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Maurice Cox grew up in Brooklyn, a borough whose name has since become a global shorthand for gentrification. An urban designer, architectural educator, and former mayor of the City of Charlottesville, VA, in 2015 Cox became head of the planning department of Detroit, where he hopes to prevent the forces that have reshaped his childhood home from taking over the Motor City. [...] Cox is using design to catalyze growth that’s incremental and closely in line with the city’s strong sense of self. — Urban Omnibus
Urban Omnibus presents an insightful conversation between Maurice Cox, Director of Planning and Development for the City of Detroit, and Marc Norman, founder of the consulting firm “Ideas and Action” and Associate Professor of Practice at UMich's Taubman School of Architecture and Urban... View full entry
As New York enters the third decade of the twenty-first century, it is in imminent danger of becoming something it has never been before: unremarkable. It is approaching a state where it is no longer a significant cultural entity but the world’s largest gated community, with a few cupcake shops here and there. For the first time in its history, New York is, well, boring. — Harper's Magazine
The story keeps going. "This is not some new phenomenon but a cancer that’s been metastasizing on the city for decades now. And what’s happening to New York now—what’s already happened to most of Manhattan, its core—is happening in every affluent American city. San Francisco is overrun... View full entry
One important outcome of our last MONU issue #28 on "Client-shaped Urbanism" was the realization that in order to create better cities, we need to improve the communication among everybody involved in the creation of cities, whether they are clients, developers, municipalities, architects, urban... View full entry
In its first-ever solo show of a Black African artist, New York's Museum of Modern Art will put the work of visionary Congolese artist Bodys Isek Kingelez on full display. On view from May 26, 2018 through January 1, 2019, City Dreams will span the sculptor's three-decade career from his early... View full entry
"Are architects at risk of losing their relevance to the client?" asks Beatriz Ramo in her contribution "Sympathy for the Devil" for MONU's issue #28 that we devote to the topic of "Client-shaped Urbanism".
(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, April 2018)
— http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm
“Are architects at risk of losing their relevance to the client?” asks Beatriz Ramo in her contribution “Sympathy for the Devil” for MONU’s issue #28 that we devote to the topic of "Client-shaped Urbanism". We consider “clients” to be crucial participants in the shaping and creating... View full entry
The following examples show how gamespace can become the stage for a social, political and ethical critique: from a nondescript city under the effect of gentrification, to a barren luxury estate and a set of playful and absurd buildings for London. These examples suggest that, rather than allowing architects to indulge Piranesi’s power-hungry ideal, games could work as a means of showing how dysfunctional reality really is. — Failed Architecture
In her essay Gamespace Urbanism: City-Building Games and Radical Simulations for Failed Architecture, Federica Buzzi looks at a new crop of indie city-planning computer games that promise fresh potential for simulation and exploration of radical urban scenarios — and subsequent social... View full entry
The artist Hu Jiamin and his wife, who said they were French nationals, were seen being taken away by plain clothes police on Friday night from the event, Hong Kong newspaper Ming Pao reported. It was not known if the couple were still under detention. — South China Morning Post
The Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture opened over the weekend. Organized in two parts, half the biennale takes place on the Hong Kong side and is organized by the Hong Kong Institute of Architects while the other, taking place in Shenzhen, is put on by the city government. While the local... View full entry
Currently the only biennial exhibition in the world to be based exclusively on the set themes of Urbanism and Urbanization, the Bi-City Biennale of Urbanism\Architecture in Shenzhen will open for its 7th edition tomorrow, Dec 15th. Initiated in 2005 by the Shenzhen Municipal Government and joined... View full entry
“… And Though She be but Little, She is Fierce!”, the title of Liz Teston’s contribution using a quote from Shakespeare’s “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”, captures the content of this MONU issue on “Small Urbanism” very well. For when it comes to urbanism, small things seem to... View full entry
The octopuses didn’t just drift toward the same secure-looking outcroppings, though. Once there, they built piles out of shells from scallops, clams, and other animals they ate, then sculpted the piles into dens, “making these octopuses true environmental engineers,” — CityLab
Scientists have found a new example of animal architecture, this time a city made by usually solitary octopuses. Named Octlantis, this underwater city is engineered by a group of 15 octopuses. Octopuses are known to be builders of their own habitat but, until now, had not be discovered to live in... View full entry
For all the concern about the gentrification, rising housing prices and the growing gap between the rich and poor in our leading cities, an even bigger threat lies on the horizon: The urban revival that swept across America over the past decade or two may be in danger. As it turns out, the much-ballyhooed new age of the city might be giving way to a great urban stall-out. — The New York Times
Richard Florida paints a gloomy picture of the state of the great American urban revival in his NYT op-ed, "The Urban Revival Is Over," citing gentrification, income disparity, rising crime numbers, unaffordable housing prices, and the anti-urban agenda of the current White House tenants. Joe... View full entry
After fifteen years of development plans tailored to the creative classes, Florida surveys an urban landscape in ruins. The story of London is the story of Austin, the Bay Area, Chicago, New York, Toronto, and Sydney. When the rich, the young, and the (mostly) white rediscovered the city, they created rampant property speculation, soaring home prices, and mass displacement. The “creative class” were just the rich all along, or at least the college-educated children of the rich. — Jacobin Magazine
Richard Frorida's latest book, The New Urban Crisis, represents the culmination of this long mea culpa. Though he stops just short of saying it, he all but admits that he was wrong. He argues that the creative classes have grabbed hold of many of the world’s great cities and choked them to... View full entry
But what is the repertoire of concepts, ideas and visions that inform the work of urban planners in the Global South — in Asia, Latin America and Africa? Are they still under the spell of their colonial and postcolonial masters? Or have they developed their own ideas and their own yardsticks, commensurate with the respective culture of their country and region? — citiscope.org
"This insight leads to the most important quality of sustainable urban planning in countries of the Global South," urban planning expert Einhard Schmidt-Kallert writes in his commentary piece on Citiscope, arguing that "Planners need to develop urban planning visions that take into consideration... View full entry
As any American who tuned into the last British election realized, UK placenames are a bit out there (at least to American ears, that is), from Droop in Dorset to Westward Ho! in Devon. So Dan Ho decided to train a (quirky) AI to generate its own. Here are some of the ones the computer crafted... View full entry
Located under a freeway overpass in Zurich, next to the Toni-Areal which houses the University of Arts and the Zurich University of Applied Sciences, is a new 240 square meter public architectural installation. The project has been carried out by ALICE (Atelier de la Conception de l’Espace)... View full entry
