With Gas Over $4, Cities Explore Whether It’s Smart to Be Dense – WSJ.com Have had this article open in a browser tab for days now — time to bookmark. Along with posts by CEOs for Cities, or Richard Florida, this article too points to the effect that gasoline prices are having on suburban housing, […]
Looming Debate, by Veronique Vienne (Metropolis Magazine) – Annotated Interesting article (with some inaccuracies, too), focused chiefly on Bertrand Delanoe, the “Situationist”-inspired left-leaning, assassination attempt survivor and openly gay mayor of Paris, who gets blind-sided by Nikolas Sarkozy, the pro-business president of France, who wants Paris to be a bit more get-go-ish. Delanoe is on […]
Inga Saffron’s Philadelphia Inquirer column about a recent speech by Philadelphia mayor Michael Nutter includes this great sound bite from the mayor: “We are a walkable city, increasingly home to bicycles,” Nutter declared. “We want to preserve our urban form. We do not want the automobile and its design requirements to dominate the landscape.” [emphasis […]
“Pay your voluntary carbon taxes: Move into the fashionable high-rise city,” by John Barber (globeandmail) Barber’s article links the ideas expressed around the demise of suburbs due to rising fuel costs, the benefits of densifying the cities (by building up, not out), and discussions around carbon taxes. “Meanwhile, the free market is applying its own […]
In praise of the lost art of strolling, by Christopher Hume (Toronto Star) – Annotated Last (so far) in what almost amounts to a series of articles on the importance to a true urban fabric of sidewalks and pedestrians. Hume adds some interesting speculation around Modernism’s aversion to mingling/ chance encounters. tags: thestar, christopher_hume, pedestrians, […]
In Defense of Townhouses — Sightline Daily (formerly Tidepool) – great article by Eric de Place on why so many new TH developments are so ugly. As his lede says, “How parking laws make housing expensive. And ugly.” tags: sightline_daily, seattle, urban_design, urbanplanning, cars, parking, architecture
As it happened, Christopher Hume’s follow-up story today in the Toronto Star on the Leslieville big-box debacle, Wal-Mart and the city an uneasy mix (which I blogged about here), made some points that coincided nicely with a story by Shannon Proudfoot, which appeared in yesterday’s Province (Vancouver), about food deserts in cities: Suburbs cause ‘food […]
I started reading Fred Wilson back in January when one of outside.in’s blog posts referenced Wilson’s entry, Rethinking The Local Paper. Wilson is a NYC-based venture capitalist/ investor who funds start-ups related to new media, social networking, online technologies, …that sort of thing. He’s also quite brilliant, blogs (A VC – Musings of a VC […]
Two items about suburbia came across my horizon recently. One is a USA Today report on Chinese delegations coming to the US to study planned suburbs: Modern suburbia not just in America anymore by Haya El Nasser (today, April 18), which has an ominous (to my ears) conclusion, although there’s a lot of interesting stuff […]
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