This is the third post in a three-part series reviewing and summarizing the CNU21 suggested reading list. CNU21 is this year’s annual Congress for the New Urbanism conference and will be held at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah May 29th through June 1st, 2013. The first review and summary discussed, “Cities [...]
This post summarizes the CNU21 Preview Podcast, “Thinking Globally, Building Locally.” CNU21 is this year’s annual Congress for the New Urbanism conference and will be held at the Grand America Hotel in Salt Lake City, Utah May 29th through June 1st, 2013. For this podcast preview, John Norquist, the current President of the Congress for [...]
How can we most effectively prevent crime? America has invested a lot of money in its prison system. In fact, the FY 2013 budget requests $8.6 billion for federal prisons and detentions according to the US Department of Justice. However, there is a different, more contemporary thought process that does not agree with this type [...]
It is really disappointing that every time we think of schools, a rigid, concrete structure comes to mind. Even in kindergarten, some of us remember playing inside the building, rather than enjoying a large green playground. Hopefully, this won’t have to be the case for our children. A few months ago, the municipality of Thessaloniki, Greece, [...]
“Above all, do not lose your desire to walk.” – Søren Aabye Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher Danish architect, Jan Gehl’s, latest book, Cities for People (Island Press, 2010), explores the better designs of cities through designs for the people to live and work simultaneously. In this follow-up to Life Between Buildings (1971), Gehl explores the shifting [...]
With the continuing onset of urbanization, urban poverty continues to grow and so does the importance of food security. The subsequent response to this emerging problem has been the emergence of community gardening and locally produced foods for many city-dwellers. In addition, with increased urbanization comes the issue of poor and unsanitary living conditions and [...]
In the summer of 2012 I was a fresh graduate from the University of Texas at Austin, trying to make my way into the working world. Having been an Urban Studies student minoring in Architecture, I was hopeful I would be able to find work in which I could apply my passion for urban development, [...]
Do you have a unique specialty in the field of environmental design? Do you currently live in a town or city that has not/or is currently not being covered by another blogger? Have you successfully managed social media platforms? Do you have a passion for writing and want to learn how to successfully blog? If [...]
Work has been done to create “smart communities,” a concept which includes information technologies as indicators for future urban planning and development, but there is still some blurriness about what these transformations really intend to do. In a October 2007 report presented by Smart Cities in Europe, developed by the University of Ljubljana, Vienna University of Technology and Delft University [...]
The University of Michigan is a world-class university with its main campus in the idyllic small-town Ann Arbor, Michigan. Students and Ann Arbor natives often refer to their little slice of heaven as “28 square miles surrounded by reality.” The reality coming to mind now is the high poverty, crime, and population decline plaguing Detroit, [...]
On the surface, the iconic 200-year-old urban grid of New York City’s Manhattan Island towers over the surrounding hinterland. John Randel Jr., who surveyed & engineered the future of NYC urban growth from 1818-1820, used hand drawn maps that effectively mapped out today’s modern metropolis. But New York City, like all cities, also carries a [...]
Gonzaga University (GU) has been in the same location across the river from downtown Spokane since its opening in 1887. GU is within a 20-minute walk from downtown, and maintains a balanced mix of park-like campus setting with just a few urban touches thrown in. Gonzaga University has grown and evolved with the city, and [...]
Ultimately, the real strength of The BLDGBLOG Book is Geoff Manaugh’s skills as a compelling storyteller. As Manaugh delves into the world of Landscape Futures in the fifth and final chapter of his book, the reader is simultaneously immersed in the floating canal city of London A.D. 2109 and in the Cloud City that hovers [...]
The main slogan for this past August 29, 2012 event was “Towards the Buenos Aires of 2030;” and for now Megaciudades is the most important conference regarding Urban Planning and Sustainability taking place in the city on an annual basis. In its third year, the event was organized by the German-Argentine Chamber of Commerce and Industry, [...]
Today, Spokane, Washington and Portland, Oregon are home to multiple universities, both public and private. They also have a reputation with their locals for having quality live performances and concerts featuring local, as well as popular, artists. Both have their respective small coffee roasters that most residents are loudly proud of, Stumptown and Thomas Hammer. [...]
Wow, how fast time does fly! It seems like only yesterday that I was signing my first set of paperwork to do my internship with Global Site Plans. Initially, I must admit that I was a little nervous about doing an internship with Global Site Plans because I feared that I could not produce quality [...]
Museums have recently become a hallmark topic in the teaching of architecture, as many architecture schools tend to include several museum projects in their design studio curricula, and that shouldn’t surprise anyone since we live in an age of the museum as a paradigmatic architectural and cultural enterprise. With the increasing popularity of critical writing, [...]
For over a decade, the Congress for the New Urbanism (CNU) has given professionals and students in architecture, landscape, and urban design the opportunity to compete across multiple categories for the annual CNU Charter Awards. The Charter Awards honor a select number of winners, honorable mentions, and two grand prize winners: one professional and one [...]
The explosion of online education in the past decade is rapidly changing the face of education. In 2006, 3.5 million students were listed as enrolled in an “online learning institution of higher education.” In 2009, it was asserted that 44% of USA post-secondary students were taking either some or all of their courses online. This [...]
In Thessaloniki, Northern Greece, on May 24 2012, the Hellenic Institute of Transport (HIT), the Greek Center for Research and Technology along with the municipality of Thessaloniki, and the Hellenic Institute of Transportation Engineers, presented the project “You are a click away.” This project will suggest intelligent, environmentally-friendly, and sustainable transportation solutions to citizens of [...]
