ARTICLE / SHORT FILM
Carlos Waters, Vox, 25 July 2018
Transportation officials across the country agree: Several minor traffic corridors in America are overbuilt and unnecessarily unsafe. So they’ve started to adopt European-inspired designs that change how drivers, cyclists, and pedestrians use the road in order to reduce speeding and encourage safety for everyone. It’s called a “road diet.”
For another short film from Vox and Jeff Speck click here.
SHORT FILM / ARTICLE
Matt Simon, Wired, 12 June 2018
But Los Angeles is in the midst of an aqueous awakening, setting an ambitious goal to cut its reliance on imported water in half by 2025 by following an increasingly urgent rule of good water policy: diversification. In a nutshell, that means getting your water from a range of sources—rain capture, aquifers, wells, desalination, even right out of the air. A study from UCLA earlier this year even said the city could feasibly reach 100 percent locally sourced water. To do it, the city is diving into a series of high- and low-tech campaigns that could transform Los Angeles into a model city for water management.
To find out about Singapore’s ‘Four Taps’ and leading water supply policy click here.
REPORT
McKinsey Global Institute, June 2018
After a decade of trial and error, municipal leaders are realizing that smart-city strategies start with people, not technology. “Smartness” is not just about installing digital interfaces in traditional infrastructure or streamlining city operations. It is also about using technology and data purposefully to make better decisions and deliver a better quality of life.
To download the Briefing Note for the report click here.
SHORT FILM
Open Future, The Economist, 4 May 2018
Although there is a lot to learn from Marx, his solution was far worse than the disease. At the same time it can’t be said that today’s capitalism, dominated by immense inequality and financial crises has triumphed.
For more from The Economist and their Open Future project, click here.
SHORT FILM
Open Future, The Economist, 17 April 2018
Liberalism has been the dominant political philosophy in the West for more than 200 years. Populists say liberals are too elite and are out of touch with ordinary people. Here’s what you need to know about liberalism and its place in modern society.
For more from The Economist and their Open Future project, click here.
SHORT FILM / INFOGRAPHIC
arcadis.com, 2017
There is no one-size-fits-all strategy for sustainable mobility in cities. As the Index demonstrates, mobility challenges differ from city to city and vary according to geographical, ecological, economic and political factors. In this section, we outline some of the top trends in urban mobility as well as looking to the future to provide food for thought for those responsible for their city’s mobility.
SHORT FILM / PROPERTY DEVELOPER WEBSITE
Pocket Living
Pocket Living is a property developer with a difference. We sell well-designed homes to local people so the people who make a city can also make it their home. Our compact Pocket homes are sold outright at a discount of at least 20% to the surrounding market rate. They’re only for first time buyers who live or work locally; we call them city makers.
For more from Pocket Living and their affordable housing developments, click here.
ARTICLE / SHORT FILM
Will Chilton and Baird Bream, vox.com, Jul 19, 2017
Off-street parking requirements, really, spread throughout the United States faster than almost any other urban planning invention. They arose partly because of the lack of management of on-street parking. If you can’t manage the on-street parking properly you need off-street parking requirements or everybody will say, ‘How could you let this building be built when there’s not enough parking?‘
To boil an 800 page book down into three bullet points, I have three basic recommendations:
Remove off-street parking requirements.
Charge the right price for on-street parking. By which I mean the lowest price the city can charge and still have one or two open spaces on every block, so nobody can say there is a shortage of parking. In order to reach that price you have to vary it by location and time of day.
But you have done that, make it politically popular, and spend the revenue on public services on the metered streets.
To visit Donald Shroup’s website click here, for CityLab’s profile ‘Parking Is Sexy Now. Thank Donald Shoup’ click here.
SHORT FILM
Helena Kardová & Tsveta Lozanova, Monocle, 16 June 2017
Staircase design is an outward display of creativity. These statements of architecture keep our bodies and minds active, running up a flight of stairs gets your heart pumping and the magnificent views at the end of an ascent can spark innovative ideas.
ARTICLE / SHORT FILM
David Roberts, Vox, Apr 22 2017
The idea is pretty simple. Take nine square blocks of city. (It doesn’t have to be nine, but that’s the ideal.) Rather than all traffic being permitted on all the streets between and among those blocks, cordon off a perimeter and keep through traffic, freight, and city buses on that.
In the interior, allow only local vehicles, traveling at very low speeds, under 10 mph. And make all the interior streets one-way loops (see the arrows on the green streets below), so none of them serve through streets.
In this way, you create a nine-square-block mini village, the interior spaces of which can be more equitably shared between cars and other uses.
For more from Vox on Cities and Urbanism, click here.
SHORT FILM
100 Resilient Cities, 2016
Cities are the future, they are both our greatest risk and our greatest hope – to solve climate change, to solve sectarian conflict, to solve overpopulation, crowding, human needs issues.
For more from 100 Resilient Cities, click here.
ARTICLE / SHORT FILM
The School of Life, 10 February 2017
And so, proposed Machiavelli, the secret to being effective lies in overcoming all vestiges of this story. The Prince was not, as is often thought, a guide to being a tyrant; it’s a guide about what nice people should learn from tyrants. It’s a book about how to be effective, not just good. It’s a book haunted by examples of the impotence of the pure.
For another article and short film from The School of Life on Niccolò Machiavelli and his ideas click here.
ARTICLE
Honeycombers Editorial, 3 Feb 2017
Centuries before the proliferation of social media, networks of people, cultures, and information flowed freely between port cities such as Batavia (Jakarta) in Indonesia, Goa in India, Canton (now Guangzhou) in China, and, of course, Singapore. Spawned by advances in ship technology and knowledge of sea routes, these cities were thriving, cosmopolitan hubs of trade. They’re great examples of early globalisation and the hodgepodge – or “rojak” – of ethnicities, language, culture, lifestyles, and fashion.
For short films about the Port Cities exhibition at the Asian Civilisations Museum in Singapore click here for a presentation on the life of Cornelia van Nijenroode, and here for another on the Indian Chettiars of Saigon.
SHORT FILM
Anette Lien, Monocle, 27 January 2017
In Japan’s Unzen City, the adventurous ideas of Taku Habino, the head of Habino Sekkei Architecture have revolutionised early childhood development in the city’s nurseries.
To visit Japanese architecture firm Hibino Sekkei’s website, click here. For a survey of their work from ArchDaily, click here.
SHORT FILMS
Copenhagenize Design Co., 8 Dec 2016
#01 The Big Picture – uniformity of bicycle network
#02 The Green Wave for Cyclists – cyclist orientated traffic signalling
#03 Intermodality – cycling integrated into all public transport options
#04 Safety Details – design of traffic flow, stop line for cars, traffic lights, bus drop offs, use of rumble strips
#05 Nørrebrogade – redesign of city artery
#06 Macro Design – showcase projects that increase cycling network
#07 Micro Design – tiny details that improve quality of cycling network
#08 Cargo Bikes – 40,000 cargo bikes in Copenhagen
#09 Desire Lines – urban design reflects how people actually use (or want to use) the city
#10 Political Will – people in positions of responsibility who understand how to design a city for people
To learn more about Copenhagenize Design Co. and their work developing bicycle mobility networks click here.