As a part of its plans to invest in sustainable transportation, Montreal has built several bicycle lanes over the years. However, traffic signals for bicycles have yet to follow in many neighbourhoods. Although there are traffic lights directed towards drivers and pedestrians, traffic signals on many streets do not “speak” to cyclists. While traditionally cyclists [...]
Like many global cities, Buenos Aires has more than one airport serving the transportation needs of its citizens. But the main international airport Ezeiza, located almost forty miles from the city center, lacks many of the so-called “ground services” – a term used in Airport Planning for defining all of the economic movement surrounding airport [...]
Everyday, urban residents around the world use energy without giving much thought as to where it comes from, how it is produced, and how safe it is to produce it. But on January 31, 2013, a series of explosions at the Richmond Chevron Refinery in Richmond, California raised important urban planning questions regarding the location [...]
The process of shale gas exhaustion, fracking, has been used since the late 1940s to help get “that last bit” of conventional oil and gas out of the ground. Conventional means that it is easy to get out, not tightly trapped between, or in the rocks, which is essentially the definition of unconventional oil and [...]
The League of American Bicyclists has been working over the past ten years to “identify the DNA” of bicycle-friendly cities. The League does not simply put out a list of the most friendly cities, businesses, and universities in the nation, but provides education on the important components of that DNA they have identified. The annual [...]
My commute to the university is not very long: I take a train, another train, and I’m as good as there. Still, almost every morning I ask my mobile app to tell me which way is the quickest. Maybe today I’ll switch at a different stop? When exactly will the next train arrive – is [...]
Increasing renewable energy generation is fundamental for sustainable development. Over the last 10 years, interest has grown in the potential for communities to take a more active role in renewable energy development. Community renewable energy is associated with sustainable rural development and more locally appropriate projects. There is currently much interest in the scope for [...]
In September 2012, New Yorkers were offered a first glimpse of what the Low Line will look like – New York City’s newest subterranean park, designed by co-founders James Ramsey and Dan Barish. According to the New Yorker, the exhibition, entitled “Imagining the Low Line,” on view through September 27, 2012, allowed visitors to “feel [...]
Just months prior to the 2010 Winter Olympics, Vancouver authorities proudly announced the opening of “The Canada Line,” Canada’s only fixed link between a major city and its international airport. The rapid transit train, which runs primarily underground between Vancouver’s city center and the outlying suburb city of Richmond, takes only 25 minutes to move [...]
I live in Athens, Greece. For the last two years there has been a big increase of people traveling by bike in the city. It seems that the economic crisis, which began in 2010, has a positive effect, at least for the environment. Fuel prices, as well as the increasing cost of mass transit tickets, [...]
The use of alternative energy is vital within our generation. As the prices of fossil fuels skyrocket and we are beginning to exhaust our natural resources it’s becoming inherently clear that we need to begin to think outside the box and utilize the energy around us that is so often overlooked. The city of Lincoln [...]
The Phoenix Metro area has seen a steady increase in ridership on the Valley Metro Light Rail.The surge in riders to almost 50,000 a day has prompted Phoenix Metropolitan area policymakers to accelerate the engineering, design, and completion of extensions, in some cases by seven years. Phoenix has made a valiant effort to provide access [...]
How does a city go from a bus-only transit system to a multi-modal network in a decade? Despite early setbacks, metropolitan Orlando is well on its way to getting connected. In the next few years, public and private projects — mostly on existing rails — will shape the way Central Floridians get around. Florida has [...]
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 city of Chicago’s flat topography makes it a bicyclist’s paradise, where despite the harsh winters, the lack of hills invites people to pedal. With the recent surge of citizens choosing sustainable two-wheeled transit, the city has struggled to keep the increasing numbers of cyclists safe, with a 38% increase in bicycle accidents from 2001-2011. [...]
The BLDGBLOG Book by Geoff Manaugh introduces us to speculation about future architecture and how the present built environment will eventually change. From the first page of the book, the reader gets an idea of what he is about to read as he is presented an illustration of London in A.D. 2109. London seems like [...]
Geoff Manaugh’s BLDGBLOG book attempts to frame the world as consisting of architecture, resultant of design choices, as legible texts similar to a work of literary fiction, and perhaps most importantly, open to the possibility of rebuilding. With his personal interests at the fore (including a penchant for novelistic allegory and acoustic quality of space), [...]
The canal bus in the Danish capital allows visitors to embark on waterfront architectural variations. Imposing cultural temples, such as The Opera and Royal Theater, next to renovated industrial parks, canal baths and newly-built residences, start from Islands Bruge towards Slusehomen. The urban expansion is pushed over idle industrial quarters. Sluseholmen’s was set on similar [...]
After living the majority of my life in the United States, specifically, in the expansive state of Texas, there are two aspect of cities that I’ve had to reconcile when considering various urban processes here in The Netherlands: scale and time. Scale because things are close and accessible here. The hour-long drive I would sometimes [...]
Is it possible for people to connect with nature while living in urban environments? Especially in big cities with poor access green spaces? Here are a few examples of percentages of green space per resident, in a sample of cities around the world: Cape Town: 290 m2/resident And according to a summary of research findings [...]
