Search Planologieblog
twitter.com/planologieblog
- Today's Moment of Idealistic Naivete: Wikileaks: http://wp.me/pCprU-mB 1 year ago
- Ending the War on Drugs: http://wp.me/pCprU-mw 1 year ago
- Twilight Of The Suburbs, Now Home To One-Third Of America's Poor http://huff.to/bGZP7F 1 year ago
- U.S. Subways Harness Kinetic Power To Recycle Train Energy http://huff.to/bVsXvR 1 year ago
- America's Walk Deficit http://yhoo.it/dijIvg 1 year ago
-
Recent Posts
- Today’s Moment of Idealistic Naivete: Wikileaks
- Ending the War on Drugs
- The Most Walkable Cities in the World
- It’s Where We Live
- Can Cities Feed Themselves?
- French Street Artist Wins TED Humanitarian Prize
- Dimanche Sans Voiture
- Are Brussels and Los Angeles Sister Cities?
- Masdar begs the question: What exactly is meant by “a sustainable city?”
- Is Generation Y Passing on Cars?
- Can Cities Make Us Crazy?
- Stranger Studies 101: Cities as Interaction Machines
- Does New Orleans Have an Identity Crisis?
- Three Urban Interventions in Two Hours: NYC
- Cargo Bike Spotted…
Tag Archives: Amsterdam
Cycling Friendly Cities
The film features lots of happy cyclists from the Netherlands, Denmark and Colombia, and shows how creating a bicycle-friendly city is the civilised thing to do.
Scripted by Enrique Peñalosa, former mayor of Bogotá and the poster-child for city-wide bicycle advocacy, the movie was produced by the Netherlands-based Interface for Cycling Expertise (I-CE).
Continue reading
Posted in Auto Independence, can bicycles save the world?, Climate Change, Culture, human scale, Livability, Placemaking, Sustainability, Transportation, urban design, urban planning, walkable, What if?
Tagged Amsterdam, bicycle advocacy, bicycle friendly, Bogota, Carlton Reid, Columbia, Copenhagen, cycling friendly cities, denmark, Enrique Penalosa, Houten, Interface for Cycling Expertise, jan gehl, Netherlands, quickrelease.tv, youtube
3 Comments
Beauty Kills—A Self-Rebuttal: Or, Why Joel Kotkin isn’t Always Wrong
In my recent post, Universal Beauty and the Responsibility of Cities, I argued that beauty is an essential element of urbanism. Forget all of that for a moment; here’s the other side of the coin: beauty kills. It can turn cities into lifeless museums animated only by tourists, inhibiting creativity and innovation while exacerbating segregation and homogenization. Look at any interior design magazine spread; room upon room of artful still-life orchestration. These are rooms that pose, not rooms that are lived in. Look at fashion models, their faces inscrutable and eyes vacant. True, this is not the sort of beauty I was advocating, but an emphasis on beauty can quickly lead one astray if untempered. Beauty is essential, yes, but it can be as intoxicating as drugs, and potentially as destructive.
Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, Rants, Response Pieces, Sustainability, Uncategorized, What if?
Tagged Amsterdam, ancient Athens, ancient Rome, art, Aspen, Auckland, compact cities, Copenhagen, creativity, cultural diversity, Economist Intelligence Unit, European cities, Florence, Forbes, Geneva, growth, Helsinki, homogenization, Houston, inventory of the possible, Islamic Baghdad, Joel Kotkin, Livability, London, Los Angeles, low birth rate, Melbourne, Mercer, Monocle, Mumbai, Munich, New Geography, New York, Palm Beach, Perth, pollution, poverty, quality of life, Renaissance, Rene Descartes, responsible urbanism, segregation, Shanghai, social dynamism, sprawl, Sustainability, Switzerland, technology, Toronto, universal beauty, urban tension, Vail, vancouver, Vienna, Zurich
Leave a comment
Universal Beauty and the Responsibility of Cities
In chapter eight of Anthony M. Tung’s erudite and impressive Preserving the World’s Great Cities: The Destruction and Renewal of the Historic Metropolis, there is a passage that stopped me in my proverbial tracks and hasn’t left my thoughts since. Tung is writing about Amsterdam at the dawn of the 20th century:
As parts of the inner city became slums and were threatened with clearance, and as picturesque canals were filled in to create new roads and better circulation, elements of the historic environment began to be eliminated. Growing numbers of citizens became alarmed and called for preservation of the historic center. In addition, a new ring of speculative housing began to surround the old metropolis. Numerous Amsterdammers began to ask that the expansion of the city meet a reasonable standard of beauty. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, Rants, Sustainability, Uncategorized, What if?
Tagged American cities, Amsterdam, Angkor Wat, Anthony Tung, Austin, Babylon, Baltimore, Beauty, Bicycle Diaries, Cambridge, Camillo Sitte, Chapel Hill, Chicago, cobblestone, Craftsman bungalows, David Byrne, Denver, farm houses, Frank Gehry, google maps, H.P. Berlage, historic preservation, Invisible Cities, Iroquois Confederacy, Italo Calvino, J.R.R. Tolkien, Key West cottages, Kyoto, Main Street, McMansions, medieval cities, modernism, modernization, Mulholland Drive, municipal, neighborhoods, New England fishing village, Pantheon, Paris, parking lots, Parthenon, Peter Jackson, Petra, Plan Zuid, portland, public way, pyramids at Giza, quality of life, Ray Kappe, Rivendell, San Francisco, Santa Monica, Santorini, Sarasota, Sausalito, screen shots, Seven Generation, Shire, shopping malls, slum clearance, sprawl, Stefan Sagmeister, stewardship, street grid, strip malls, Sustainability, Tibor Kalman, trailer parks, urbanism, Varanasi, Vienna, Wonder
3 Comments
from Copenhagenize: Bicycle Commuter Superhighways
The City of Copenhagen is currently planning to expand the existing, extensive network of bike lanes to extend farther out into the suburbs. A network of 13 high-class routes – ‘bicycle superhighways’ if you will – dedicated to bicycle commuters and aimed at encouraging more to cycle to work. Continue reading
Posted in Culture, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, Rants, Shout Outs, Sustainability, transit, Transportation, What if?
Tagged Amsterdam, auto-dependence, best practices, bike infrastructure, biking, Copenhagen, Copenhagenize.com, Ecclesiastes, ecological footprint, Freiburg, Groningen, historic cities, human scale, Pete Seeger, transit, urban consolidation, walking
Leave a comment
