A City Rises, Along With Its Hopes
(The entrance pavilion to the Botanical Garden in Medellín, Colombia, designed by Lorenzo Castro. Paul Smith for The New York Times)
“What sets Medellín apart is the particular strength of its culture of urbanism, which acts now almost like a civic calling card. The city’s new mayor, Aníbal Gaviria, spent an hour describing to me his dreams for burying a congested highway that runs through the middle of town, building an electric tram along the hillsides to stem the sprawl of the slums, adding a green belt of public buildings along the tram, rehabilitating the Medellín River and densifying the city center — smart, public-spirited, improvements. It’s as if, in this country whose relatively robust economy has underwritten many forward-thinking projects, every mayor here has to have enormous architectural and infrastructural plans, or risk coming across as small-minded or an outsider.” (New York Times)
3 days ago
Subway Systems Obey Emergent, Natural Laws As They Grow
The design of subway systems in big cities conforms to certain patterns regardless of where, when, and how they’re built. So where does that leave designers? (Fast Company)
1 week ago
Jungleland
(Two houses on Alabo Street, one abandoned, one occupied. Photo by Andrew Moore/European Pressphoto Agency)
The Lower Ninth Ward in New Orleans Gives New Meaning to ‘Urban Growth.’ The Lower Ninth has become a dumping ground for unwanted dogs and cats. People from all over the city take the Claiborne Avenue Bridge over the Industrial Canal, bounce along the fractured streets until they reach a suitably empty area and then toss the animals out of the car. But it’s not just pets. The neighborhood has become a dumping ground for many kinds of unwanted things. (New York Times)
2 months ago
Soon to be Razed, a Philadelphia Neighborhood Frozen in Time
A recent visit to Philadelphia’s Naval Yards, currently awaiting redevelopment, offers a glimpse of an abandoned community soon to be demolished forever. The Naval Yards, and the residential communities that ring it, sit frozen in time since it was last populated, during the height of America’s military industrial complex. (Architizer)
3 months ago
Great use of data in our cities.
3 months ago
In Madrid’s Heart, Park Blooms Where a Freeway Once Blighted
More than six miles long, Madrid Río took over a neglected area of Spain’s capital, knitting together neighborhoods that had been severed from the city center. An article by Michael Kimmelman (New York Times)
5 months ago
Two Stunning Examples Of Urban Waterfront Renewal
San Francisco’s Crissy Field and New York’s Brooklyn Bridge Park are stunning examples of reinvented waterfronts. (Fast Company)
6 months ago
Gary Hustwit On Solving America's Big-City Problems
“The city has to invite the type of behavior it wants.” - Gary Hustwit (Fast Company)
7 months ago
The 19 Building Types That Caused the Recession
Christopher Leinberger, an urban land-use strategist and professor at the University of Michigan, includes the Grocery Anchored Neighborhood Center on his list of the 19 standard real estate product types dominant in post-war America. (The Atlantic)
7 months ago
Mapping the digital city
(SENSEable City Lab (EE UU), (Carlo Ratti + Assaf Bidermann + Fabien Girardin + David Lu + Andrea Vaccari), Los ojos del mundo, 2009, Software, video-projection. http://senseable.mit.edu/worldseyes)
Contemporary urban space is no longer mobilised by a utopian, ultra-rational, standardising modernist inprint; nor is it fully defined operationally by physical infrastructure alone. Increasingly subject to personalised experiences and characterised invisibly by dynamic processes and human flows, it is a sentient city, whose pervasive digital and other environmental properties have an “alive” quality that can be monitored to help organise our lives.(Domus via @laperiferia)
Also, check out The Data City essay that Richard Prouty published in the Information issue of MAS Context.
8 months ago
