Third Spaces

Interesting article not only on how we are changing the live/work dynamic, but on how our cities themselves can change, evolve to foster that. Ray Oldenburg talks about these new spaces as "third spaces"...":where we go not just to drink coffee but also to send an e-mail; the hotel lobby where we take a meeting; or the local library where we write a report, edit a document or revise a business plan." Its those places where no one looks like they are working, but in fact are.

And these places can be anywhere...so people are looking at where we live over where we work. Bigger cities then become the magnets for this sort of "senergy".... but the author offers some interesting perspectives of how any size place can foster this sort of momentum...

"All successful revitalization efforts focus on upgrading existing local assets — developing better ties among colleges, universities and communities, strengthening business districts, upgrading parks and open spaces, preserving and reusing old buildings and supporting local art and music."


image credit

Shrinking City

Article: New York Times by David Streitfeld

"a model for a different era". From expansion with development to developing with shrinkage. Flint, Michigan talk about using land banks to covert abandoned, foreclosed properties into natural landscape, saving money, condesing the town and ultimately rethinking the American city.

“If it’s going to look abandoned, let it be clean and green,” he said. “Create the new Flint forest — something people will choose to live near, rather than something that symbolizes failure.”

land banks: (taken from this U. of Michigan site by Jessica de Wit) A land bank is a public authority created to efficiently hold, manage and develop tax-foreclosed property.(1) Land banks act as a legal and financial mechanism to transform vacant, abandoned and tax-foreclosed property back to productive use. Generally, land banks are funded by local governments' budgets or the management and disposition of tax-foreclosed property.(2) In addition, a land bank is a powerful locational incentive, which encourages redevelopment in older communities that generally have little available land and neighborhoods that have been blighted by an out-migration of residents and businesses.(3) While a land bank provides short-term fiscal benefits, it can also act as a tool for planning long-term community development. Successful land bank programs revitalize blighted neighborhoods and direct reinvestment back into these neighborhoods to support their long-term community vision.

Related:
Shrinking Cities in a Global Perspective Program, University of California, Berkeley

USA Today Article

The Green Zone

The New Green Zone, Baghdad, Iraq.

from The Guardian:

"The US military released the first tentative artists' impression yesterday. An army source said the barbed wire, concrete blast barriers and checkpoints that currently disfigure the 5 sq mile area would be replaced by shopping malls, hotels, elegant apartment blocks and leisure parks."

"American officials stress that final decisions about reconstruction and development rest with the Iraqi government. Karnowski added that as well as the benefits of renovating and demilitarising an important area of Baghdad, the blueprint would help to create a "zone of influence" around the massive new US Embassy compound being built on the eastern tip of the Green Zone. The $1bn project to move the embassy from Saddam's old presidential palace is planned for completion later this year."

Grounds for Free Speech

image credits: Thailand's Suvarnabhumi International Airport + the Acropolis of Greece

Recent news headlines have been displaying images of public spaces in connection with locally occurring protests. In Thailand, its the Democratic Alliance Against Dictatorship protesting Mr Somchai's People Power Party, locating themselves finally in both airports Bangkok, disrupting travel amoung other things. In Athens Greece, protesters asking for mass protests across Europe in responce to a local teenager shot by police, unvail banners on the walls of the Acropolis.

These are peaceful acts of communicating distaste for local governments, inaction by governing bodies. People are coming together to show and express their opionions. These acts culimate in public places, national/city gathering grounds. Space to express, to rally...and to disrupt.

These two examples highlight the changing arena of our new grounds for free speech. They are not sites of governmental policy making, not capital steps, houses of parliments... They are very visual public spaces...and most interestingly they are sites of international attention, places of high tourism and visability.

They are globalized sites. Local displeasing actions are now fed directing into global conversation. Using sites of recongnition (airports, monuments) that identify nationality (who and where it is) or homogenity (could be anywhere).

Building Landscapes

Academy of Sciences Museum in San Francisco, CA
The rooftop mimics surrounding hills, while planted with native plants
Mounds reflect the planetarium and rain forest exhibits within.

Seed Project

David Cohen's The Seed Project

This "art" project asks people to plant organic basil seeds anywhere and everywhere. Its invites one to take the element of nature and imposes it upon the more "unnatural" environments within our everyday lives.

In regards to our urban environment, existing visual cues of "natural" have become so urbane that many fail to even recognize it as plant life. This project shakes up your daily commutes, questioning place, location and purpose of plant life in our built environments.










In a time of extreme greenwashing, what are the new visual cues of true environmental action?
What locations, programs, buildings, forms of employment within a concrete jungle of a city can programmed for understanding basic living processes?
What new forms of urban gardening can harvest not only moments of contemplation, but todays lunch?

Similar movements:
Guerrilla Gardners

Mapping "Real" America

image link

In this time of heightened political commentary, I never expected it to enter into a blog concerned with urban design. But as we have all come to understand, all things are political. So, it is of great interest to me hearing the Republican vice presidential candidate, Sarah Palin's comments regarding a "real America." And, daring to take it seriously, ask, what is and where is this "real America"


















here is one patch of it


In scouring the internet, I could find no "list" of Palin's speaking engagements, in seeking a literal "road map" of her "real america." The attached images are mostly cartoon satires, but, help to illustrate my inquiry.

What is this conceptual landscape of "real America?" Who or what makes up this identification? Is it based on location? urban form? density? can it be defined architecturally? Or is it census based: education, ethnicity, age, economic tier, religion...?

What images come up for us with the comment of "real America?" With red and blue states, how deep is our identification of the (new?) political landscape of the USA?

Is this "real America" an imaginary (virtual) reality?















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The Walled City

one of the most densely populated places on earth, the Kawloon Walled City was destroyed in 1993. It had a population of 50,000 people in the space of .01003865 square miles or 6.4247 acres. The walled city was defined by the existing ancient Chinese watchpost that wasn't under British Rule, it became then a sort of rule-less outpost that at the time of its demolition had everything from drug rings, casinos and factories within its walls.

Density at its greatest, the vertical city was a one of a kind...

A Japanese team documented one of the last "expeditions" to this matrix city.

Urban Films

I know there are a lot of films that architects covet for their use of space and light. Its not hard to see the strong comparison to an architect designing space and light...and the film maker capturing space and light. But here I wanted to begin listing films that capture a bit more than just the spatial, but include films that are about city-building. Films that give us that amazing opportunity to see a city - different.

In the Pit (2006) - Life and Culture of Mexican road construction workers
Paris, Je T'aime (2007) - five minute stories painted with Paris as the canvass
The Fifth Element (1997) - futuristic adventure set within a 3D city
The Truman Show (1998) - New Urbanism and a stage set community

Too Much Space

We have just too much space. Consider great cities, think density. Think walking, people and great architecture...public spaces. The constraints those cities were under where slightly different than todays cities - Trade, Health, Politics, Security....it wasn't until transportation and cheep energy did cities inflate to the linear, car dominated scale we find today. Even Chicago in a post fire freak out, create an urban form of safety, well within the density of the human scale. Bring on the car and places like Branson, Missouri (above) have come to be the expected urban form, now found all over the world.

So, with the car as our urban measuring stick, can new great cities evolve? Dubai is a transportation disaster, and newer cities being built have simply removed the car for good. New Urbanist have recycled older urban models while some cities simply take on "Eruo-urban" elements (like round-abouts and landscaped medians) as if it really mattered.

I'm not anti-car. I want to ask this question: how will peak oil impact the American urban fabric? We are already seeing an emergence of smaller cars pushing through in the marketplace. There has also been a spike in the number of riders of public transportation. We are already experiencing lower real estate markets for housing stock in suburbia.

Will our cities see a new formal/design transformation. What role can the car play in remaking our cities? How can re-thinking the automobile assist in creating that transition.

related articles:

In Missouri, Investors Seek a Profit in Branson Airport, By CHRISTINE NEGRONI Published: April 20, 2009

Urban Food Chain

Urban farming. I have been seeing many more of these images lately. This urgent need for good food, close food and cheep food - especially in urban poor neighborhoods. These new models explore farming as architecture.

How does this concept work within the local/neighborhood/community? And what other sort of programming works within the field of farming? What are the schedules of the crops in relation to the local inhabitants, day v. night, seasonal? What sort of local wildlife (birds/pidgins/rats!) can become included/avoided within the activities of urban farming? How is energy created, used, processed, transfered (sun, light, electric, gas, oil?) Educational, social and cultural values?

How is it accessed, transportation? pick up? delivery?

Image by SOA Architects, from NYTimes article

New Electric Infrastructure

Tesla Motors: I have been following the events regarding Tesla motors and their introduction of the electric "high performance" vehicle. The idea being, if they reintroduce the concept of an electric car as a performing roadster - 0-60 in 4 seconds - it would get attention and make their following "sedans" more worthy of attention.

But I often wondered how the introduction of a new energy driven vehicle, could redefine the urban environment. The extensive network of Gas stations have to be reconsidered, refueling now means electricity... with the expansion of locally available solar, wind, etc energy production, new questions arise.

Can the electric call also begin to redefine other patterns beside energy? Local source energy allows for a great community effort in transport? Carpooling turned car-shares? Neighborhood generation stations become neighborhood owned fleets? What sort of scales can be imagined when it is realized that size does matter. Urban fleets, vs inter-state vehicles. And what of expanding the technology to a great "digital" infrastructure of the roadways...auto-pilot-highways, GPS centered movement, social networking passenger pools?

check out these websites:
Tesla Motors
Inhabitat
www.obviousa.com

Tierra Firma

This caught my attention while walking in New York. There is something about seeing earth in the city that catches your attention (with or without the orange cones). Its almost like one assumes that while living upon the concrete surface of the urban grid, that its just one solid island of concrete. That there is no earth, except in strategic "park" spaces, where its formed, worked...manicured.

But what would the urban grid become if "earth" were to be exposed? What infrastructures of the city could be reinvigorated, reintroduced? Its properties: absorb water runoff, sound absorption, sustaining plant life...human life...

Papal Protection

If you look closely down the street, you will see the two dump trucks lined up strategically to block vehicular access down Lexington (or was it Madison?). Its pope visit day, and the city, police, state and some of those federal dudes have come together to weave a line of security thru mid-town Manhattan. The width of streets, lined with stone, steel and brick buildings are fenced off by large white dump trucks. Any attempted car bomb heading toward the pope-mobile's path would be prevented. How does the width of our urban corridors signify security? How can the urban form breach security? We are familiar with technological gadgets (cameras, heat, radio-active sensors) placed within the city for "security". But how can the initial planning phases of a city implement, reinforce or even detract from overt security? How does this enforce or detract from public-ness, free speech or demonstration? Same-same but different from the overt use of the use of space to express power/security (Mao/Tienanmen Square, Hitler/Nuremberg, Haussmann+Nepoleon III/Paris).