…expounding on the wealth of the cities. But he has aged more than 30 years since then. Hmmm…I wonder what is he doing now?
Yearly Archives: 2011
Urban Planning Books as Gifts
Tis’ the season for gifts and what better gifts than books on urban planning. I revived the Urban Planning Bookstore on this blog after abruptly shutting it down last year. I later realized that plenty of people had in fact used it to find interesting books. Anyway, I am listing some books that I had the pleasure of reading this past year and think they’ll make excellent gifts:
- Hyperborder: The Contemporary U.S.-Mexico Border and It’s Future
- Last Harvest: From Cornfield to New Town: Real Estate Development from George Washington to the Builders of the Twenty-First Century, and Why We Live in Houses Anyway
- The Warhol Economy: How Fashion, Art, and Music Drive New York City
- The Spaces of the Modern City: Imaginaries, Politics, and Everyday Life
- The Cul-de-Sac Syndrome: Turning Around the Unsustainable American Dream
- Delirious New York: A Retroactive Manifesto for Manhattan
- Large Parks
- To Build New York: 100 Years of Infrastructure
- Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
- At Home: A Short History of Private Life
Couple of books in this list are available in Kindle format. I have been using the Kindle app on my iPad to read books and find it really convenient.
The Transportation Planning Rule Every City Should Reform
The source of the disconnect between San Francisco's transit-first heart and its car-centric hand is an arcane engineering measure called "level of service," or LOS. In brief, LOS suggests that whenever the city wants to change some element of a street — say by adding a bike lane or even just painting a crosswalk — it should calculate the effect that change will have on car traffic. If the change produces too much congestion, then a great deal of time, money, and additional analysis must go toward the project's consideration.
[Link to The Transportation Planning Rule Every City Should Reform]
Hip Cities That Think About How They Work
This survey is not based solely on quality of life, number of trees or the cost of a month’s rent. Instead, we examine some cities that aim to be both smart and well managed, yet have an undeniably hip vibe. Our pick of cities that are, in a phrase, both great and good:
Ice Cube Architecture
Ice Cube talks architecture. Now when did you talk rap? Your turn, architects.
What makes Shivaji Park more accessible than Oval Maidan
For a city starved of public spaces, the Oval Maidan is an exemplar of barriers destroying urbanity. In order, presumably, to preserve the grounds from the depredations of undesirables, the Oval is fenced off with railings that put you in mind of a penitentiary no matter which side you are on. Inside, a few cricket pitches are tended to for a filtered few to use. The narrow ‘public’ path joining the Art Deco to the Neo-Gothic stretch only emphasises the impression of one being out of place.
On how open public spaces are ruined by enclosing them.
[Link to What makes Shivaji Park more accessible than Oval Maidan]
Middle-Class Areas Shrink as Income Gap Grows
The portion of American families living in middle-income neighborhoods has declined significantly since 1970, according to a new study, as rising income inequality left a growing share of families in neighborhoods that are mostly low-income or mostly affluent.
Decline of heterogeneity. I'm not sure that's a good thing.
The Pedestrian Loses the Way
IN the future, perhaps our time will be known as the first decade of the Bicycle Wars, with righteous armies fighting over traffic lanes, bike paths and sidewalks, indeed over the very purpose of the streets themselves. Like many wars, it’s a question of territory, and the pedestrian has been losing for years.
[Link to The Pedestrian Loses the Way]
Sustainable Living Architecture in Action
A bridge in Meghalaya constructed by the living roots of Fig Trees.
How Blind People Cross the Street
It is so simple to make pedestrian crossings accesible and safe for blind people that I wonder why we don’t do it too all.