Search Planologieblog
twitter.com/planologieblog
Error: Twitter did not respond. Please wait a few minutes and refresh this page.
-
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: Main Street
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.
Continue reading
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
Leave a comment
The High Cost of Ignoring Beauty
Architecture clearly illustrates the social, environmental, economic, and aesthetic costs of ignoring beauty. We are being torn out of ourselves by the loud gestures of people who want to seize our attention but give nothing in return.
Continue reading
Posted in architecture, Culture, Placemaking, urban design, urban planning
Tagged aesthetic principles, America, American.com, architecture, Britain, democratic culture, European cities, Main Street, McDonalds, mutual destruction, property rights, Roger Scruton, St. Mark's, The American, Why beauty matters
2 Comments
Shapes of Everyday Life
Vernacular architecture is traditional architecture. It gives a visible face and functional core to local patterns, ethnic and regional character. In our efforts to read this character through the everyday buildings around us, we look for recurring meaningful patterns. Traditions in vernacular architecture may last for generations, but they do change over time as social, economic and technological conditions change. To follow these changeable patterns, researchers have sorted vernacular buildings into sets of types, based on form, which demonstrate their evolution across time and space.
Continue reading
Posted in Culture, History, Local Inspiration, Neighbors, vernacular architecture
Tagged architectural style, architectural type, Boonslick, Bootheel, Colonial Revival, cultural identity, Georgian, Gothic, Greek Revival, Howard Wight Marshall, international commerce, Little Dixie, Main Street, Mission Revival, Missouri, Missouri Folklore Society, regional character, Rhineland, symbolism, traditional architecture, vernacular architecture, Williamsburg
Leave a comment
Site Analysis: Hawkins Court, Sarasota, Florida
Hawkins Court calls to mind Dutch woonerven, which allow autos to travel at foot speed through pedestrian space, as well as the (also Dutch) principle of “shared space,” in which all road users are given equal status and lines, signs, and signals are removed, is more applicable. Despite being only three blocks from Main Street, Hawkins Court manages to conjure something of the idyllic neighborhood vibe associated with the early days of suburbia and Small Town, USA.
Continue reading
Posted in Culture, human scale, Josh Grigsby, Livability, Local Inspiration, Neighbors, Placemaking, Sarasota, Site Analysis, Uncategorized, walkable, What if?
Tagged Burns Square, Cady's Alley, Dutch, Florida, Hawkins Court, Julia Place, Laurel Park, Main Street, neighborhood, orthogonal grid, Osprey Avenue, Payne Park, quality of place, right of way, Sarasota, Seaside, shared space, Small Town USA, street edge, Towles Court Artist Colony, woonerf, woonerven, Ybor City
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
