By Haya El Nasser, USA Today. May 16, 2012
Townhouses and single-family homes are sprouting on old industrial sites in the heart of Southern California cities. In Florida, developers are coveting foreclosed golf courses in urban centers to put up new subdivisions. Builders in Texas are…
via massurban:
WE ARE OPEN!!!! PLEASE DO
NOTDISTURB!EXHIBITION OPENING ON 22.5.2012 at AEDES GALLERY IN BERLIN.
come and join the future!
https://www.facebook.com/events/406006292755424/
via futurecitylab:
Edward T. McMahon. May 11, 2012.
When it comes to land development, Americans famously dislike two things: too much sprawl and too much density. Over the past 50 years, the pendulum swung sharply in the direction of spread-out, single use, drive everywhere for everything, low density development.
via massurban:
“If people behaved entirely rationally, we would have foregone our cars long ago. … Against sound reasons of safety, environmental health, and personal wealth, we still drive. People simply love their cars. And as we all know, love and reason are like oil and water….
In a new e-book from Island Press called Making Transit Fun! How to Entice Motorists from Their Cars (and onto Their Feet, a Bike, or Bus), urban designer and writer Darrin Nordahl writes that advocates for non-car transportation need to stop trying to appeal to reason and go for the gut instead:
“If people behaved entirely rationally, we would have foregone our cars long ago. … Against sound reasons of safety, environmental health, and personal wealth, we still drive. People simply love their cars. And as we all know, love and reason are like oil and water….
What has become very clear in the automotive world is the power positive emotion wields over a person’s choice. While joy seems to be a dominant word in the language of carmakers, the transit industry often focuses on words such as function, usefulness, safety,convenience, and accessibility. These are all important words, no doubt. But what are lacking in the transit vocabulary are nouns of positive emotion: delight, allure, pleasure,exhilaration, and compulsion.”
Saw the article because of More than this’s post.
via thegreenurbanist:
“10 foot wide sidewalks are narrow and utilitarian.” —advocating for 15ft sidewalks, Great Second Street, SF.
10 ft wide sidewalks rarely exist in San Diego! man, the guy writing that blog doesn’t know how good he has it in SF.
In lots of areas—esp. surburban—sidewalks are only about 2 squares wide (6-7 ft?), from the picture). The person would be standing in the gutter.
via citymaus:
Why Place Matters
By Saffron Woodcraft. 20 April 2012
“The idea of ‘community’ has gone in and out of fashion in the past few decades. In the 1980s and 1990s, commentators on globalization suggested that places, and, in particular, cities would no longer matter if people and organizations could be connected anywhere and everywhere.
Two decades of change has shown this picture to be only partially accurate. Global connectedness has transformed the way businesses operate, and how people relate to each other and to places. Yet, cities have become more, not less, significant.
Sociologist Saskia Sassen, argues that globalization has intensified the importance of place as specialised industries – banking, technology, biotech and others – have become concentrated in particular areas; generally a handful of major cities. Clusters of specialised industries create demand for highly skilled professionals, but they also create demand for a whole range of administrative jobs and service industries. Globalization theorists focus on the mobility of specialised industries and their elite workers. Sassen argues this is one-sided and more emphasis should be given to the local impacts of global networks.
Sassen’s perspective is important because it is a reminder that cities have a complex social life, which, for the most part, is rooted in particular places and defined by the people who live and work in them. Most city dwellers spend a considerable part of their lives in roughly the same place. Therefore, the quality of that place matters – the range and affordability of housing, the job opportunities, the schools, healthcare and public transport – because it shapes day-to-day life and long-term opportunities.
Yet what makes a bricks-and-mortar neighbourhood into a flourishing community is more than these big-ticket items. There are other, more subtle, factors that shape how safe, inclusive, cohesive and supportive a place feels, and how attached to that place people become. The Young Foundation has been researching how people understand community for over 50-years, and for the past three, the Foundation’s Future Communities programme has been thinking specifically about what makes some communities thrive and others fail.”
Via: Urban Times & massurban
Photo: Crispin Hughes
“Green Infrastructure Could Save Cities Billions
Nate Berg. April 24, 2012
Compared to canvas grocery bags or CFL light bulbs or even solar panels, larger “green infrastructure” projects such as roof gardens or permeable streets can be hugely expensive. It turns out, however, that they’re actually not that expensive when compared to the costs of building more traditional infrastructure, and can even save money. According to a new study, governments are wasting billions of dollars a year by not going green.
Looking at 479 case studies of green infrastructure projects around the U.S., the report finds that the majority of projects turned out to be just as affordable or even more so than traditional “grey” infrastructure. About a quarter of projects raised costs, 31 percent, kept costs the same and more than 44 percent actually brought costs down.
“The lesson learned so far by early adopter communities who have already implemented green infrastructure in a significant fashion is that a wide-ranging commitment to including green infrastructure stormwater approaches, on public as well as private properties, can result in long-term fiscal savings for local governments as well as provide numerous, tangible economic and community benefits through related ecosystem services,” notes the study, co-authored by the American Society of Landscape Architects, American Rivers, the Water Environment Federation, and ECONorthwest.
The costs of traditional infrastructure are especially pronounced in cities and regions with combined sewer systems that collect both sewage and stormwater. During heavy rainfall, these systems are often overwhelmed, pouring sewage-laden water into drinking water sources and greatly increasing water treatment costs.
Technologies like permeable pavements and rain gardens can capture, naturally treat and filter stormwater back into the ground, preventing overflows and reducing reliance on treatment centers. Chicago’s existing green infrastructure, including its green alleys, diverted about 70 million gallons of stormwater from treatment facilities in 2009, according to the report.
These projects can create significant costs savings. New York City plans to build green infrastructure to cut down discharges into its combined sewer system – a project expected to save about $1.5 billion in treatment and infrastructure costs over 20 years. Replacing streets in Seattle with permeable pavement and other green infrastructure has cut paving costs nearly in half.
And by allowing natural processes to take over the work we’ve been building infrastructure to handle, operations and maintenance costs also fall. The report concedes that some maintenance on green infrastructure will still be required, but that it is significantly less than what’s required by traditional infrastructure.”
Via: The Atlantic Cities & massurban
Photo: Shutterstock
“America’s romance with sprawl may be over
By Haya El Nasser and Paul Overberg, USA Today
Almost three years after the official end of a recession that kept people from moving and devastated new suburban subdivisions, people continue to avoid counties on the farthest edge of metropolitan areas, according to Census estimates out today.
The financial and foreclosure crisis forced more people to rent. Soaring gas prices made long commutes less appealing. And high unemployment drew more people to big job centers. As the nation crawls out of the downturn, cities and older suburbs are leading the way.
Population growth in fringe counties nearly screeched to a halt in the year that ended July 1, 2011. By comparison, counties at the core of metro areas are growing faster than the nation as a whole.
“There’s a pall being cast on the outer edges,” says John McIlwain, senior fellow for housing at the Urban Land Institute, a non-profit development group that promotes sustainability. “The foreclosures, the vacancies, the uncompleted roads. It’s uncomfortable out there. The glitz is off.”
Via: USA Today & massurban
Image: USA Today
Perverse Cities: Hidden Subsidies, Wonky Policy, and Urban Sprawl
via humanscalecities
(Source: amazon.com, via landscapearchitecture)
Even if you will never ride a bike in your life, you still see benefits from increased levels of biking. More bicyclists mean less congestion in the streets and less need for expensive road projects that divert government money from other important problems. Off-road paths, bike lanes, sidwalks and other bike and ped improvements cost a fraction of what it takes to widen streets and highways. It’s proven that bicycling and walking increases people’s health and reduces obesity, which will translate into huge cost savings for government and a boost for our economy.
Policies that are good for bicyclists actually benefit everyone on the streets. Good conditions for bicycling also create good conditions for pedestrians. And what makes the streets safer for bikes, also makes them safer for motorists.
Higher gas prices (which have topped four bucks for the third time in four years) means more Americans are looking for other ways to get around. Bikes offer people more choices in transportation. This is especially true for people whose communities are not well served by mass transportation or where distances are too far to walk to work or shopping.
A quote from the Shareable article, ‘The Boom in Cycling Benefits Everyone, Not Just Bicyclists’
(Photo credit: Shareable)
(Source: plantedcity)
Resilient Cities: Rethinking the Urban Landscape
From The New America Foundation:
The ability to bounce back, to absorb shocks, to persevere, to retain functionality over time, to endure, to adapt, to succeed, to survive, to sustain… so many verbs are conjured up by the term “resilience.” Whether we’re talking about our bodies, our minds, our communities, our institutions or our natural environment, the R-word provides a conceptual framework for designing a better tomorrow. Please join us for a wide-ranging inquiry on what it means to be resilient and what a resilient future could look like.
The discussion features:
Kaid Benfield – @Kaid_at_NRDC
Director of Sustainable Communities, Natural Resources Defense CouncilJustin Hollander – @justinhollander
Professor, Tufts University
Author, Sunburnt Cities: The Great Recession, Depopulation, and Urban Planning in the American SunbeltSander van der Leeuw – @ASUGreen
Dean, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University
Co-Chair, Complex Adaptive Systems Initiative, Arizona State UniversityModerator
Andrés Martinez – @NewAmerica
Vice President and Editorial Director, New America Foundation
(Image credit: Common Current) via plantedcity
“Low Tech Magazine on How To Heat And Cool Cities Without Fossil Fuels
Lloyd Alter. March 26, 2012
One of the fundamental problems about covering sustainable design is that really, the single family house doesn’t matter in the larger scheme of things. We spend so much time covering passive houses, for example, when they and all of the other green houses shown on every design website don’t add up to a rounding error when it comes to where people live in most of the world, which is in cities.
That’s why Kris De Decker’s post at Low Tech Magazine is so important and groundbreaking. He has written The solar envelope: how to heat and cool cities without fossil fuels. He writes:
Passive solar design does not involve any new technology. In fact, it has been around for thousands of years, and even predates the use of glass windows. For most of human history, buildings were adapted to the local climate through a consideration of their location, orientation and shape, as well as the appropriate building materials. This resulted in many vernacular building styles in different parts of the world. In contrast, most modern buildings look the same wherever they stand. They are made from the same materials, they follow forms that are driven by fashion rather than by climate, and are most often randomly located and oriented, indifferent to the path of the sun and the prevailing wind conditions.
He then goes on to describe how zoning and building rules might be changed to create solar envelopes and the ensure the principle of solar access. It used to be common practice; De Decker notes that ” The Ancient Greeks built entire cities which were optimal for solar exposure.”
Via: Treehugger & massurban
Image: © The density atlas
Building Urban Resilience: ‘Saga City - Our Communities Facing Climate Change’
Urban planning has great effects on collective choices that contribute to climate change. By defining the shape of a community, urban planning determines part of its energy consumption, and thus, the quantity of greenhouse gases released by dwellers. Nevertheless, it remains largely out of the general debate on this issue. SAGA CITY invites you to learn more about these stakes through to story of the city of Colvert.More here.
(Photo credit: Vivre en Ville via Saga City)
via plantedcity
“People had a sense that when it came to land use of the city, we could spread out, we could avoid some of the problems of the East Coast industrial cities…But in the end, it’s a shame. We went too far in the other direction, too much toward cars, too much toward sprawl. We’re still repairing that today.”
from The Roots of Sprawl: Why We Don’t Live Where We Work
via atlurbanist:
(via humanscalecities)
“The New Suburban Poverty
By Lisa McGirr. March 19, 2012
In many of America’s once pristine suburbs, harbingers of inner-city blight — overgrown lots, boarded up windows, abandoned residences — are the new eyesores. From the Midwestern rust-belt to the burst housing bubbles of Nevada, California and Florida, even in small pockets of still affluent regions like Du Page County, Ill., the nation’s soaring poverty rates are visibly reclaiming last century’s triumphal “crabgrass frontier.” In well-heeled Illinois towns like Glen Ellyn and Elgin, unkempt, weedy lawns blot the formerly manicured, uniform and tidy landscape.
The Brookings Institution reported two years ago that “by 2008 suburbs were home to the largest and fastest growing poor population in the country.” In the previous eight years, major metropolitan suburbs had seen poverty rates climb by 25 percent, almost five times faster than cities. Nationwide, 55 percent of the poor living in the nation’s metropolitan regions lived in suburbs.
To add insult to injury, a new measure to calculate poverty — introduced by the Census Bureau just last year — darkens an already bleak picture: nationally, 51 million households had incomes less than 50 percent above the official poverty line, and nearly half of these households were in suburbs.
Why is poverty soaring in the suburbs? Part of the answer, according to the Brookings Institution, is simple demographics: More Americans live in the suburbs, so there are more poor people there, too. But the recent downturn has also had an outsize impact on suburbs, with the decline in certain categories of jobs and an end to the housing boom that drew many urbanites and immigrants to the suburbs in the first place.
While suburbs have always been more diverse economically and culturally than popular imagination would have it, soaring poverty rates threaten the very foundations of suburban identities, suburban politics and the suburb’s place in the nation’s self-image. “Keeping up with the Joneses,” the midcentury caricature of suburban conformity, materialism and consumption has given way to a new suburban normal of making ends meet, with many formerly middle-class families in detached single-family homes struggling to pay mortgages and utility bills, and to repair aging cars.”
Via: The New York Times
Photo: In a development in the Cleveland suburb of Warrensville Heights, seven of 14 homes were in foreclosure and boarded up last fall. Dustin Franz for The New York Times
via massurban:
Studio630 is the maverick research arm of whatever project we are pursuing. We bring and post the most inspiring articles of work in architecture, urban design, technology, sustainability, open-source, and culture. We are currently stationed at BNIM Architects.
