Urban Planning Blog

When you hear skyscrapers these days, you instantly think of Dubai but it turns out that Moscow with its 103,000 dollar millionaires isn’t far behind:

By 2015, Moscow will boast the 10 tallest office buildings in Europe—and already prime office rents in Moscow are going above $2,000 a square meter, 50 percent higher than the most prestigious skyscrapers of midtown Manhattan [via].

Urban civilizations continue to evolve and history is testimony that great civilizations have crumbled either due to onslaught of natural disasters or gradual shift in economic trends. Environmental Graffiti takes a look at 5 such cities in the United States that may be endangered. Like before, climate change and changing economies continue to influence the state of our cities.

Just because you can doesn’t always mean you should. “This gleaming hunk of urban development is about to rise on an artificial, perfectly square island off the coast of Dubai” [source]. Dubai has been going crazy creating all these islands off their coast probably because coastal properties enjoy greater demand and thus elicit higher prices. But in the long run, these islands are proving to be an environmental disaster as they end up destroying the marine life and coral reefs in the vicinity which are an integral part of the ecosystem. This 6.5 square kilometer mini-city is being designed by noted architect, Rem Koolhaas. Why would you care for the environment when your paycheck from this job alone can let you retire in riches?

The current issue of Science has a special focus on cities and urbanization especially in the developing world. Covering a vast range of topics like transportation, housing, pollution, and future trends, this promises to a must-read for all urban planners and urban policy researchers.

The Long Johns (John Bird and John Fortune) on the mechanisms of the market that takes a poor black man sitting on a crumbling porch in rural Alabama to High Structured Enhanced Credit Funds. Hilarious but tragically true.

This time-lapse video depicts 35 years' worth of construction in Tokyo's fashionable Shibuya district in ten seconds.

“The majority of the world’s designers focus all their efforts on developing products and services exclusively for the richest 10% of the world’s customers. Nothing less than a revolution in design is needed to reach the other 90%.”

—Dr. Paul Polak, International Development Enterprises

Looking beyond our usual perspectives can not only be enlightening but also mighty useful for sections of populations that have escaped our attention thus far. The National Design Museum in New York is hosting a Design for the other 90% exhibit. Another set of designers called themselves Designers without Borders. Interesting stuff [via].

In today’s age of unpredictable weather and rampant flooding, the Dutch are leading the way with creating amphibious houses. As I mentioned before, we can forget about controlling nature (levees, etc.) and instead focus on adapting our living to minimize damages when weather turns foul.

co-authored by Rohit Pradhan

Back in the days when Doordarshan (Indian state television) ruled the airwaves, if you tuned in during the weather forecast, you wouldn’t be completely off the mark if you thought that India’s urban regions comprised solely of Delhi, Calcutta, Bombay, and Madras – conveniently located in four corners of India. It was the natural corollary of India’s development since independence that has always been centered on its millions of villages. The idea of making villages self-sufficient drew its sustenance from the rather utopian Gandhian ideals. India’s early leaders also believed in heavy industrialization which led to development of cities like Jamshedpur–modeled primarily along industrial cities like Detroit in the developed world. The ‘Great Leap Forward’ (in stark contrast to its Chinese counterpart), came only after the post-1991 liberalization when India embarked on a path of economic reforms and globalization. The impact of rapid liberalization and expansion of opportunities were profound especially on the morphology of Indian cities.

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Global Cities looks at the changing faces of ten dynamic international cities: Cairo, Istanbul, Johannesburg, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Mumbai, São Paulo, Shanghai and Tokyo.

A practical approach for developing economies - Design for Sustainability.

Ten areas that offer both affordable housing and rapidly rising home values in some of the country’s largest cities. Also, check out the list of biggest Metro areas with the lowest rent. All four Texas metros make the cut.

The ‘white flight’ to the suburbs was followed by other citizens who well, were not so white. When the Fair Housing Act criminalizing racial discrimination in housing came into effect followed by the gradual decline of exclusionary zoning practices like redlining, etc, communities hunkered down further by creating the ‘gated community’. Justified in the name of keeping out crime and other evil social conditions [although not always true], the gated community was the ultimate in creating a Truman’s Show world provided you had the money and of course, the right ‘attributes’. The homeowners association probably the strongest private body that can at times be so un-American played the role of the gatekeeper and of course, law-enforcer and isolator if you ever managed to crash the gates.

In a increasingly globalized world and with the leveling of the playing field that Friedmann mistook for the flatness of the world, gated communities are making a foray in Indian cities. Expats are returning home and wish to duplicate the good life of their U.S. experiences. The market obliges and provides them with their own haven. Welcome to Palm Meadows:

It is a gated community of about 600 single family homes, with 10 or more security guards manning the gates at any given time. Some houses are big and some are small, but most houses have at least three bedrooms each. Residents of Palm Meadows are a mix of original owners, returning Indians and expats [source: Blogpourri].

Heck, even the name is U.S.-centric and trust me, I have never seen a meadow of palms. But leaving that aside, it does appear to provide all you could wish for to eke out a luxurious living. Of course, considering the clients and homeowners are considered to be rich and ‘earning in dollars’, prices are steep and as Sujatha mentions, collusion among the real estate agents have hiked up the rents further. Of course, some of that wealth trickles down to the domestic help. In India, it is quite common to have domestic help, even the middle-class families have them. The only difference is in the price.

Of course, you can enjoy all you want while you are inside Palm Meadows but once you cross the gates, not even God can help you navigate through that dreaded Bangalore traffic.

Just when we thought that the nature of our urban spaces has been altered by the changing forms of economy and technology, the manufacturing-based cities make a comeback. In the previous half-century, we moved from a manufacturing-based economy to services-based economy thus altering the form of our cities from being centralized to being disperse. No longer was a single industry the major employer and the working class didn’t necessarily have to live near their place of employment as commuting to work became easier. This held true even in developing economies until of course, China took over the mantle of being the world’s manufacturer. Of course, manufacturing never died as someone has to manufacture the countless goods that we desire; it simply moved to places where it was more affordable to do so.

[source]. Edward Burtynsky recently released his pithily-named book, China that contains several photographs like the one above that depict the vast manufacturing industry in China. The mass employment pattern of such industries have spawned townships that are akin to manufacturing towns that dotted the Rust Belt in the United States in the earlier part of last century. Almost all workers are employed by a single industry and work and live together in high rise apartments. Characterized by long working hours, most workers either have no need for activities apart from work or aren’t given opportunity to indulge in any such activity. The other day I was talking with my significant other regarding the proclivity of having acquaintances and friends outside of our working environment and if lack of such options would have any detrimental effect on our lives. It looks like these workers simply don’t have the luxury of such options. The images of the workers housing as shown below are indicative of their work-centric lives:

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I have always loved the concept of moving entire houses. Considering how ‘rooted’ the houses are in India because of the way they are built, this concept was completely unimaginable to me when I first heard of it. Here is a time-lapse video of moving an 1883 carriage house in Portland:

I’m sure the old neighborhood will miss it but I’m sure the new one will love it.