Detroit: The 'Shrinking City' That Isn't Actually Shrinking - Kaid Benfield - National. At the bottom of this post are two short videos about Detroit, both featuring architect and planner Mark Nickita, principal of the city's Archive Design Studio and a lifelong Detroit resident. In a very refreshing change from the mind-numbing negativity one usually hears about the city, Nickita is upbeat and hopeful. His point of view, emphasizing revitalization, is much closer to my own than much of what I read, which effectively takes the approach that the city has somehow been abandoned beyond redemption, leaving the only question how to manage its more-or-less permanent shrinkage. Architecture 2030: The 2030 Challenge for Planning. The built environment is the major source of global demand for energy and materials that produce by-product greenhouse gases (GHG).
Planning decisions not only affect building energy consumptions and GHG emissions, but transportation energy consumption and water use as well, both of which have large environmental implications. Architecture 2030 has issued the 2030 Challenge for Planning asking the global architecture and planning community to adopt the following targets: Chicago Metropolitan Agency for Planning. Place Making Chicago - Placemaking Chicago.
How to Shrink a City. Cities x Design. A lot has been written about Detroit in recent months: unemployment, bankruptcy, and a failing auto industry.
When arriving there, one would surely compare reality to what has been said in the media. But Detroit is a city in transition rather than a dying city. It looks like a semi-empty canvas or an experimental ground that could be embraced by artists and designers. Empty factories lined up in the distance as we drove through the city. Incredible relics of American industrial architecture and modern housing structures are waiting to be found in Detroit.