LSE researchers: Beware of “build baby build” approaches
“Upzoning is far from the progressive policy tool it has been sold to be. It mainly leads to building high-end housing in desirable locations.” As many of us have long argued, … Continue reading
Five Key Takeaways from the World Urban Forum
The hard work proceeds to implement the New Urban Agenda It’s been over a year now since all 193 countries of the United Nations adopted by acclamation the “New Urban … Continue reading
Horizons of Pattern Languages
The well-known 1970s innovation in the field of architecture has spawned many surprising developments in other fields, notably software — but why has it not had more success in the … Continue reading
Watch out for those “externality costs!”
I think the name of the game nowadays is not left and right, not populist and elitist, not rural and urban. It’s the Tragedy of the Commons, and we’re all … Continue reading
How pedestrian-connected cities may actually be smarter cities
New insights into neuroscience offer some intriguing parallels to urban dynamics – suggesting an “urban connectome” may be the key to city vitality. A few years ago, the … Continue reading
A tale of two urban futures
Urbanism will play a key role in a choice between an “age of human capital” and an age of depletion and division. Before she died, the great urbanist Jane Jacobs … Continue reading
Urban Acupuncture in Medellin, Colombia
A case study of strategies for catalytic self-organization One of the recurrent themes of this blog is that urban self-organization is a powerful dynamic that ought to be of more interest (and use) to urban designers, planners and other actors. Th…
Toward a Theory of “Place Networks”
Two very different examples of place networks, not far from each other in London. Top photo, Seven Dials, offering a very complex, rich network, serving human users at a very high level of quality. Lower photo, an impoverished network, serving mac…
Does Paris need tall buildings to be “modern?”
A report from a fact-finding delegation of the Council for European Urbanism (including this author) evaluates three new projects with tall buildings in the central city, and concludes the City is damaging centuries of heritage for short-term gain…
Explaining the “Dark Greenness” of cities
New research suggests there’s a surprisingly large hidden benefit from the network structures of urbanism – but we need new models to harness this powerful resource Author’s Note: This is a longer version of an article that first ran in The Atlant…
