford [...] the only answer is to create a future where pedestrians, bicycles, and cars become part of a connected network.
— CNET
The Copenhagen-Guangzhou firm ADEPT won a large-scale planning competition in China with their project, ‘Green Loops City’. The municipality of Hengyang, Hunan Province chose the proposal for the 17km2 / 6.5 square mile site in Laiyan New Town and Binjian District in the city of Hengyang. — bustler.net
“We have beaten the odds and the obstructionists over and over again,” the mayor triumphantly declared in his State of the City address in March. He chose an appropriate venue: the Barclays Center, the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, which was a lightning rod for his all-out development policy. A vigorous opposition was beaten in the courts and the City Council in much the same way he often steamrolled opposition to his comprehensive rethinking of development. — nytimes.com
While Mayor Bloomberg has attracted media attention recently for his contentious opinions on "stop and frisk" policing and city-wide bans on soda, it's hard to argue with the New York Times' interactive infographic on Bloomberg's twelve-year mayoral run, highlighting his... View full entry
Officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the start of the aptly named "Park Over the Highway" plan in St. Louis, Missouri earlier this month. The plan's objective is to connect the iconic Gateway Arch grounds and Downtown St. Louis by building a... View full entry
“Ultimately people can’t get around conveniently because they are far away from everything.” And it is this observation that for me epitomizes the problem of the driverless car — it’s the worst kind of solutionism. By becoming so enamored with how technology might transform the car, we’ve neglected to adequately explore how getting rid of cars might transform how and where we live. We’d do well to heed Gorz’s exhortation to “never make transportation an issue by itself.” — opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com
It's a given that America continues to be a car-obsessed society despite the more painstaking reality of driving a car in many major cities of today. In The New York Times, editor Allison Arieff of SPUR points out that the U.S. is still fixated on selling, using and enhancing the car when... View full entry
Why does the layout of cities matter so much in mobility?
Harvard's Raj Chetty says he and the other authors of the study were struck by the amount of variation in mobility across areas.
— marketplace.org
Four finalists have just been chosen from Phase I of the two-phase “For a Resilient Rockaway” (FAR ROC) design competition. The New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), L+M Development Partners, The Bluestone Organization, Triangle Equities, American Institute of Architects New York Chapter (AIA New York) and Enterprise Community Partners, Inc. (Enterprise) made the announcement at the Center for Architecture in New York City. — bustler.net
Launched in April, the FAR ROC competition sought ideas for developing an 80+ acre site called Arverne East into a new mixed-use, mixed-income, sustainable and storm-resilient community that will meet the new physical and regulatory challenges of waterfront development while maintaining the... View full entry
News broke that the team consisting of OMA, Tishman Realty and UIA Management has won the Miami Beach Convention Center Master Plan competition. The team was one of the two remaining contestants fighting for the bid, the other team featuring BIG, West 8 and Fentress Architects among others [...].
OMA had already won another competition earlier this month for a large mixed-use development in Santa Monica, California.
— bustler.net
Previously: BIG & Design Partners Propose Miami Beach Square as Massive Convention Center Redevelopment Related: OMA’s Winning “The Plaza at Santa Monica” Entry View full entry
Smart city infrastructure can augment the ability of managers, planners, designers and engineers to define and implement a fundamentally better next generation of buildings, cities, regions — right? Maybe. For that to be a serious proposition, it’s going to have to be normal for planners and designers not only to collaborate productively with engineers, but to do so with the full and competent participation of the only people they mistrust more than each other ... customers. — Places Journal
"A city is not a BMW," writes Carl Skelton. "You can't drive it without knowing how it works." In a weighty think-piece on Places, he argues that the public needs new tools of citizenship to thrive in a "new soft world" increasingly shaped by smart meters, surveillance cameras, urban informatics... View full entry
Emerging London-based firm Baharash Architecture has been selected to design phase 2 of the 46-hectar Dubai Sustainable City development. The practice is set to open an office in Dubai following the victory against international anonymous teams from the United States, Lebanon, Jordan, UK, and UAE. — bustler.net
BIG, along with fellow team members Tess, Transsolar, Base, Transitec, and Michel Forgue, has been selected to design EuropaCity, an 80-hectare cultural and commercial destination in the heart of France. — bustler.net
The latest evidence of Philadelphia’s architectural comeback? The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta is coming to town for a project at Temple University.
“We have a fantastic tradition of quality architeture and urbanism in Philadelphia, but we do go through low ebbs in that tradition,” says Harris Steinberg, the executive director of PennPraxis, the clinical arm of the University of Pennsylvania’s School of Design.
— Next City
The Norwegian architecture firm Snøhetta has designed some of the most notable buildings and public spaces in the world over the last 15 years. The new Oslo Opera House. Egypt’s Bibliotheca Alexandrina. A reconfigured Times Square in New York, and a massive expansion of the San... View full entry
Four finalist entries have been unveiled in the Christchurch, New Zealand urban design competition, Breathe - The New Urban Village Project. The brief called for innovative medium-density housing development designs from collaborative groups containing a designer and a property developer. — bustler.net
UPDATE: Winner of the Christchurch “Breathe - The New Urban Village Project” competition View full entry
It is in empty spaces like [under Hong Kong's overpasses] that a group is campaigning for the government to build youth hostels, arts performance venues, offices for small- to mid-sized businesses and, most intriguingly, temporary housing. The group sees this unused land as an opportunity to alleviate Hong Kong’s problem of young people not being able to afford to rent in the world’s most expensive property market. — smartplanet.com
Billionaire businessman, James Packer has shortlisted four of the world’s best architects (Adrian Smith + Gill Architecture, Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates, Renzo Piano and Wilkinson Eyre Architects) to bid to design and build the urban masterpiece that will be Crown Sydney.
The proposed $1 billion six-star Crown Sydney resort will be a dramatic addition to Sydney’s skyline and be built across a giant 6,000 square metre site in Barangaroo.
— DesignBuild Source