Urban Planning Blog

Improving Public Space for all New Yorkers. The Design Trust is emphasizing conserving public space in the city of New York City.

Ever done a figure-ground analysis for studying the footprint of a structure? Now just reverse your line of sight and look the other way. Yup! Toward the light. I wonder if we can we have an Urban Typography font?

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If you can’t beat them, decorate them. A local artist transforms the ubiquitous and ugly satellite dishes on an Amsterdam street front by painting them with the help of school children. A new form of urban graffiti? Probably but at least it looks better than the monotonous drab grey discs occasionally emblazoned with corporate logos that we are used to seeing on rooftops [source].

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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You know a country has too much money when they build a hundred acre park covered with lush green grass in the middle of a desert or for that matter, even a skiing slope. Dubai is no stranger to ostentatious spending but compared to its equally rich cousins in the Middle East, the rulers of Dubai tend to ‘invest’ their oil revenues in their infrastructure and building an alternative to an after-oil future rather than building colossal palaces (just because you can!) I was in Dubai seven years ago and my brother and I chose to visit this thriving economy rather than idle our time on Mall Road in some Indian hillstation. Of course, we missed out on sylvan-lined bucolic evening walks but instead were exposed to wealth as never seen before. Since then, we have heard that there are plenty more things that Dubai has to offer including your own private island shaped like a country within a set of islands set to the world map.

We’ve all heard of the construction boom that is going on in Dubai so I thought it wise to revisit the Dubai property market through a paid review of LatticeWerks. You have seen the glamorous symbols of Dubai like the arching sail-like Burj-Al Arab Luxury Hotel and the view of the Giant Palm Islands but did you know that a majority of the construction cranes in the world are found in Dubai? That in itself should tell you that it is not over yet and the future of Dubai skyline is just beginning to form.

LatticeWerks, a property investment firm in Dubai gives us an overview of why you should invest in Dubai. I just hope they would increase the font a little and emphasize the headlines more since it makes it extremely difficult to read and you don’t want to lose out on potential investors if they can’t read your website, right? And of course, everyone loves photos of fancy buildings and cityscape. Perspectives of upcoming projects and a view of the future doesn’t hurt either. Convincing investors in overseas property can be much more tricky than showing them palm trees lined oceanfront property in say, Florida.

That brings me to another point -are customers convinced of investment opportunities by simply browsing through the websites of investment companies? Probably in hot property markets like Dubai, nothing can go wrong (or will it?) but are customers still gullible to read a rosy picture description of a faraway land and willingly hand over their hard earned money or will they demand more information even if it is on the Web? Probably I’m looking at it the wrong way. Probably such websites merely open the Pandora’s box and hook in the consumer making him initiate an enquiry following which the sales experts take over.

What do you think?

I was in Singapore in the late 90s. It was a trip planned at the last minute and right in the middle of a college week. However the opportunity was simply too good to miss (in India or at least in typical middle-class households, missing a day of school is unthinkable unless you are on your deathbed). It was my first ‘foreign’ trip and being in architecture school at that time, all my attention was on the urbanscape details. Having heard of the amazing job that Lee Kuan Yew had done to transform a fishing village to a bustling metropolis, I was ready to see a thriving city dotted with umpteen flyovers, wide lanes of road filled with fast traffic, and gleaming glass skyscrapers (yeah! I had a skewed sense of what makes for good urbanscape).

But as soon as I landed at the Changi Airport, I was blown away by how green the city was. Green as in landscape profusely; not just in grand city parks that we normally associate with a landscaped city but also in small details like traffic islands, road dividers, and even the space under the flyovers. Govindraj had a similar experience recently and he took additional effort to find the secret of making a city green. He learned that Lee Kuan Yew took personal interest in the subject of soil and vegetation, trees and drainage, climate and fertilizers:

In an equatorial forest, as Lee learnt, with big tall trees forming a canopy, the rain water drips down. But in Singapore, the trees had been chopped down, it would all come down in a big wash. So Lee decided that fertilizers would replenish the soil and began the task of making the compost from rubbish dumps, adding calcium and lime where the ground was too acidic.

Lee asked his officials to find out which plants could survive below the flyovers where the sun did not shine much. And instead of having to water these plants regularly, which was expensive, he got his officials to find a way to channel water from the roads, after filtering it to get rid of the oil and grime from the traffic above.

Govindraj is right in observing that although Singapore is geographically located in a hot tropical zone, thanks to the urban greenery you feel a lot more at ease. Greenery in Singapore, as we learnt isn’t an accident but a deliberate attempt led from the top. It is true when they say that great cities don’t just happen but have to be shaped either by individuals with foresight or an ever-interested community.

tags: landscape, Singapore, urbanscape, city

[tags]Singapore, urban, Lee Kuan Yew[/tags]

Is this a new type of urban squatting? [via MAKE] And how long before it gets outlawed?

Google, one of the most innovative companies on the block today stays on the top not by resting on its laurels (an awesome search engine) but by continuously adding to its multitude of web services. Google Maps apart from offering satellite views now gives you a street-level view of certain urban districts in the United States. Here is a streetview of San Francisco and here is one of New York’s Times Square.

Wired Magazine even put up a contest that allowed readers to send in submissions of Google Streetview ‘gotchas’. The contest received overwhelming responses and admittedly some extremely funny ones. But few visuals catch people sun-bathing or entering an adult bookstore; something that not everyone is comfortable parading in front of the world. A group pool of photographs on Flickr captures more such examples. New York Times picked up the story from Boing Boing that put the technology into perspective - would we be comfortable if Streetview if it was done by the NSA or CIA instead of Google? Now, that’s an interesting one. In an interview with NY Times, a woman in Oakland, CA expressed her opinion on violation of privacy when she saw a picture of her apartment window where her cat sitting inside is clearly visible. She says:

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Via Treehugger, I get this news that New York is getting a major upgrade in its street furniture. Apartment Therapy gives us more insight on the public toilets:

“These state-of-the-art facilities offer comfort, hygiene, accessibility, and security to the public, within a modern design. Designed to self-sanitize after each use, the APTs will also be serviced twice a day for inspection and system maintenance, affording the people of New York a safe and valuable convenience.”

Any decent, aesthetically-pleasing, and of course, functional street furniture is always welcome in an urban environment. Hopefully these will be self-financed by the advertisement space they offer so as not to be a burden on the tax payers. Cemusa, a Spanish Outdoor firm has reportedly won a $1billion contract to sell ads on New York’s street furniture.

In spite of the fact that humans occupy less than 1% of the total land available on Earth, land scarcity is an omnipresent urban reality. Partly due to urban aggregation behavior and availability of conducive habitable spaces, the fight for space especially in urban areas has been intense. Be it the ever-growing slums in Mumbai or the problem of homeless in New York, the fight is also never fair or equal. Although common sense tells us that economics should be enough to dictate property rights, the point of contention arises at the boundaries of public and private space. As in this case:

A Madison Avenue antiques dealer is suing a group of unidentified homeless people for $1 million, saying that the group has taken up residence outside his posh Upper East Side business, using the sidewalk in front of the shop as a urinal, spittoon and occasional dressing room [source].

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Architecture continues to push boundaries and of course, Daniel Libeskind is doing his share of pushing as designs for Gazprom City in St.Petersburg [HQ for the Russian gas giant] stream in. The building is expected to rise at least 300m into the air and symbolize the growing power of the firm. Check out the other designs in the image gallery - each is more ambitious than the other.

After 9/11, people were ready to write off towering skyscrapers as they tend to be sitting ducks for potential terrorism. But they are larger than ever and fears of terrorism are history. Right from the age of the Pyramids, bigger has always been considered better but is it really? Such a tall building in the heart of historic St.Petersburg is a virtual slap in the face of the city’s urbanscape. I have always believed in contextual design and this is so not it. But then again, change is revolutionary and departs from the status quo.

Technorati Tags: Daniel Libeskind, St. Petersburg, Gazprom, Russia, design, architecture, skyscraper

Alex Staffen at WorldChanging gives a thumbs up to Worldwatch’s new report on the State of the World in which they cite that by the end of 2010, we would have nearly 3.5 billion urbanites. Alex particularly likes the chapters that address the crossover between the urban and the natural regions of the world that underline the role of sustainable development. The three aspects - providing clean water and sanitation, farming the cities (’urban agriculture’), and reducing natural disaster risk in cities - would be key if we are to survive the growing wilderness that our cities are turning into.

Technorati Tags: urban, future, worldchanging, cities, sustainable development

The history of the streets in an urban landscape seems to be intricately tied in with the automobile and we wouldn’t envision a road without cars plying on them. But frankly, it never was that way to begin with. Streets and roads have always existed as a means to travel but the total dominance of cars on them is a recent phenomenon. Contested Streets: Breaking New York City Gridlock, a documentary highlighting the history and culture of New York City examines the role of the street from the pre-automobile era to the current gridlocked scenario. A recent report suggested that the city will face an all-day rush hour by 2030.

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I have always believed in the experience of a place. When you visit a city, you not only go to its historic monuments and nightlife hotspots but also walk among ordinary people who go about their daily lives. Being a innocent bystander caught in the hustle bustle of city life is as voyueristic you can get without feeling too bad.

The annual NYC festival for contemporary psychogeography (what a delightful word!) - Conflux Festival - is currently underway in Brooklyn, NYC. It runs through until September 17th. The festival “brings together mapmakers, urban adventures, and performers to investigate the physical and psychological landscapes of cities [via].”

The list of projects seem quite interesting. The 24 hour roadtrip through the 5 boroughs of New York City would be a big draw for all those enamoured to take bite off the  Big Apple. Avenue 5.5 will aim to take you from 37th Street to Rockefeller Center without even setting foot on an actual Manhattan avenue:

An escape route, a municipal wormhole, a slow-motion space
mountain…Avenue 5.5 is an alternative walking tour that maps a unique
path through a variety of interior and exterior public spaces that
connect certain New York City blocks. This architectural tunnel
includes spaces such as arcades, atriums, parks and parking lots. As a
concept this project deals primarily with the idea of autonomous
exploration and the potential for a person to chart one’s own path
through the city thereby creating a sense of familiarity and ownership,
or in other words a type of ritual that creates an emotional connection
to the grid unique from conventional “sidewalk subsistence”.

The very fact that this is possible makes New York so damn exciting. Borough Edges will take you along the actual accessible perimeters of the five boroughs of New York City. For a city that has a long coastline, we don’t see much of it either in its lifestyle or in its manifestation. City Sample takes a cue from Stomp and attempts to transform urban noises into music. If these don’t excite you enough, then you must venture out into the night for a wild chase. Journey to the End of the Night stages a mock chase using your two feet and public transportation as you flee unknown pursuers. Geeks can think of this as a real-life video game.

These are just few of the examples. For an entire list of projects that would keep you busy throughout the days of the festival, visit their project page.

Technorati Tags: conflux, new york, urban planning, borough, brooklyn, manhattan, art, experience, urbanscape

I recall applying for a job in Bend, Oregon (yup, what was I thinking). Somehow that place popped up to my attention once again. It seems that Ron Meyers is building a real-world Shire - a new subdivision is based on Tolkien’s characters in the Lord of the Rings trilogy and the Hobbit.

The houses — going for $550,000 to $850,000 — will feature gabled roofs with faux-straw thatch made from thin strands of PVC that promotional literature says “is essentially windproof, rainproof, fireproof and guaranteed not to
discolor.”

Meyers has taken the liberty of renaming an irrigation canal next to The Shire as Brandywine Brook. He’s happy to show off two Hobbit holes otherwise known as storage sheds. Still, the parts of The Shire that are complete — the small amphitheater, paved pathways, flowery gardens — have an undeniable Middle Earth quality.

When built out at 6.5-acres, The Shire will have 15 cottages and 16 town houses encircling a central gathering place called the sanctuary. The first properties will go on sale this winter.

Like Meyers, I haven’t read LOTR but enjoyed the movies immensely. I particularly loved Bilbao Baggin’s home with its rounded openings. It reminded me of Nari Gandhi’s creations. For ardent LOTR fans, you might enjoy walking down streets of Village Homes in Davis, California where they are named for people or places in the trilogy.

Technorati Tags: Lord of the Rings, LOTR, Shire, Oregon, sub division, housing, residential