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…
