Category: City Solutions

Articles City Solutions Infrastructure Magazines Short Films Singapore / Malaysia Sustainable Cities USA

LA is doing water better than your city. Yes, that LA.

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.

Architects Articles Australia City Solutions Developers Housing

Nightingale Housing wants you to own a great apartment

ARTICLE

Lucy Feagins, The Design Files, 13 February, 2018

The Nightingale Model empowers architects to develop their own thoughtfully designed medium-density apartment buildings. Profit margins are capped, and savings are passed directly onto homebuyers. For their part, homebuyers have to play by the rules too. They must be owner-occupiers, and they must agree to certain limitations about on-selling their apartment in the future, to ensure affordability is passed on.

For more coverage of Nightingale Housing click here, for Nightingale Housing’s website click here, to watch Jeremy McLeod’s TEDx Talk click here, and for a short film featuring Jeremy and a tenant / soon to be owner, click here.

Academics Africa Brazil City Solutions Colombia Korea Leadership & Decision Making Meet the Urbanists: 21st Century Singapore / Malaysia Sustainable Cities Talks Urbanisation USA

The biggest risks facing cities – and some solutions

TALK

Robert Muggah, TED Talk, September 2017

It’s a small opportunity but a golden one: in the next 10 to 20 years, to really start designing in principles of resilience into our cities. There’s not one single way of doing this, but there are a number of ways that are emerging. And I’ve spoken with hundreds of urban planners, development specialists, architects and civic activists, and a number of recurring principles keep coming out. I just want to pass on six.

First: cities need a plan and a strategy to implement it. I mean, it sounds crazy, but the vast majority of world cities don’t actually have a plan or a vision. 

Second: you’ve got to go green. Cities are already leading global decarbonization efforts.

Third: invest in integrated and multi-use solutions. The most successful cities are those that are going to invest in solutions that don’t solve just one problem, but that solve multiple problems.

Next, fourth: build densely but also sustainably. The death of all cities is the sprawl. Cities need to know how to build resiliently, but also in a way that’s inclusive.

Fifth: steal. The smartest cities are nicking, pilfering, stealing, left, right and center. They don’t have time to waste.

And finally: work in global coalitions. You know, there are more than 200 inner-city coalitions in the world today. There are more city coalitions than there are coalitions for nation-states.

To learn more about Robert Muggah, his work on evidence based urban policy and data visualisations, visit the Igarapé Institute here and SecDev here.

Articles City Solutions Meet the Urbanists: 21st Century Newspapers (Print & Online) Parking Short Films

The high cost of free parking

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.

Articles City Solutions Government Agencies Housing Singapore / Malaysia

Why 80% of Singaporeans live in government-built flats

ARTICLE

The Economist, 6 July 2017

Today there are about 1m HDB apartments, largely clustered in two dozen new towns that extend in a semicircle around the city’s coastal core. Each year the government sells a fresh batch of as-yet-unbuilt flats, predominantly to first-time buyers. They all come with 99-year leases and are sold at lower-than-market prices, though successful applicants must wait three or four years for their blocks to be completed. Alternatively Singaporeans can choose to buy existing HDB apartments directly from their owners, at whatever price buyer and seller can agree. First- and second-time buyers get money through government grants, regardless of whether they buy new or old flats. Quotas ensure that the mix of Chinese, Indians and Malays in each HDB block reflects the ethnic make-up of the country as a whole, a measure designed to preclude the formation of racial enclaves.

For another article about Singapore HDB program, see ‘“But what about Singapore?” Lessons from the best public housing program in the world‘ from the World Bank’s website.

Articles City Solutions Newspapers (Print & Online) Short Films Spain Streets, Roads & Mobility

Superblocks: how Barcelona is taking city streets back from cars

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.

(New) Traditional Cities City Planners / Urban Designers City Solutions Meet the Urbanists: 21st Century Streets, Roads & Mobility Sustainable Cities Talks The Public Realm

7 principles for building better cities

TALK

Peter Calthorpe, TED, April 2017

So there are seven principles that have now been adopted by the highest levels in the Chinese government, and they’re moving to implement them. And they’re simple, and they are globally, I think, universal principles.

One is to preserve the natural environment, the history and the critical agriculture.

Second is mix. Mixed use is popular, but when I say mixed, I mean mixed incomes, mixed age groups as well as mixed-land use.

Walk. There’s no great city that you don’t enjoy walking in. You don’t go there. The places you go on vacation are places you can walk. Why not make it everywhere?

Bike is the most efficient means of transportation we know. China has now adopted policies that put six meters of bike lane on every street. They’re serious about getting back to their biking history.

Complicated planner-ese here: connect. It’s a street network that allows many routes instead of singular routes and provides many kinds of streets instead of just one.

Ride. We have to invest more in transit. There’s no silver bullet. Autonomous vehicles are not going to solve this for us. As a matter of fact, they’re going to generate more traffic, more VMT, than the alternative.

And focus. We have a hierarchy of the city based on transit rather than the old armature of freeways.

It’s a big paradigm shift, but those two things have to get reconnected in ways that really shape the structure of the city.

To visit Calthorpe Associates website click here.

Articles Cities for People City Solutions Community Community Participation France Government Agencies Tools

Participatory Budgeting: What are Parisians dreaming about?

ARTICLE

PB Network, 24 Jan 2017

Launched in 2014, Paris implements a successful method of citizen participation. Ideas are developed and submitted on an Internet platform by residents or groups of residents. In 2015, Parisians submitted over 5,000 projects. In 2014, the first year of its operation, over 40,000 Parisians chose 9 winning projects at a cost of 17,7 million €.

To learn more about Participatory Budgeting in the USA click here, and in the UK click here.

Biking City Planners / Urban Designers City Solutions Denmark Short Films

Top ten design elements that make Copenhagen bicycle-friendly

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.

Articles City Planners / Urban Designers City Solutions Codes, Density & Urban Form Newspapers (Print & Online)

What makes a city tick? Designing the ‘urban DMA’

ARTICLE

Kim Dovey & Elek Pafka, The Conversation, November 2, 2016

When we talk about “urban DMA”, we’re talking about the density of a city’s buildings, the way people and activities are mixed together, and the access, or transport networks that we use to navigate through them.

For more from The Conversation on cities, click here.

Activists Australia City Solutions Events & Festivals Retail Talks Tools Websites

Renew Newcastle

WEBSITE

Renew Newcastle

Since 2008, Renew Newcastle has been connecting people with vacant spaces, supporting a community of creative entrepreneurs who bring life, interest and activity into under utilised neighbourhoods. Partnering with those who share the vision of giving back to their community.

What makes a good Renew Newcastle project?

  • It adds life to the city
  • It is unique
  • It has a high degree of professionalism or a very clear idea
  • It is ongoing
  • It is ready
  • It has the support of the property owner

How long does Renew Newcastle have properties for?

Renew Newcastle’s default license agreement is based on accessing the property on a rolling 30 day basis. That means Property Owners can give 30 days notice at any time should they receive a commercial offer or need to proceed with development. This enables the property owner to provide the property without sacrificing the potential commercial returns and is one of the key reasons why properties are made available so cheaply.

To watch Marcus Wesbury’s speak about creative cities and the Renew Newcastle model click here, for his book Creating Cities click here, and for tools to create your own Renew project click here.

Activists Articles Cities for People City Planners / Urban Designers City Solutions Meet the Urbanists: 21st Century The Public Realm Tools Urban Activism USA

What ‘Tactical Urbanism’ Can (and Can’t) Do for Your City

ARTICLE

Sarah Goodyear, CityLab, 20 Mar 2015

The phrase “tactical urbanism” came into use just a few short years ago, coined by a group of young planners and activists and popularized by an online guide to phenomena such as guerrilla wayfinding, pop-up markets, and DIY traffic-calming.

Many of those nimble urban-improvement techniques, which often originated in the activist community, have since gone mainstream. Cities such as San Francisco and Philadelphia, for instance, have been rapidly installing parklets where parking spaces used to go, a practice that originated with an annual grassroots action called Park(ing) Day.

To listen to a panel discussion about Tactical Urbanism, hosted by the New York Times and including Mike Lydon, click here.

To find out more about Mike Lydon and his Street Plans practice click here, for links to Street Plan’s books click here, and to download their guides to Tactical Urbanism click here. Several of these guides have been co-authored with similar placemaking firms around the world including Co-Design Studio (Australia), Ciudad Emergente (Chile), and TaMaLaCà (Italy).

(New) Traditional Cities City Planners / Urban Designers City Solutions Talks Walking

4 ways to make a city more walkable

TALK

Jeff Speck, TED, October 2013

If you’re going to get them to walk, then you have to offer a walk that’s as good as a drive or better. What does that mean? It means you need to offer four things simultaneously: there needs to be a proper reason to walk, the walk has to be safe and feel safe, the walk has to be comfortable and the walk has to be interesting. You need to do all four of these things simultaneously, and that’s the structure of my talk today, to take you through each of those.

For more from Jeff Speck and his work as an advocate for walkable cities, click here.

City Solutions Colombia Government Agencies Leadership & Decision Making Meet the Urbanists: 21st Century Talks Transit

Why buses represent democracy in action

TALK

Enrique Peñalosa, TED Talk, September 2013

Mobility in developing world cities is a very peculiar challenge, because different from health or education or housing, it tends to get worse as societies become richer. Clearly, a unsustainable model. Mobility, as most other developing country problems, is more than a matter of money or technology, is a matter of equality – equity. The great inequality in developing countries makes it difficult to see, for example, that in terms of transport, an advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport, or bicycles.