Suburbia/Sprawl. Stop thinking big - Dream City. Last week, a press release from Chicago’s Office of the Mayor proclaimed something that would have sounded like a Yes Men prank just a few years ago: Rahm Emanuel, it said, has a plan to get rid of the city’s “excess asphalt.” It wasn’t a proposal for a big new park or recreational facility, but a plan to take little bits of public space here and there — streets, parking spots, alleyways — and turn them into places for people. It was the latest example of a municipal government taking an active role in tactical urbanism, that low-cost, low-commitment, incremental approach to city building — the “let’s not build a stadium” strategy.
For a long time, tactical urbanism was associated with guerrilla gardeners and fly-by-night pop-up parks, whereas large-scale “city planning” was seen as the job of bureaucrats with blueprints. In a way, thinking small is the next logical step in America’s urban renaissance. Its easy to see why penny-pinching local governments would want to get in on this. The Center for Land Use Interpretation. The Center’s exhibit space and offices in Los Angeles offers exhibits, lectures, and other resources for the public.
A small bookstore stocks CLUI publications, and titles of special interest from other publishers. Currently on view: SOLAR BOOM: SUN-POWERED ELECTRICAL PLANTS IN THE USAWhile visiting the CLUI in Los Angeles, check out: POINTS OF INTEREST IN CULVER CITY Open 12 to 5 PM Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays, and by appointment.Closed Christmas Day, and New Years Day. Ayutthaya - environmental resilience: flood-defense would restore "Venice of the East" to former glory. Shma's bold "water city" concept is a reimagining of the medieval Thai city of Ayutthaya, that rethinks flood defenses for the 21st century by drawing inspiration from the past.
It's a concept, yes, but one worthy of a second look, given that this is a uniquely Thai response to the catastrophic flooding that hit the country last year. Gizmag takes a moment to set Shma's scheme in its proper context: that of the very recent past, as well as that of Ayutthaya's heyday as one of Asia's, if not the world's, foremost cities. View all The flood The 2011 monsoon season hit Thailand with catastrophic flooding that cost 815 lives and affected millions of others.
A US Navy Sea Hawk helicopter assesses the damage outside Bangkok during the 2011 floods Responses to flooding tend to fit one of two philosophies. Reisdents of Ayutthaya put inner tubes to good use during the 2011 flooding (Photo: Daniel Julie) Longer-term measures announced have proved more controversial. A call to arms Ayutthayas past. How the Growth Machine Ate Florida. John DeGrove was the father of land use planning in Florida and the principal architect of the state land use agency, the Florida Department of Community Affairs. The agency was established in 1985 to oversee compliance with the Growth Management Act.
Most Floridians are unlikely to know either what the Department of Community Affairs did or what its disappearance means. Fewer still understand the challenges to design and implement a regulatory framework for rationale growth and development in one of the nation’s fastest growing states, or, how DCA and DeGrove’s mission was a target of anti-government, pro-property rights zealots from the first. Why this matters is simple. Presupposing the failure of government regulatory authority virtually guarantees it will happen. The notion that government cannot do anything that private industry can do better, cheaper, and faster including protecting public safety, health and welfare has spread its toxic roots far and wide. The St. In Rooftop Farming, New York City Emerges as a Leader. Today, she could have had both. New York City (the stores!)
Is suddenly a farming kind of town (the chores!). Almost a decade after the last family farm within the city’s boundaries closed, basil and bok choy are growing in Brooklyn, and tomatoes, leeks and cucumbers in Queens. Commercial agriculture is bound for the South Bronx, where the city recently solicited proposals for what would be the largest rooftop farm in the United States, and possibly the world. Fed by the interest in locally grown produce, the new farm operations in New York are selling greens and other vegetables by the boxful to organically inclined residents, and by the bushel to supermarket chains like Whole Foods.
The main difference between this century and previous ones is location: whether soil-based or hydroponic, in which vegetables are grown in water rather than soil, the new farms are spreading on rooftops, perhaps the last slice of untapped real estate in the city. Mr. “But in New York City,” Mr. Amanda M. PHOTOS: Plant Tomatoes. Harvest Lower Crime Rates. I suppose the easy thing to do would be to rail against food deserts, the dearth of fresh produce and other healthy foods for those living in impoverished neighborhoods. Or to enter the debate over whether there are, in fact, food deserts. (A couple of recent studies have suggested that proximity to decent grocery stores isn't the key problem of inner-city nutrition.) But considering Emily Schiffer's photos, I was reminded of Mother Teresa's visit to a housing project on Chicago's West Side in the mid-1980s.
What rattled her was not the poverty of the pocketbook. Looking at Schiffer's photos and talking with people involved in urban farming, I've come to realize that their efforts have less to do with providing healthy food than they do with a reclamation of sorts, taking ownership of their community and their daily lives. On Chicago's South Side, corner stores are filled with processed food, and vacant lots are filled with weeds. Green plants reduce city street pollution up to eight times more than previously believed. Trees, bushes and other greenery growing in the concrete-and-glass canyons of cities can reduce levels of two of the most worrisome air pollutants by eight times more than previously believed, a new study has found. A report on the research appears in the ACS journal Environmental Science & Technology.
Thomas Pugh and colleagues explain that concentrations of nitrogen dioxide (NO2) and microscopic particulate matter (PM) -- both of which can be harmful to human health -- exceed safe levels on the streets of many cities. Past research suggested that trees and other green plants can improve urban air quality by removing those pollutants from the air. However, the improvement seemed to be small, a reduction of less than 5 percent. The new study sought a better understanding of the effects of green plants in the sometimes stagnant air of city streets, which the authors term "urban street canyons.
" Strategies for Reuse of Underutilized or Vacant Airport Facilities. McAllen Walmart Turned Into Public Library. Secondary Airports, Losing Traffic, Have Space to Rent. Postcards from the Future - megacities. Welcome to the era of the megacity. More than half the global population now lives in urban areas, and there's no going back to the farm. With China leading the way, today's global cities are surging ahead in population and economic heft, powering the world economy -- and posing some very difficult problems for governments. But it's not all about the Beijings, the New Yorks, and Tokyos.
Drawn from the McKinsey Global Institute 's index of the world's 75 Most Dynamic Cities , some of these up-and-coming commercial hubs -- including Belo Horizonte, Fuzhou, and even Philadelphia -- may surprise you. 1. Since being pried open by the British during the First Opium War, Shanghai has served as China's window to the world. Above, a view from the waterfront Bund provides a general view of the Huangpu River and the Lujiazui financial district in Pudong New Area on Dec. 22, 2010, in Shanghai, China. China Photos/Getty Images. Man-Made smart island in Korea. Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things By Peter-Paul Verbeek (University of Chicago Press, 183 pp., $25) JUST WEST OF SEOUL, on a man-made island in the Yellow Sea, a city is rising.
Slated for completion by 2015, Songdo has been meticulously planned by engineers and architects and lavishly financed by money from the American real estate company Gale International and the investment bank Morgan Stanley. According to the head of Cisco Systems, which has partnered with Gale International to supply the telecommunications infrastructure, Songdo will “run on information.” It will be the world’s first “smart city.” The city of Songdo claims intelligence not from its inhabitants, but from the millions of wireless sensors and microcomputers embedded in surfaces and objects throughout the metropolis. The unstated but evident goal of these new urban planners is to run the complicated infrastructure of a city with as little human intervention as possible. Want To Make A Creative City? Build Out, Not Up. Copyright © 2012 NPR. For personal, noncommercial use only.
See Terms of Use. For other uses, prior permission required. Urban density spurs innovation. But it turns out that some kinds of density are better than others. RICHARD FLORIDA: It's great to be with you, Neal. CONAN: And let's go on a little bit more about that New York-Shanghai comparison. FLORIDA: Well, I think I wanted to write the piece because there's so much of a rush to density. So the point was to try to - the piece was to try to point out that density, of course, matters. CONAN: And a lot of people might ask, how are you measuring innovation and creativity? FLORIDA: Well, most people measure innovation typically by looking at rates of patenting. CONAN: Is there a difference in expense as well? FLORIDA: Well, I don't get into this in the piece, but I do know enough people who know more than I do about real estate, and they tell you that new construction is typically more expensive.
CONAN: And how do you plan for that?