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- Today's Moment of Idealistic Naivete: Wikileaks: http://wp.me/pCprU-mB 2 years ago
- Ending the War on Drugs: http://wp.me/pCprU-mw 2 years ago
- Twilight Of The Suburbs, Now Home To One-Third Of America's Poor http://huff.to/bGZP7F 2 years ago
- U.S. Subways Harness Kinetic Power To Recycle Train Energy http://huff.to/bVsXvR 2 years ago
- America's Walk Deficit http://yhoo.it/dijIvg 2 years ago
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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: Cambridge
Imagining a City Built for Bicycles
A lot is made, and rightfully so, of the differences between walkable cities and auto-dependent cities, but isn’t there a middle way? Truly walkable cities, like most medieval walled cities and their small town USA descendents, aren’t really cities in the modern context. They can’t accommodate the scale and diversity we now associate with a city. Auto-dependent cities handle scale and diversity just fine, but they disconnect people from the built environment and each other. But what if we built our cities for bicycles? What would that look like? What benefits and drawbacks would this model have?
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Posted in architecture, Auto Independence, can bicycles save the world?, Culture, human scale, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Placemaking, transit, Transportation, Uncategorized, urban design, urban planning, walkable, What if?
Tagged accessibility, air pollution, autodependence, beach cruiser, bicycles, bikability, brooklyn, built environment, Cambridge, classism, college town, complete ecosystems, concrete jungle, cooperation, Copenhagen, crime deterrent, denmark, Euclidean zoning, human scale, Los Angeles, low density, manhattan, Massachusetts, medieval walled cities, mixed-use, mobility, modern cities, noise pollution, norway, obesity, para-transit, permeable pavers, population density, portland, Providence, rhode island, San Francisco, seattle, social change, sunbelt, sustainable settlements, Switzerland, trampe, transit, trondheim, urban core, urban density, vancouver, walkability, working bikes, Zurich
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A Question of Nomenclature: What is a Neighborhood?
What, exactly, is a neighborhood? People on all sides of the urban conversation talk about neighborhoods, trotting them out to support everything from transit oriented development to the suburban status quo, from Smart Growth to no growth. Formal definitions vary, but few include criteria beyond a set of distinctive characteristics shared by a contiguous geographic area inhabited by people who behave neighborly. Which, despite its vagueness, sounds sensible enough. Imprecise, but sensible. And yet, when I think about the neighborhoods I’ve lived in, or spent time in, few of them fit even this ambiguous definition.
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Posted in Culture, History, Josh Grigsby, Nomenclature, Personal Experiences, Sarasota, urban design, urban planning, vernacular architecture, walkable, What if?
Tagged American urbanism, Back BAy, boston, Burns Square, Cambridge, city planning, community planning, convenience shopping, definition of neighborhood, electricity, Florida, Greater New Orleans Community Data Center, Harvard Square, Jane Jacobs, Laurel Park, Main Street, Margaritaville, Methyl Street, Mongols, Montana Avenue, neighborhood, neighborhood association, New Urbanism, Nomenclature, North End, Pacific Palisades, pedestrians, planning theory, Providence, Santa Monica, Sarasota, Siege of Baghdad, small town, Smart Growth, surburban, Tamiami Trail, tourists, Towles Court, transit-oriented development, urban, village, walkable, zoning
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The World’s Most Beautiful Cities
Since beauty is subjective, we surveyed city specialists from a range of fields, including urban planning, architecture and sustainable development. Respondents include Reynolds and Michael Kaufman, an architect at Chicago-based architectural firm Goettsch Partners, as well as Raymond Levitt, director of the construction program in civil and environmental engineering at Stanford University, Tony McGuirk, an urban designer, architect and chairman of BDP in London, J. Hugh O’Donnell of urban engineering firm MMM International, and Ken Drucker, New York design director of architectural firm HOK.
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Posted in Culture
Tagged downtown, vancouver, architecture, New York City, Paris, ecological footprint, Stanley Park, Cambridge, London, urban design, cultural diversity, Florence, Forbes, Canada, urban planning, most beautiful cities, England, River Cam, King's College Chapel, Cambridge University, Tokyo, Amanda Reynolds, Urban Design Group, cityscape, Sydney, Tim Kiladze, Ian Cumming, France, Australia, Italy, Venice, Michael Kaufman, Goettsch Partners, Raymond Levitt, Stanford University, Tony McGuirk, BDP, Hugh O'Donnell, MMM International, Ken Drucker, HOK, boulevards, street life, Haussman, Eiffel Tower, Centre Pompidou, Institute du Monde Arab, height restrictions, cities of light, natural beauty, open air, Pacific Ocean, Cape Town, South Africa, Sir Francis Drake, Kirstenbosch botanical garden, Table Mountain
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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
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