Posted in A Town Square, The next city, The next city: urbanism, Urban design, tagged Brunner, Cutler, Olmsted, Rochester, sprawl, urbanism on December 17, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Rochester, New York. Photo from Wiki.
What better way to get to know a new home place than to imagine it as a case study for examining the next city?
Here we are in our new neighborhood, and in between fresh paint, endless trips to the hardware store, and nearly daily (but very enjoyable) snow shoveling, I [...]
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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, [...]
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We went for a stroll this morning, in lovely Capitol Hill. And to my complete delight, we discovered a wonderful surprise just blocks from our house. Take a look.
Yes, folks, those are rails for the DC streetcar. They are sitting quietly on a prepared bed, next to a slab that will extend the width of the sidewalk [...]
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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 [...]
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Shenzen, China.
When I decried a dozen generations of dead-end urbanism recently, what exactly did I mean? Let me explain.
A dozen generations is about how long it has taken us to move from the pre-industrial city of the 18th century to the post industrial city we find ourselves inhabiting today. And about how long it has [...]
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Posted in The next city, The next city: urbanism, Urban design, tagged Babel, Burnham, City of tomorrow, Ebenezer Howard, Jared Diamond, L'Enfant, Nauvoo, Pullman, Urban design, urbanism on March 25, 2009 | Leave a Comment »
Pieter Bruegel the Elder, The Tower of Babel, 1563.
We humans never seem to tire of imagining and constructing the next city, searching for an ideal home. For millennia we have conjured up cities of intent – urban places that we have designed to represent certain purposes. These intended cities fall into one of at least three categories.
First [...]
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