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.
PODCAST
Andrew Tuck, Monocle, 4 May 2017
Special interview: Richard Florida
Our cities have become small little areas of concentrated wealth and advantage for the global super rich, for knowledge workers, for the members of my own creative class. It’s not just the 1%, it’s about a third of us who can make a go, but then the other two thirds, falling further and further behind and surrounding these areas of concentrated advantage much larger spans of concentrated disadvantage, and those are not only in the city, what’s so interesting about The New Urban Crisis, that’s spread out to what we used to think of as the great affluent suburbs, so it really is a new geographic divide in our society, and that divide is not only causing inequality it’s causing this terrible backlash.
To visit Richard Florida’s website click here, for an article from The Guardian about his previous thesis on The Creative Class and it’s relationship to The New Urban Crisis click here, and for a longer discussion of The New Urban Crisis with the LSE Cities Ricky Burdett click here.
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.
INFOGRAPHIC
100 Resilient Cities
Why do we focus on cities? First, the world is rapidly urbanizing—by 2050, 75% of the world’s population will live in cities. Second, global pressures that play out at a city scale − such as climate change, disease pandemics, economic fluctuations, and terrorism − pose new challenges and uncertainty. Sudden shocks or accumulating stresses in cities can cause significant damage and disruption; in 2011, the cost of natural disasters was estimated at over $380 billion. Because city systems are interconnected, breakdowns can lead to multiple or sequential failure. At worst, this can result in social breakdown, physical collapse, or economic decline.
For more from 100 Resilient Cities, click here.
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.
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.
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.
A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It’s where the rich use public transportation.
Adding highway lanes to deal with traffic congestion is like loosening your belt to cure obesity.
PODCAST
Andrew Tuck, The Urbanist, Monocle, 15 December 2016
And really, Jane was the first time where I’d read a critique of cities and it really spoke to me, really resonated, it was incredibly human. It talked about mistakes and failure, it talked about things being imperfect, about things being informal, about the spontaneity, the ballet and dance of life that happens on our city streets.
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.
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.