Since we began posting here at A Town Square, in November of 2007, it has always been with an eye to using the blog as a research and development platform for a book, or something like a book. Who knows – maybe an HBO mini-series.
The book, with a working title of The Next City: Shaping [...]
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 »
Lisbon, Cadiz, Casablanca – some of our recent destinations. In each of these cities there is at least one district, or urban quarter, that is dense, rich, bustling with activity, alive, completely walkable, and as ever, fragile. Each faces pressure from gentrification, adjacent development, cars. (Only the Old Medina is so dense that cars are excluded, [...]
Read Full Post »
A slum in Manila.
“All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.” Christopher Morley, Where the Blue Begins.
I continue to search for a vernacular urbanism for the next city. After some reflection, I have concluded that what I am looking for is an urbanism that is local in character, conditional, [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: urbanism, Vernacular urbanism, tagged access to excess, Alfama, micro-urbanism, Pomeioc, The next city, urbanism, Vernacular urbanism on September 15, 2008 | Leave a Comment »
The Algonquin town of Pomeioc. Watercolor by Captain John White, 1585.
“…comprising the dwellings and all other buildings of the people. Related to their environmental contexts and available resources they are customarily owner- or community-built, utilizing traditional technologies. All forms of vernacular architecture are built to meet specific needs, accommodating the values, economies and ways of [...]
Read Full Post »
Posted in The next city, The next city: energy, The next city: infrastructure, The next city: mobility, The next city: urbanism, The next city: water, Vernacular urbanism, tagged cars are obsolete, hutong, Koolhaas Dubai, Masdar, Shibam, streetcars and the Chicago block, The next city, urbanism, Vernacular urbanism on September 8, 2008 | 1 Comment »
“The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand.” Italo Calvino
Shibam, Yemen, photo by Jialiang Gao: an ancient pattern of dense, high-rise desert urbanism.
What should the next city look like, and how should we inhabit the future? I have been puzzling over these questions for quite a long time. For [...]
Read Full Post »
