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Researchers at the University College London have put forth a new argument in favor of a simple solution to combating the issue of extreme heat in cities without air conditioning. The so-called “cool roof” method they found had the best mitigation performance metrics over others surveyed... View full entry
A new planned community is built on the urban design philosophy known as ‘gender mainstreaming.’ [...]
Ms. Kail acknowledges that the parameters of gender mainstreaming are in flux. Where there used to be “a focus on the everyday life of white, middle-class women and their children,” she said, over the past decade or so, a new crop of urban planners has widened the lens, just as she’s stepping out of it.
— The New York Times
Vienna (the city previously declared by the Times to be a "renters utopia") owes a tremendous thanks to Eva Kail for its apparent equity strides. Though recently retired, the urban planner touts the new Aspern Seestadt development and its "female face" as the embodiment of the movement to infuse... View full entry
The consequences that climate change presents to the future natural and built environment of the Netherlands have led to a new study on urbanism titled 'WHAT-IF: Nederland 2100,' produced by a trio of Dutch studios that includes MVRDV, IMOSS, and Feddes/Olthof. The research is aimed at... View full entry
The Brooklyn Bridge finally caught up with the COVID-19-era rise in cycling last year after the city opened a dedicated bike path on the iconic span’s roadway.
It was one of the signature initiatives in the final year of the Mayor Bill de Blasio administration, and advocates lauded the addition, which was also the first reconfiguration of the bridge since old trolley tracks were permanently removed in 1950.
— amNewYork
Bicycle traffic on the bridge increased by more than a quarter from 2020 to last year. The jump is indicative of an overall city-wide trend, which has seen New Yorkers’ biking habits increase at a rate of 33%. The numbers likely correlate to the pandemic-era decrease in subway ridership caused... View full entry
Cities are being overwhelmed by a top-down, algorithmically-enabled attempt to make them legible, quantifiable and replicable. Can a project of nonsense-making disrupt the seemingly inexorable march of "progress"? — Failed Architecture
Anti-digital mapping and other seriously stylish interventions have taken cues from protest groups like the Umbrella Movement. Many now see them as key areas in which architects can play a role alongside other designers and urbanists to halt the encroachment of certain proptech... View full entry
Pink umbrellas tumble on hidden winds. IP addresses cross like city streets. Bright islands of community float like balloons tethered to gray infrastructural networks. In her wall-sized drawing “Confronting Urbanization: The Interactive Tissue of Urban Life Pro[log]ue,” Petra Kempf, assistant... View full entry
In its 9th iteration, the annual CTBUH International Student Tall Building Design Competition highlights the best student work that explores the future of sustainable vertical urbanism. The competition aims to invite students to submit their best project ideas as they explore a "new light on... View full entry
Henning Larsen has unveiled designs for Wolfburg's Nordkopf district, called Wolfsburg Connect. The 13.6 hectare masterplan creates a prototype for "small-scale urbanism." "We are designing an inclusive city on human terms – an approach that means putting emphasis on social life and... View full entry
This post is brought to you by TerraViva Competitions TerraViva Competitions launches TACTICAL URBANISM NOW!, a new architecture and design competition focused on the transformation of contemporary public spaces. Prizes up to 4.000 € will be awarded to the winners selected by an... View full entry
The city has changed. The city is always changing, but COVID-19 has accelerated the process. From New York and Hong Kong to Brisbane, Manaus and Copenhagen, the pandemic is reshaping the ways we think about urban space. “In a matter of just two or three months, people have completely... View full entry
This post is brought to you by TerraViva Competitions TerraViva Competitions launches TACTICAL URBANISM NOW!, a new architecture and design competition focused on the transformation of contemporary public spaces. Prizes up to 4.000 € will be awarded to the winners... View full entry
We can see our cities for the first time without the choking traffic, dirty air and honking horns that have so often made them intolerable.
Throughout the world, the coronavirus has forced extreme changes in our behavior in just days. And we’re already seeing the impact of those changes: On Monday, for example, Los Angeles had the cleanest air of any major city in the world.
— The New York Times
In today's NYT Opinion piece, Allison Arieff attempts to look at the benefits of the global social distancing experiment, from the cleaner city air through unprecedented street access for pedestrians and cyclists to potentially lasting design interventions in the public urban space. "Covid... View full entry
Pandemics [...] are anti-urban. They exploit our impulse to congregate. And our response so far — social distancing — not only runs up against our fundamental desires to interact, but also against the way we have built our cities and plazas, subways and skyscrapers. They are all designed to be occupied and animated collectively. For many urban systems to work properly, density is the goal, not the enemy. — The New York Times
Michael Kimmelman, architecture critic for The New York Times, waxes wistfully over the inherent collectivity of urban life as the COVID-19 pandemic shuts down cities around the globe. Describing the current state of affairs, Kimmelman writes, “Today’s threat is altogether another... View full entry
We've covered a sprawling variety of urban planning stories on Archinect this year, but as the new decade is mere hours away from the land of the densification-averse, we'd like to raise our glass and salute the fine people at Planning Peeps for tirelessly brightening our days with the memes even... View full entry
The NYC has announced that Group Project is the winner of the BetterBin Competition, which called for designers to reimagine New York City's classic green, wire mesh waste basket. The two finalist each produced 12 prototypes that were tested in three NYC neighborhoods over a 90 day period... View full entry
