Links tagged with “urbanism”
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Dutch Cycling Lifestyle
Every local newspaper will use this to generate hyperlocal rage bait, “An AI predicted what the High Street will look like when cars are banned”. (via Kottke)
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“Democratic Architecture” — GS
I like these small Donald MacDonald houses in San Francisco.
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MIT Press Open Architecture and Urban Studies | The MIT Press
A free “digital collection of classic and previously out-of-print architecture and urban studies books”. (via Things Magazine)
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Inspiration & References
Occasionally I check in on how the development of Citybound, a SimCity-style game, is going, and noticed the developer shared this nice collection of resources.
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The Dangers of Elite Projection - Human Transit
A useful term. (via several people on Twitter)
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Creative Alibis | Daniel Brook
Being critical of Richard Florida’s Creative Class stuff. Impossible to tell when this was published. (via Buckslip)
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Owen Hatherley reviews ‘Eyes on the Street’ by Robert Kanigel and ‘Vital Little Plans’ edited by Samuel Zipp and Nathan Storring · LRB 27 July 2017
Good on Jane Jacobs’ good and bad, and all that in relation to British cities. (Subscribers only)
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The Incomplete City — But what was the question? — Medium
Dan Hill on a fascinating week-long workshop at the Bartlett, with students creating a wall-sized 3D plan of a city.
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New York: Conspicuous Construction by Martin Filler | The New York Review of Books
Interesting to read something about all the new, huge, expensive, foreign-investor-owned, residential buildings going up in New York, rather than London for a change.
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Municipal Dreams
A blog with long posts about the history of UK social housing, planning, etc. (via Wowhaus)
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How to traffic - Album on Imgur
I’d never even heard of the ‘Cities: Skylines’ game but I like this description of how to make traffic work. (via Infovore)
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Development Aesthetics
Relentless images of and comment on the hoardings surrounding new developments, mostly in London.
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The Real Harlem by Darryl Pinckney | The New York Review of Books
On the changing faces of Harlem over the decades. Gentrification etc, how it’s never a clear, simple phenomenon.
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The Fall of the Creative Class
On how Richard Florida’s creative class theory doesn’t show causality. Worth reading Florida’s and then Bures’ follow-ups. (via @timoarnall)
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Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York: On Spike Lee & Hyper-Gentrification, the Monster That Ate New York
A look at the gentrification of New York. Lots of good stuff, and interesting. But it feels a little too biased towards the author’s personal experiences of the recent wave. It may well be true that this is more important and destructive than previous waves but this needs more objective data.
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Citybound - The Beginning
SimCity-style game, in progress, being written in JavaScript and WebGL. Looks big, interesting, promising. (via Stellar)
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San Francisco Scapegoated for Silicon Valley’s Civic Blind Spot
Very good point from Peter Merholz: The poor planning (ie, car-centric, sprawling) of Silicon Valley is one reason for the current problems in (more appealingly planned, dense) San Francisco. A good example of the need for regional rather than town planning, I’d guess.
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The Pedway: Elevating London
I had some problems with this (eg, the commentators all have the same opinion, the shots of today’s walkways make them look more derelict and deserted than they are) but it’s still well worth a watch.
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The JR James Archive - Sets
The University of Sheffield’s planning archive has been digitised and put on Flickr. Post-war town and regional planning porn. (via @benterrett)
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Sim City: An Interview with Stone Librande - Venue
“We realized… our game was going to be really boring if it was proportional in terms of parking lots.” A real shame. An opportunity to make people notice just how much a car-reliant society needs for parking. Feels like whitewashing. (via @timoarnall)
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Whitecross Street Estate - 2010 - Publica (PDF)
A report on the Peabody estate that spans Whitecross Street, from 2010. An interesting read. It sounded like a quite reasonable amount of work would make a big different to a lot of the public/residents’ spaces which are neither car park or useful/enjoyable space. But I’m not sure how much has actually changed since.
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An Independent Appraisal of Henderson Global Investor’s Ltd’s Proposals for Redevelopment of the Western Market Buildings, Smithfield (PDF)
Lots of photos etc, describing the proposals. Mainly: Keep the most of the shallow, street-facing brick buildings (or just the facades?), and replace the large 19th century market space inside with a seven-storey office block. This assessment seems unsurprisingly critical.
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China’s Ghost Cities? Not so ghost-like. | Tobias Buckell Online
Those news reports about empty Chinese cities appear to be not entirely accurate. (via @GreatDismal)
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Welcome to Toytown: what life is like in new-build Britain | Society | The Guardian
‘“It’s referred to as a village, but it’s an estate,” Terri insists. “The fact that it was all built at the same time means it’s an estate. Villages evolve, don’t they?”’
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ViziCities development diary #1: One month in | Rawkes
This is great. Not just an interesting project — making a SimCity-like 3D view of a city’s data, on the web — but a lovely high-level (no actual code) description of learning how to solve and improve something. (via @neb)
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Using The New Sim City, 6 Urban Planners Battle For Bragging Rights | Co.Exist: World changing ideas and innovation
“We brought together some of the most interesting urban thinkers to play the new version of the city planning game to see who would make the best fake metropolis.” I still can’t wait. (via @antimega)
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Anna Catherine Dr to Summer Rain Dr - Google Maps
Impressive: two houses in Florida that back on to each other, but to get from one to the other by road is a 7 mile journey. (via Paul Mison)
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Gamasutra: Mike Rose’s Blog - Using SimCity to diagnose my home town’s traffic problem
Replicating a real town’s traffic problems. I still can’t wait. (via Terra Nova)
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SimCity vs. The Suburban Sprawl - Tested
Different road layouts in the new SimCity. I can’t wait.
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Jones the planner: Hackney Hipsters
Ignoring the hipster stuff, a good look at some of the developing and developed parts of Hackney. “There is a fundamental mismatch between what ‘regeneration’ does and the sort of organic development that resulted in the Shoreditch of today. … Most developers do exactly the opposite of what makes Shoreditch successful.” (via @amcewen)
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Old Street – putting the genie back in the bottle? | The power of the network
Yes (except when he says “Old Street” he means “Old Street Roundabout”). Putting a big building in the middle of a horrific, people-unfriendly space won’t help much. I’d go further: pedestrianise everything from the Foundry to the roundabout. (via @cityofsound)
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How a high-rise craze is ruining London’s skyline | Art and design | The Observer
“Strata waddles into the background from stage left, like SpongeBob SquarePants in a production of Hamlet.” Yes, all this. (via @cityofsound)
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Why the Southbank Centre redevelopment plan is sheer folly | Art and design | The Observer
What is it that makes people want to change pleasant, distinctive locations into chain-filled, plate-glass-fronted, shopping centres? (via everyone with any sense)
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How low (power) can you go? - Charlie’s Diary
Charlie Stross takes Moore’s Law and Koomey’s Law (improving power consumption) for a walk and imagines a very, very conmected city. (via blech)
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Disquiet about confidentiality clauses - Portas Pilots
If having a TV celebrity manage the regeneration of a handfull of high streets didn’t sound like a dumb enough way of implementing government policy, it’s sounding like turning the process into a reality TV show — with all the secrecy, fakery and manufactured conflict that involves — is even worse. Also, #portaspilots on Twitter.
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Between the Lines - Features - Los Angeles magazine
Fascinating long article on the history of parking, parking meters, parking lots, parking costs, and how they all affect towns and cities. (via Kottke)
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Five Years After Banning Outdoor Ads, Brazil’s Largest City Is More Vibrant Than Ever
I’d love this in London. Well, any and every city really. (via Blech)
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Debunking the Cul-de-Sac - Design - The Atlantic Cities
Looking at the change of US city layouts from grids to increasingly dead-end cul-de-sacs. (via Tom Taylor)
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Homework and Jacuzzis as Dorms Move to McMansions in California - NYTimes.com
Big, cul-de-sac houses in America rented cheap by students. These cut-off developments are ripe to become the same kind of dead-end ghettos as neglected estates and 60s high-rises. (via @GreatDismal)
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A 53% Surge in Poverty Rate Is Reshaping Suburbs - NYTimes.com
I’ve thought for years, decades, that when sprawling suburbs with few through roads stop being comfortably wealthy, their unlivableness is going to be horribly apparent. Dead ends in two senses.
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London Cycling Campaign | Campaigns | Key campaigns | Blackfriars | People-friendly Blackfriars
Pretty impressive graphics and animations for an alternative vision of a tricky junction, as competition for the official and protested-against plans.
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Noah Raford » Complete PhD Online
“Large Scale Participatory Futures Systems: a Comparative Study of Online Scenario Planning Approaches” focused on the field of urban planning. I would like to work out how to make time to read this. (via @cityofsound)
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The Living City (1970) - YouTube
I haven’t watched it all yet, but looks interesting: a 1970 half hour film about the post-war rebuilding of the City of London, from the London Metropolitan Archives.
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LRB · Will Self · The Frowniest Spot on Earth
A critical look at the “breathless,” airport-centered vision of how we’ll live in the future, according to the book ‘Aerotropolis’.
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Wilderness to brothels to Apple store: the History of Development in one block
I like this description of one spot of Manhattan and how it changed over the centuries. Although calling the block’s current state “the ultimate culmination of centuries of development” assumes nothing’s going to change ever again. (via @GreatDismal)
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David Long :: Hidden City
“The Secret Alleys, Courts and Yards of London’s Square Mile” Sounds like a good read.
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And Now Presenting: Amazing Satellite Images Of The Ghost Cities Of China
I skipped this link the first couple of times seeing it, but I’m glad I finally looked. Amazing, stunning amounts of development, largely uninhabited. (via BERG)
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A Guide to the New Ruins of Great Britain (VersoBooks.com)
Oh, that looks good doesn’t it. Fills a gap that I now realise was aching to be filled.
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An Invisible Empire of Sidewalks and Gutterspace
The possibilities of fishing in old streams beneath New York, and a man who bought many tiny slivers of land across the city.
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Stratigraphies of Infestation
For both the anecdotes about New York’s rats and the anecdotes about the levels of underground old New York where the rats live.