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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: Zurich
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 Uncategorized, What if?, Placemaking, Transportation, Josh Grigsby, transit, Culture, Livability, Auto Independence, human scale, walkable, architecture, urban design, urban planning, can bicycles save the world?
Tagged seattle, transit, vancouver, portland, Copenhagen, mobility, Los Angeles, Massachusetts, human scale, San Francisco, walkability, Cambridge, mixed-use, Zurich, Switzerland, built environment, urban core, bicycles, social change, Providence, bikability, autodependence, medieval walled cities, low density, sunbelt, beach cruiser, sustainable settlements, rhode island, denmark, urban density, population density, brooklyn, manhattan, college town, modern cities, permeable pavers, concrete jungle, complete ecosystems, obesity, air pollution, noise pollution, cooperation, classism, Euclidean zoning, crime deterrent, accessibility, para-transit, trondheim, norway, trampe, working bikes
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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.
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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
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