Urban Planning Blog

For those not living in the shadow of the Empire State Building and wondering what color is it displaying today, this site may be useful to satisfy that curious cat in you.

Prices will probably drop some more but personally I don’t expect to ever again see index values around 110.  Do you?  If we don’t see the massive drop back to “normal” levels then the run up in prices should be described as a shift to a new equilibrium - much as happened during World War II.

Alex Tabarrok at Marginal Revolution uses the oft-quoted Robert Shiller’s chart on home values and concludes that fundamentally there was no housing bubble.

Update: As expected, Paul Krugman has a response.

The above image is the winning entry in the Space Settlement Calendar Art Contest. More here.

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.

Quick calculations showed that, given construction costs in the 1990s, profits made from the market-rate sale of 560 apartments would finance 1,000 free homes for slum-dwellers. So, to give away 160,000 homes, developers would have to sell almost 90,000 full-price homes. In total, they would have to build 250,000 each year.

In an insightful article, Dilip D’Souza, writing for the Outlook section in the Washington Post explains the futility of the current slum redevelopment schemes in Mumbai.

I will always welcome the transfer of public property into private hands, and even the most left-liberal activist will agree that it is more preferable to hand over property rights to the “little guy” transparently than to big evil builders after intense backroom dealings.

Gaurav Sabnis, an Indian blogger takes the argument further and advocates transferring property rights to slum dwellers thus giving them a better say in negotiations with the builders.

My uncle, a builder and developer in the Mumbai suburbs runs his construction business through the model that Dilip suggests i.e. by redeveloping properties which have surplus FSI (Floor Space Index) and effectively giving free homes to the original residents while making the profit off the additional housing units that he sells at market rate. More on the impact of that strategy for the housing condition in Mumbai later.

Architect Vincent Callebaut’s latest project balances public galleries, meeting rooms and gathering spaces over canals and abandoned railroad tracks in the 19th Parisian district. Callebaut describes the process as an intention to “absorb and recycle by photo-catalytic effect the cloud of harmful gases (Smog) from the intense traffic near Paris” [source: Inhabitat].

Definitely a worthy and proactive effort at going beyond the traditional green architecture.

…is in Algarrobo. Where’s that? In Chile. In the San Alfonso del Mar Resort. That thing is nearly a kilometer long and holds 66 million gallons of water [via Neatorama]. Of course, Dubai is pissed that it doesn’t have something as large and is rumored to be promptly building something just as large. Yeah, we know Dubai is in the desert but if you haven’t heard they already have an indoor ski slope so what’s so great about a large body of unfrozen water?

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.

Apologies all around for letting this blog rot in oblivion. I had this little thing of getting married to take care of over the winter break. Hopefully, things shall be rosy again.

19 cities in the world with 20 million people in the 21st century. Read more on the mega trend of our century. The world is urbanizing rapidly whether you like it or not.

Compact housing taken to the limits. More here. This is recycling at its best; using old containers to build housing.

“There’s so much comedy on television. Does that cause comedy in the streets?” - Dick Cavett.

[via the ever-so-excellent Jessica Hagy's Indexed.]

I used to love going to the Dogwood Festival in Piedmont PArk when I was living in Atlanta. The Brazos Valley Worldfest in Historic Downtown Bryan seems somewhat similar. This year’s event is scheduled for November 17, 2007 and has a variety of activities including performances, culture displays, vendors selling international goods, and best of all, international cuisine. I’m looking forward to attending it and just wish that my new DSLR would arrive in time.

Bikes have their own traffic light in Budapest, Hungary.