When you lead a nation in green space, what opportunities do you possess? How do those opprotunities impact small and emerging businesses, and the surrounding communities? At what point do you convert underutilized green space into a sprawling piece of revenue-producing land? In the United Kingdom, Nottingham currently boasts the Kingdom’s top green space ranking. [...]
Brighton – a small, tightly woven community of artists and art galleries, is located Northwest of Over the Rhine and downtown Cincinnati. It retains a ghostly atmosphere – a quiet neighborhood, where age-old nineteenth century Italianate buildings sit dormant against a backdrop of a modern city, now beginning to regain its former prominence. Walking these [...]
Apart from the economic crisis that they have been facing for the past five years, Athenians also have to re-think the city center of Athens. More precisely, they have to re-think one of the most prominent axes that unifies Sintagma (Constitution) and Omonia (Concord) central Squares, which are also attached to the famous neoclassical trilogy [...]
Kifisos is a principal watercourse of the Attica basin which springs from mountains of Parnitha and Penteli, run through downtown Athens and eventually discharges into Saronikos Bay. Just before emptying into the sea, for a stretch of 20klm, river Kifisos has been regrettably covered by transportation infrastructure as means to avoid expensive expropriations. At its [...]
When you think of tough neighbourhoods and burroughs like the Bronx in New York, or St Ann’s in Nottingham, you don’t necessarily equate them with energy efficient living. If you consider it living at all, it is most certainly not energy efficient living. However, it is in Nottingham England that city council has made an [...]
Metaxourgio is a residential area of west-central Athens, in close distance to square Omonia. The vicinity’s current urban characteristics stem from its industrial past, which, today, is composed of a big reserve of empty unused buildings, open spaces, small traditional cafés, craftsmen’s workshops on the ground floors of residential buildings, and half-abandoned buildings. Metaxourgio is [...]
Does the design of your environment, the man-made structures and infrastructure that permeate nearly every aspect of your life, influence behavior directly related to your personal health? The government of Kane County, Illinois thinks that it does, as this is evident from their new comprehensive plan, the “Kane County 2040 Plan: Healthy People, Healthy Living, [...]
The new wave in social media communication is quickly creating a method for discussing topics relating to urban planning, architecture, and community development. The social media site Twitter is leading the charge in this evolution by creating a way for people from around the world to gather in one centralized location to discuss and solve various [...]
A healthy downtown is an important economic component for any city that desires to increase revenue, improve tourism, or revitalize local neighborhoods. Thus, the local downtown is by and large the life-blood of any metropolitan area. Like many other cities and small towns, urban planners from Richmond, Virginia have been working tirelessly to revitalize the [...]
The overall goal of any riverfront plan is to create river accessibility that becomes a major resource to the community; by linking it to nearby communities so that both residents and tourist can enjoy it. While many communities have a neighboring river as a potential asset to their community, most local governments are unable to [...]
The City of Spokane, Washington implemented two of their first-ever SURGE (Spokane Urban Runoff Greenways Ecosystem) projects in 2010 with AHBL: Lincoln Street on the South Hill; [Bottom] [Official Surge Report]; Broadway Street in the West Central Neighborhood. [Top] [AHBL's Presentation to the City]. Both were the first of their kind in Eastern Washington, and [...]
Did you ever imagine that, as planners (or architects), we would be able to make revisions on a 10 thousand sqf retail mixed-use project in Revit, on our smart touchpads, while discussing it with a colleague on What’s App, on our way home, in a public train? It’s happening. Today’s social media mobilizes planners’ and [...]
Planning should be participatory; however, it’s often very difficult to get stakeholders to contribute to planning processes. Mail-in survey return rates are low, and more often than not, residents don’t want to sit through a Saturday morning design charette. Marketing online and social media platforms give urban planners and architects a set of contemporary tools [...]
The sky is limitless, they say. So if there’s no space to your left, or to your right, or below, then look up! Land, limited in the City of Los Angeles, is slowly becoming a commodity. And as new land becomes occupied by never-ending construction projects, it’ll eventually vanish so we need start thinking straight, [...]
Taksim Square, in Istanbul, Turkey, is one of the liveliest public spaces in the city. It was a part of the modernization project of the newly-formed republic in the late 1930s. Like many other parts of the city, it was based on the plans of Henri Prost, the prominent representative of the French school of [...]
A “build it and forget it” method may not be the wisest of decisions for an urban planner when creating a website. It is a myth that a website can sustain itself after it’s developed. In fact, similar to your business, a website must be constantly maintained if you want it to continue to thrive. [...]
A few weeks ago, I explored three avenues for social media marketing for urban planners and urban planning firms. The social media marketing steps discussed in that blog are just a handful of steps for an urban planning firm to promote themselves online. There are many different avenues a firm can take to promote itself [...]
Can you imagine a small apartment, let’s say about 344 square feet, transforming into 24 different rooms? It’s possible. Well, at least when architects and engineers choose to focus on such a concept anyway, but the fact is that it has been done. Space is becoming more of a commodity, particularly within the city, such [...]
Social media marketing has become a buzzword this decade. Every business seems to be hiring social media marketers now. Which social media network would be the most appropriate for a certain organization? This mini guide is meant to be a starting point for planners’ and architects’ research into social media marketing. Planning professionals should always [...]
In 2009, Abengoa Solar Inc. filed an Application for Certification (AFC) for its Abengoa Mojave Solar Project, a proposed project for electrical power production, located near Harper Dry Lake in San Bernardino, California. Now, in the Mojave Desert, lies a construction of solar panels that will be generated by parabolic trough technology and solar heat [...]
