Earlier this week, the EPA designated Brooklyn’s Gowanus Canal as a Superfund site, much to the chagrin of developers and local group Clean Gowanus Now! (their punctuation, not mine), two groups that generally prefer Mayor Bloomberg’s faster, cheaper cleanup plan, which (because it is faster and cheaper) would allow for major development projects to proceed much more quickly.
But as [...]
Thanks to the efforts of a few groups and many volunteers, Detroit just completed what is surely a prerequisite to crafting a coherent plan of urban rejuvenation: it took an inventory. Specifically, volunteers combed Detroit’s streets to determine and document the condition of Detroit’s nearly 350,000 residential parcels (not including buildings w/ more than 4 [...]
In light of the fact that Chicago (well, the Chicago region) is first among cities that can boast as backdrops for Frank Lloyd Wright’s legacy, I thought it only appropriate to take inspiration from him for fixing Chicago’s most recent, ill-fated, act of architectural braggadocio.
Among the thousands of real-estate developments that fell victim to changing economic [...]
One city just passed a measure to spend roughly $600 million over 20 years on its bicycling infrastructure; one city is in the midst of planning similar improvements that, if fully built out, would cost an estimated $230 million.
The substantial difference between the two figures might lead you believe two things: that the $600 million [...]
Olympics may fail to regenerate east London, report warns
As construction continues at the east London site for the 2016 Olympics, evidence continues to accumulate that, per tradition, London’s Olympic legacy may include a combination of unfulfilled promises, under-funded budgets, and forlorn facilities.
A committee of the Greater London Authority just released a entirely unsurprising report in which [...]
Here is Part III in our 7-part series on architectural renaissance-ready American cities. Previous entries: Buffalo, New York and Detroit, Michigan.
It would be easy to discuss the city of New Orleans without reference to its history prior to 2005; after all, it’s streets were so thoroughly soaked from just three days of water, wind, and [...]
A few months ago, I posted about a Columbia University lecture on Denmark’s success in make bicycling an integral part of their transportation system. The lecturer’s main point - with which I largely agreed - was that Denmark’s bicycling culture was not purely the result of some sort of organic growth made possible by Copenhagen’s [...]
Here is Part II in our 7-part series on architectural renaissance-ready American cities. Our last entry: Buffalo, New York.
Reputations, good and bad, tend to lag reality. Except in Detroit. For years, Detroit was like Buffalo, which I wrote about last week; its bad reputation fit the reality on the ground, due to abandoned homes, crumbling towers, and [...]
By now, most architects and design professionals know about Dubai’s belated (and deserved) encounter with something approaching economic reality.
During the last two decades, Dubai proved itself to be the United Arab Emirates’ most enthusiastic practitioner of the art of capitalism and until last week, when Dubai World (Dubai’s state-run development company) nearly collapsed under roughly [...]
Leon Krier is a provocateur. I was reminded of this when I read about a talk he recently gave to a group of professionals in San Diego, which predictably included a bit of praise for that city’s Balboa Park and a bit of chagrin for some of that city’s objectively-unappealing modern architecture.
Being the man of provocation that [...]