The Atlantic Cities: 

“The Coming Bold Transformation of the American City

Enrique Penalosa. April 30, 2013

In 40 years, 2.7 billion more people will live in world cities than do now, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs. Urban growth in China, India, and most of the developing world will be massive. But what is less known is that population growth will also be enormous in the United States.

The U.S. population will grow 36 percent to 438 million in 2050 from 322 million today. At today’s average of 2.58 persons per household, such growth would require 44.9 million new homes. However American households are getting smaller. If one were to estimate 2.2 persons per household—the household size in Germany today and the likely U.S. size by 2050—the United States would need 74.3 million new homes, not including secondary vacation homes. This means that over the next 40 years, the United States will build more homes than all those existing today in the United Kingdom, France, and Canada combined. Urban planner and theorist Peter Calthorpe predicts that California alone will add 20 million people and 7 million households by 2050.

To meet this demand, completely new urban environments will have to be created in the United States. Where and how will the new American homes be built? What urban structures are to be created?”

Photo: Battery Park City in Manhattan exemplifies how the quality of urban life can be enhanced by replacing waterfront roadways with parks or pedestrian infrastructure. (Left); A “highway” for pedestrians, bicycles, and transit on Jiménez Avenue in Bogotá, Colombia. (Right) Photo courtesy of Enrique Peñalosa.

“Urban Omnibus: 

“Experimental Landscapes: Alexander Felson on Ecology and Design

March 27, 2013

Ecology, by definition, is about interactions; it’s the study of the relationships among organisms, and between organisms and their environment. When we consider the work of ecologists in urban contexts, we often think of protecting natural systems against the harm wrought by development. Alexander Felson, an assistant professor at Yale in both the School of Foresty & Environmental Studies and the School of Architecture, is a different kind of urban ecologist. In his research and his design work, he calls for an ecological practice that moves from analyzing nature to shaping it, embedding scientific experiments into the design process. The framework he’s established for this synthesis, Designed Experiments, offers to yield scientific data as well as influence the physical form of built projects.”

Photo: Researchers tracking survival, growth, pest damage, photosynthetic capacity, drought stress, and seedling recruitment of woody vegetation to determine how incoming vegetation competes with natives for the Million Trees Project. All images courtesy of Alexander Felson and Timothy Terway.

“The Architect’s Newspaper:

SANDY WHO? 

New developments prevail on Brooklyn’s waterfront in the wake of Hurricane Sandy.

Nicole Anderson. Dec 13, 2012

There’s no stopping waterfront development, not even by the might of Hurricane Sandy. A month after the storm swept through New York City flooding basements and shutting down power, Brooklyn residents—who live near the water—are still dealing with its aftermath. But even as the city remains locked in recovery mode, developers are forging ahead with new projects on the waterfront, undeterred by the recent damage and the chance that another such storm, and possibly of greater magnitude, could likely hit the East Coast again.

Several new developments are slated for construction in areas damaged by the storm such as Gowanus, Red Hook, and DUMBO. While rising sea levels and climate change could pose a greater risk to waterfront properties in the future, developers have no intention on walking away from these projects. Instead, they say they’re taking into account the impact of the storm and re-thinking certain elements of their plans.

This, however, has some community members and government officials worried. Councilmember Brad Lander has been urging the developer Lightstone Group to withdraw its plans to build a 700-unit complex along the Gowanus Canal.  In a letter sent to David Lichtenstein, the CEO of Lightstone, the councilman wrote: “I believe it would be a serious mistake for you to proceed as though nothing had happened, without reconsidering or altering your plans, and putting over 1,000 new residents in harm’s way the next time an event of this magnitude occurs.”

Photo: LIGHTSTONE GROUP’S MIXED-USE DEVELOPMENT ALONG THE GOWANUS CANAL.

“The Architects Newspaper: 

EDITORIAL> LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE’S ASCENDANCE

Alan G. Brake on the growing importance of landscape architecture.

Dec 4, 2012

In recent years, landscape architects have seen their profile rise. The discipline has gained stature in the public’s imagination, as well as among the allied disciplines of architecture, planning, and even civil and transportation engineering. Some, like prominent New Urbanists, have tried to paint this growth as a threat to architects and town planners, couched in a reheated rad versus trad debate (don’t we have more pressing issues than endlessly rehashing the style wars?).

There are a number of reasons for landscape architecture’s prominence. Catalytic projects like the High Line, Chicago’s Millennium Park, and LA’s new Grand Park have certainly galvanized the public around the need for high quality parks and public space. New York is reclaiming its waterfront through projects large and small, and marquee projects like Governor’s Island the Fresh Kills promise to re-orient the city to embrace its identity as an archipelago.

Landscape architects have also been actively redefining what they do, reclaiming the profession’s civic role and layering on new environmental and infrastructural potentials. Landscape architects have also been effective in claiming urbanism as their purview. Changes in federal and city policy have reinforced that role through programs like “Greening America’s Capitals” and New York’s Clean Water Act consent agreement with the EPA. As an observer, these developments appear great for urban areas. As cities cope and adapt to climate change and rising sea levels, I expect the discipline’s role to continue to expand.

Landscape architecture’s dynamism, however, also points to certain weaknesses in contemporary architecture and planning. Architecture has been caught in a kind of hangover from the pre-crash years. Much of the profession, not to mention architectural education, is still too obsessed with architecture-as-object. The rise of tactical urbanism is a reaction to this, and also often involves landscape-based projects. Planning seems even more stuck. Too afraid to engage with design—following the failures of much of modernist planning—planners have either buried their noses in policy or retreated into colored-pencil-clichés of urbanism that seem dated. Landscape architects have stepped into that vacuum.”

Photo: BROOKLYN BRIDGE PARK BY MICHAEL VAN VALKENBURGH ASSOCIATES.

Design Observer:

The Unreal Estate Guide to Detroit

 ANDREW HERSCHER Nov 17, 2012

Unreal Estate: An Introduction 
unreal, adjective. 1. not corresponding to acknowledged facts or criteria; 2. being or seeming fanciful or imaginary; 3. lacking material form or substance; 4. contrived by art rather than nature; 5. Slang: so remarkable as to elicit disbelief. 

Detroit: a city seemingly so deep in decline that, to some, it is scarcely recognizable as a city at all. 

And so, to most observers, and more than a few residents, what’s there in Detroit is what’s no longer there. Theirs is a city characterized by loss: of population, property values, jobs, infrastructure, investment, security, urbanity itself. What results is vacancy, absence, emptiness, catastrophe and ruin. These are conditions of the “shrinking city,” a city that by now seems so apparent in Detroit as to prompt not verification but measurement, not questions but responses, not doubts but solutions. [1] 

Built into the framing of Detroit as a shrinking city, though, are a host of problematic assumptions about what a city is and should be. On the basis of these assumptions, changeis understood as loss, difference is understood as decline, and the unprecedented is understood as the undesirable. These understandings presume the city as a site of development and progress, a site defined by the capitalist economy that drives and profits from urban growth. The contraction of such a site, therefore, provokes corrective urbanisms that are designed to fix, solve or improve a city in decline. 

What corrective responses to shrinkage reciprocally preempt, however, are the possibilities and potentials that decline brings — the ways in which the shrinking city is also anincredible city, saturated with urban opportunities that are precluded or even unthinkable in cities that function according to plan. Taking advantage of these opportunities requires us to consider the shrinking city not so much as a problem to solve but rather as a prompt to new understandings of the city’s spatial and cultural possibilities.”

Photos: Andrew Herscher

“Swallowing Rain Forest, Cities Surge in Amazon

by Simon Romero. Nov 24 2012

PARAUAPEBAS, Brazil — The Amazon has been viewed for ages as a vast quilt of rain forest interspersed by remote river outposts. But the surging population growth of cities in the jungle is turning that rural vision on its head and alarming scientists, as an array of new industrial projects transforms the Amazon into Brazil’s fastest-growing region.

The torrid expansion of rain forest cities is visible in places like Parauapebas, which has changed in a generation from an obscure frontier settlement with gold miners and gunfights to a sprawling urban area with an air-conditioned shopping mall, gated communities and a dealership selling Chevy pickup trucks.”

Photo: Lalo de Almeida for The New York Times

“treehugger

Alternative Social Housing: Prefab, Add-On Homes to Densify Suburbs

Paula Alvarado. Nov 7, 2012

As masses of people get out of poverty in developing countries, they are also getting out of slums (sometimes literally, sometimes metaphorically). But as social housing is built in vacant lots in the outskirts of urban centers, it presents all the problems of suburban sprawl.

Argentine architects Adamo Faiden have created a concept which adds an interesting, controversial spin to the conversation. What if, instead of building new houses on virgin ground, we added prefabricated units on top of existing homes?”

Photo:  © Adamo Faiden

“NYTimes: 

South African Settlement Welcomes the iShack 

By Emma Bryce. Nov 5, 2012

One of the first sights greeting every tourist riding from the airport into Cape Town is a wall of corrugated iron and wood on either side of the highway. Before Table Mountain rises on the horizon in all its majesty, it’s the clusters of shacks that make an initial impression.

South Africa has several thousand informal settlements, many of them technically illegal, comprising well over a million dwellings. While these are a legacy of the country’s system of racial apartheid, the problem has only worsened since apartheid was dismantled, partly because of weak political will, many say. The government, led by the African National Congress, acknowledges that the demand for state-sponsored housing has outstripped supply. So efforts have shifted toward providing services in the settlements and upgrading existing shelters.

Enter the wryly named iShack, or improved shack, a prototype built by a group of South African researchers to help address the problem. The main goal of the design, which is malleable, is to equip informal homes with solar panels and energy-saving features that make them more livable. With a rooftop photovoltaic panel, shelters can generate enough electricity to power three lights, a cellphone charger and a motion-sensitive alarm. (Security is a pressing concern in the settlements.)

Of course, the premise behind these upgrades is that the settlements are here to stay.

“South Africa is experiencing some of the highest rates of urbanization in the world,” said Berry Wessels, the project’s field coordinator. “Housing backlog is growing. The government cannot provide houses for everybody.” He describes his team’s invention as the first effort at in-situ upgrades in the settlements.”

Photo: The iShack prototype at the Enkanini settlement outside Cape Town has cross-ventilation, a sloping roof and solar power. Ishack

NYTimes: 

Learning From the Superstorm

By JUDITH RODIN. Nov 2, 2012

As my home city of New York recovers from Superstorm Sandy, city leaders across the world are asking how their city would respond to a similar event and examining their resilience to extreme weather patterns.

While many lack the resources of New York City and the United States, the good news is that a number of low-cost solutions are available, but governments and the private sector need to start taking action now.

Asia in particular will see events like Sandy grow more frequent — and with even greater extremes and losses — as the confluence of climate change and rapid urbanization generate heightened vulnerabilities, especially for the hundreds of millions of urban poor residents.

In coming years, 60 percent of the world’s population increase will be in Asian cities. Of the cities that contain the largest numbers of people exposed to the risks of flooding caused by climate change, 5 of the top 10 are Asian. By 2070, it will be 9 of the top 10 [pdf].

Asian cities — particularly smaller but rapidly growing ones — have significantly fewer resources available to them than those in North America and Europe to prepare for and manage the challenge of major storms. If transplanted to a typical low- or middle-income Asian city, Sandy would almost certainly have resulted in far greater damage to property, loss of lives and overall disruption of basic infrastructure and services.

Encouragingly, however, what stands out from New York City’s preparedness are not the expensive investments in hard infrastructure like sea walls, but rather a collection of softer measures focused on effective institutional coordination, rapid and accurate information sharing and timely decision making.”

Photo: Storm clouds over Bangkok, Thailand, in Oct. 2008./ Rungroj Yongrit/European Pressphoto Agency

“Transit villages in N.J. blend past with future, and spark development

By Mike Frassinelli/The Star-Ledger . Sept 22, 2012

New Jersey Transportation Commissioner Jim Simpson surveyed the old railroad town that was trying to revitalize its main street.

He looked at the renovated movie theater that attracts scores of families and at the refurbished building that serves as a practice center for Olympians on the U.S. table tennis team.

Simpson looked at Dunellen and saw the past — and the future.

“This is like old wine in a new bottle — all of the ingredients for success are here,” he said last month at a ceremony to name the Middlesex County borough the state’s 26th Transit Village, communities built around transportation hubs, making it convenient to get around without a car.

A report and database due out Monday by New Jersey Future — the result of more than three years worth of study — assesses development opportunities around New Jersey’s transit stations and heralds the importance of transit-oriented development.

The report by the smart growth and transportation choice advocacy group shows that what is old is new again in New Jersey as towns look to the past — their train stations — to make them desirable for a new generation of commuters who have eschewed their cars.

“In particular, the ‘Millennial’ generation has expressed a preference for driving less and walking more, and employers are increasingly heeding the imperative to locate in places where they will be accessible to a young workforce that wants multiple transportation options,” the report stated.

New Jersey Future’s research director, Tim Evans, has spent 3 1/2 years assembling a database looking at New Jersey’s 243 transit stations, including 205 rail stations, 16 major bus terminals, 12 ferry terminals and 10 terminals that have more than one mode of transportation, such as Hoboken Terminal, which has trains, buses and ferries.

It’s the first time such a study has been done of New Jersey’s extensive network of transit stations, and suggestions were made for how to better use the vital asset in the future.

The report lists transit municipalities with the greatest number of jobs (Newark, Jersey City, Edison); station areas featuring the highest population densities (9th Street and 2nd Street stations in Hoboken on the Hudson-Bergen Light Rail and Hoboken Terminal); stations in neighborhoods where at least one-third of households do not have a vehicle (Warren Street and Washington Street on the Newark Light Rail); stations in neighborhoods having a median home value greater than 200 percent of the statewide median (Millburn, Summit, Peapack) and stations where fewer than one-third of parking spaces are typically occupied (Point Pleasant Beach, Florence, Cinnaminson).

The report could help policy-makers and developers put the right kinds of incentives — such as urban hub tax credits or Transit Village designations — in the right kinds of locations and help municipalities understand the strengths and weaknesses around their transit assets, said Elaine Clisham, New Jersey Future’s director of communications.”

Via: The Star Ledger

Photo: Robert Sciarrino/The Star-Ledger

Photo: