In addition to the typical traffic congestion caused by daily commutes and gridlock from construction and accidents, reports have estimated that over 30 percent of traffic in a city is caused by drivers searching for a parking spot.
[Link to IBM Global Parking Survey: Drivers Share Worldwide Parking Woes]
Milwaukee’s newest trendy neighborhood is likely to become one of its best, and almost certainly its greenest. The Brewery, an environmentally sensitive restoration and adaptation of historic structures among the decaying wreckage of the former Pabst Brewing Company, is already home to striking residential lofts, a great beer hall, a range of offices, Cardinal Stritch University City Center, and a small urban park.
[Link to Green neighborhood in Milwaukee]
Mr. Garrett died last week at 74, just short of the 25th anniversary of Burning Man’s founding.But his handiwork will be on display to thousands as the yearly festival begins Monday. Mr. Garrett arranged the grounds, called Black Rock City, in a series of concentric semicircles. At their center is the Man, a giant effigy meant to be immolated on the last night of the weeklong gathering.
Until then the Man is to Black Rock City what the Empire State Building is to Manhattan: a locating device and a reassuring beacon.
[Link to Rod Garrett, the Urban Planner Behind ‘Burning Man’]
The Visitors’ Centre derives from a modernist tradition of pavilion-building that channels the Glass Boxes of Mies and Johnson. It employs many syntactical elements- a raised plinth, deep roofs on both sides to provide shade; the overhead plane held up by slim shining supports used sparingly, a sheltered glass enclosure of indeterminate function. The architecture gains significance by not kowtowing to the visual fakery that is the bane of most buildings that come up in the vicinity of important older structures.
[Link to A clean, well-lighted place]
But the culture of Foster and Partners (as it was then called) was different from firms in Silicon Valley with one notable exception – Apple, the place that combined geek business inventiveness without its reputation for poor aesthetic sensibility. Perfecting the model of selling design that is compatible with big business, Foster simultaneously grew one of the largest architecture practices in the world while still winning awards for design excellence. The secret was to design buildings like the limited edition, invite only Porsches that Foster drove and fellow Porsche drivers would commission them.
More alike than you would imagine.
[Link to Norman Foster and Steve Jobs]
The benefits of living close to other people are evident even to hunter-gatherers. Though their societies have changed over the millennia, studying characteristics of present-day hunter-gatherers can let us peer into the past. That’s what was done by three anthropologists—Marcus Hamilton, Bruce Milne, and Robert Walker—and one ecologist—Jim Brown. In the process, they seem to have discovered a fundamental law that drives human agglomeration. Though their survey of 339 present-day hunter-gatherer societies doesn’t explicitly mention cities, it does show that as populations grow, people tend to live closer together—much closer together. For every doubling of population, the home ranges of hunter-gatherer groups increased by only 70 percent.
[Link to Density is Natural]
The completion of the skyline in Battery Park City comes at a crossroads moment for the neighborhood, which was conceived in 1968 by the State of New York as a way to redevelop a moribund shipping area. Trade Center dirt later filled in rotting piers, though it was not until the 1980s that construction really ramped up. Today the area has 34 residential buildings and a population of 13,000.
The riots that began in London have spread across the country. Decades of social-science research has delivered insights about these outbursts of violence, but hasn’t explained why they erupt when and where they do.
We do, however, understand how they usually end: with overwhelmingly force that clears the streets.
Browse population growth and decline, changes in racial and ethnic concentrations and patterns of housing development.
A really cool visualization tool for a quick glance.
[Link to Mapping the 2010 U.S. Census]
The Earthscraper, designed by BNKR Arquitectura, is the Skyscraper’s antagonist in the historic urban landscape of Mexico City where the latter is condemned and the preservation of the built environment is the paramount ambition. It preserves the iconic presence of the city square and the existing hierarchy of the buildings that surround it.
[Link to The Earthscraper]