For a city whose population has almost doubled in the past 20 years, Shanghai’s transportation system is remarkably up to date. Shanghai boasts one of the most comprehensive and fastest growing metro systems in the world, and has no plans on slowing down. Although the first line was only opened in 1995, the system already [...]
Most of Astana’s residents live in high-rise apartments, like those pictured above. Astana, Kazakhstan. In Cities of Tomorrow, Sir Peter Hall writes, “Stockholm in 1950 still looked and felt like a small city: a metropolitan area, including suburbs, of only about one million people, in which a 20-minute walk from the center would bring a [...]
Promoting bicycle ridership has become a widespread mission across many regions, ranging from small towns to large cities. In California’s East Bay, the East Bay Bicycle Coalition (EBBC) has grown to be the primary advocacy group to make bicycling more feasible and safer on a large scale. The organization’s “guiding principles” include the following: Make [...]
Orlando, Florida, is consistently the most-visited city in the United States with 48 million annual tourists. It should come as no surprise, then, that a major portion of the local economy is made up of service, hospitality, and theme-park-related jobs relying on national and international visitors. Despite the industry’s importance to the area, local infrastructure [...]
The Trust for Public Land Park Score index ranked the “City of Lakes” Minneapolis, Minnesota as the #1 Park System in the Nation, with New York, NY coming in second. The city’s park system scored high in every category, which includes the size of the parks, the amount of money spent on them, and their [...]
It’s been a hard day’s night And I’ve been working like a dog It’s been a hard day’s night I should be sleeping like a log If the Beatles had the chance to rewrite these verses today, they should probably take into account that a rising number of city dwellers work at night and sleep [...]
After raising the question of how to achieve social equity and inclusiveness in urban planning, within our previous post, Global Site Plans’ The Grid and the Center for Social Inclusion turned to Twitter and #thegrid for a thought-provoking conversation on the topic. From this fast-paced one hour chat, four emerging trends appeared: 1. Access to [...]
As the years pass, there are certain areas in every city that tend to be neglected. But what happens when the nightlife industry intrudes in those areas and changes their whole vibe? This is exactly the case for Valaoritou and Sigrou Streets in Thessaloniki, Greece. The area around these streets were the city’s old shopping [...]
“Walkers are ‘practitioners of the city,’ for the city is made to be walked. A city is a language, a repository of possibilities, and walking is the act of speaking that language, of selecting from those possibilities. Just as language limits what can be said, architecture limits where one can walk, but the walker invents [...]
Charles (Chuck) Marohne, Strong Towns Chuck Marohne, Executive Director of Strong Towns, said that the mechanisms of growth we have become accustomed to are waning. Local governments are forced to absorb the costs of new standards and requirements set by the powers that be. He argued that the current pattern of development is not sustainable [...]
In the midst of rapid technological innovation, our cities are becoming “smarter.” We may have passed the first part of the digital revolution, but the fact stands that technology is now an inseparable part of our lives. Smart cities around the globe are adopting new digitally based infrastructure and introducing new services in this arena [...]
Rob Milam, Fehr & Peers Ron Milam, Principal-In-Charge of Technical Development at Fehr & Peers, discussed the effect of big data on transportation planning and engineering. He began by lending us some perspective: If you were to purchase a hard drive with the intent to store all music ever recorded by man on it, you [...]
Mike Lydon, The Street Plans Collaborative Mike Lydon, Principal at The Street Plans Collaborative, opened the session with, “It’s time to redesign the project delivery process… to make urbanism legal again.” He suggested that those who wish to see change should set-up a mock up of your desired redesign with traffic cones. This cone redesign [...]
Though ranked among the least bike-friendly cities in the country, Miami is improving. With a Bicycle Master Plan, education initiatives, greenways and bike lanes installations, and Bike/Walk city events, improvements are enhancing some of the country’s most dangerous areas for riders and walkers. While these physical upgrades are important, the unity and adjustment of road [...]
James Alfandre, Kentlands Initiative James Alfandre, Executive Director at the Kentlands Initiative, opened the session by defining crowdsourcing. He thinks of crowdsourcing as an “open call to an undefined group of people.” It’s essentially Wikipedia’s open source model applied to urban revitalization and development. Alfandre said that there are two major steps to creating the [...]
This past May 2013, New Orleans received a Bronze Bicycle Friendly Community award from the League of American Bicyclists. Undoubtedly, the award was well deserved. New Orleans now has almost 2% of its population commuting by bike, and the city has gone from fewer than ten miles of designated bikeways before Hurricane Katrina to approximately [...]
Hands down, I live in biking Mecca. From taking in the scenic overlooks from the view of my road bike, to getting lost in nature on all the different mountain bike trails that the area has to offer, Tahoe is truly a dream for a bicycle enthusiast. In the Sierra Region cycling of all sorts, [...]
What’s the longest it’s ever taken you to find parking in an urban environment like San Francisco? If you’ve ever driven in the city, you’re probably familiar with the frustrating (and dangerous) experience of circling city blocks to find an open space. You’re not alone. In 2007, Donald Shoup, professor of urban planning at UCLA, [...]
The Camlica Mosque, or Çamlıca Camii in Turkish, is located at Istanbul, Turkey’s Çamlıca Hill. Upon completion, the project will have a 110,000 square meter (1,184,030 square feet) footprint, serving 29,700 people from the surrounding Kisikli Mahallesi. While there has been a great number of individuals who support, and oppose this project, we would like to hear your [...]
Who’s afraid of the Buenos Aires’ new popular habitat act? The answer: everyone. The recently enacted law of the Buenos Aires province proposes a compact, dense, diverse, and accessible city, aiming to reorient the urban land market. This law is shaking the fundamentals of planning in a metropolitan area that to a great extent still [...]
