Because of this, we won’t need traffic lights at all (or stop signs, for that matter). Traffic will constantly flow, and at a rate that would probably unnerve the average human driver. The researchers have modeled just how this would work, as you can see in the animation (click on the link below)
Source: The Atlantic Cities.
The basic driver of remarkable economic growth in China — and India, Vietnam, Thailand, Brazil and pretty much every other developing country — is pretty simple: people migrating from rural areas, where they’re not very productive, to dense cities, where they are very productive. This is a tried-and-true strategy for making people and countries richer.
Source: The Washington Post.
Sigh! When will America realize that its cities are the real America?
The focal point of this Korean residence is the central multifunctional area, namely the wooden staircase which integrates a slide, bookshelves, reading nooks, and even cinema seating oriented towards a projection screen.
An interesting concept for a playhouse that has a TV/movie viewing area.
Via Inthralld.
Early-1932, after seeing a photograph in the New York Times of the great Helen Keller at the top of the newly-opened Empire State Building, Dr. John Finley wrote to her and asked what she really "saw" from that height. Keller — famously both deaf and blind from a very early age — responded with the incredible letter seen below, within which lies one of the greatest, most evocative descriptions of the skyscraper and its surroundings ever to have been written.A truly beautiful letter.
Chinese architect Wang Shu, whose buildings have been praised for their commanding presence and careful attention to the environment, has won the 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize, the prize's jury announced Feb. 27.
[Link to 2012 Pritzker Architecture Prize - Architecture by Wang Shu]
City governments across the country are threatening to kill the food truck revolution with dumb regulations.
[Link to How city governments are trying to kill them with dumb regulations]
In the last half-century, the clear result of “architectural myopia” is buildings whose makers have been so concerned with the drama of their appearance that they fail on the most fundamental human criteria. They isolate people; they do not provide enough light; or provide a poor quality of light; they provide a hostile pedestrian environment at their edges; they cause excessive shade; or create winds in what is known as a “canyon effect”; or they trap pollutants in the “sick building syndrome”; they use resources wastefully; etc. Moreover, the buildings themselves are a wasteful use of resources, because they are not likely to be well-loved, cared for, repaired, modified, and re-used over many years. In short, it is not just that people find them ugly, but they represent a fundamentally unsustainable way of building human environments.
[Link to Architectural Myopia: Designing for Industry, Not People]
Recent efforts to fix the housing market — including Thursday’s $26 billion settlement with five of the nation’s biggest banks — have focused purely on the financial aspects of the slump. A permanent solution, however, must go further than money to address issues that have been at the core of the crisis but have been wholly ignored: design and urban planning.
[Link to Design a Fix for the Housing Market]
What if in-town big box stores encourage people to drive less? That is, after all, a major policy objective of smart growth. Plenty of people who don’t want a big box store in their midst still drive 20 miles to get to one. Why not cut out those unnecessary emissions? And if you could go to a Sam’s Club once a month instead of a Safeway every week, wouldn’t that get people out of their cars more, too?
[Link to Why In-Town Big Box Stores Might Not Be As Awful As You Think]
