Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged GDP, Growth, The next city, urbanism on June 26, 2009 | 4 Comments »
I’ll make this short. I am very cranky this afternoon, and I admit it. The lead from the AP wire, a few minutes ago: “Consumers are saving more than they’re spending, and that has investors worried.” What?!?!
Okay, so what, really, is the point of our economy? A rising GDP is the whole game? After a long [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, Urban design, tagged City block, infrastructure, Oregon, Salem, The next city, urbanism on June 16, 2009 | 3 Comments »
I have speculated here repeatedly about taking a single existing urban block off the grids. I have come to believe that the scale of a single city block may be the most affordable, and rational, way to retool existing urban neighborhood infrastructures: power, heat, water, gardens, all in the alley. And now it turns out that I am way, [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged cities, energy, food, mobility, scale, urbanism, water on June 9, 2009 | 4 Comments »
The largest city on earth – Tokyo. Image by Altus.
I have often found myself reflecting here on matters of scale – of blocks and streets, of cities and neighborhoods. Recently I have found myself thinking about the relationship between the really, really big, and the fairly tiny. Let me explain.
We lead our daily lives in familiar, [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: food, The next city: urbanism, Urban design, tagged Dutch cities, Ruisdael, The next city, Urban design, urbanism, van der Hayden on May 5, 2009 | 11 Comments »
Amsterdam, painted by Jan Micker in 1652, 350 years before Google Earth.
Lately I have been provoked to reflect on the shapes and forms of urbanism past and future, about the nature of compact and dense urban places, and about what makes the next city, or any city, literally sustainable. Let me explain.
This last weekend we had a chance to [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged billions, high speed rail, scale, urbanism on April 3, 2009 | 3 Comments »
We hear every day now about the staggering sums of money being thrown at this and that sinking sector of our nation’s economy. It’s hard to understand the scale of all of this. I am just now starting to figure out what a toxic asset is, and I am struggling to grasp what $700 billion dollars means. Or $50 [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, Vernacular urbanism, tagged American urbanism, Microurbanism, Office of Urban Policy, shovel-ready, urbanism, Vernacular urbanism on January 16, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Image from flickr.
“Once we accept that our cities will not be like the cities of the past, it will become possible to see what they might become.” Witold Rybczynski, City Life.
When he wrote those words in 1995, Rybczynski was actually “glimpsing the urban future,” and seeing it as a low-density and low-rise city, amorphous and sprawling, completely [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: urbanism, tagged Keynes, Paradox of Thrift, regionalism, The next city, urbanism on December 28, 2008 | 2 Comments »
The North Sea. Photo by Captain Tim.
Spend? Save? It turns out that economist John Maynard Keynes came up with a name for the quandary I am in about saving, spending, and an economy we are watching slip beneath the waves faster than a melting glacier. He called it the Paradox of Thrift.
The Paradox goes like this: [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: food, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, tagged energy, food policy, infrastructure, mobility, Obama infrastructure plan, plumber-in-chief, The next city, urbanism, water on December 17, 2008 | 3 Comments »
Announced just over a week ago, your new infrastructure fund is now gone, Mr. President. It’s all been spent already, several times over, by politicians, constructors, lobbyists, trade associations. Get your staff to try googling “Obama infrastructure plan,” and up pop hundreds of thousands of web sites, and nearly every newspaper, magazine, financial analyst, and [...]
Read Full Post »
