PopTech

“The key function of a city is to enable exchange, interaction, and the [creative] combination and recombination of people and ideas. When buildings become so massive that street life disappears, they can damp down and limit just this sort of interaction…

What we need are new measures of density that do not simply count how many people we can physically cram into a space but that account for how well the space is utilized, the kinds of interactions it facilitates.”

Read more at The Atlantic Cities. (via theatlantic, wellandlighthouse)

Kickstarter:

Walk [Your City] began when a few, civic-minded friends in Raleigh, NC posted a network of signs around town that gave walking directions to cool, local spots. It was a simple way to help citizens navigate their city on foot, but (surprise!) it resonated worldwide.

Now, with hundreds of folks eager to adopt the movement, the team is working to create an open-source, web tool that will allow anyone to make, print, and post their very own neighborhood walking signs. See you on the sidewalks — see them as our Project of the Day.

The Science of Quieter Cities

Could we design better places where we could all live together without hearing quite so much of each other? And just what would that sound like?

These aren’t questions only for apartment-dwellers. Obnoxious city noise comes from all around us, moving between buildings and through windows and across congested roads. If we don’t tame it„ people may never willingly rearrange themselves into the denser living patterns environmentalists say we need.

“People think, ‘Oh we need electricity from solar panels, we need x-y-z system, we need to use less water,”  Thomas Jones, the dean of Cal Poly’s College of Architecture and Environmental Design, says. “But we absolutely have to make living in denser urban environments pleasant to the senses, or we’ll lose the environmental battle.”

Maybe it’s time to start looking at townhouses and bus shelters with the same acoustic care engineers have long given to concert halls and schools. In doing so, it’s possible we could make the city sound not just quieter – but, in a very real way, more pleasant.

Read more at The Atlantic Cities. [Image: Shutterstock]

guardian:

How the world of 1950 looked in 1925: infographic

Airships above you, cars below ground; clean pedestrianised streets, beautiful elegant high-rise living… how exotic the far-off year of 1950 must have seemed to readers of Popular Science Monthly in 1925, when the infographic below was published. Rediscovered by the wonderful Retronaut (Slogan: “the past is a foreign country. This is your passport”) it probably says more about 1925 than it does about 1950. 

curiositycounts:

Popuphood – a new urban initiative and small business incubator in Oakland sets out to revitalize a struggling neighborhood in six weeks by carving out a rent-free space of entrepreneurial spirit. 

poptech:

The Low Line: A plan for a new park banks on subterranean photosynthesis, a neat project from PopTech staffer Dan Barasch. 

From The New York Times:

Ever since it opened in 2009, the High Line has drawn out-of-town visitors who hope to replicate its success. Observers of the elevated park on the West Side of Manhattan have come from nearby municipalities like Jersey City and Philadelphia and places as far away as Hong Kong.

Lately, those observers have been coming from across town, with plans for another attention-grabbing green space on a former transit site. But this one comes with a twist — the proposed park would be underground, in a dank former trolley terminal under Delancey Street that is controlled by the Metropolitan Transportation Authority. Though its promoters call it the “Delancey Underground,” another nickname has already been coined: the Low Line.

From CNN:

Ramsey and Barasch’s romantic vision includes a polished, undulating ceiling plane from which the “remote skylights” — developed by Ramsay to filter out harmful ultraviolet and infrared light frequencies — will flood the park with sunrays all year-round, night and day.

According to Ramsey, the technology is “like a cross between a telescope and an endoscope” — capturing light from the sun and then transporting it through fiber-optic cables onto a relatively small focal point.

So, Chicago is getting ready for a wetter, steamier future. Public alleyways are being repaved with materials that are permeable to water. The white oak, the state tree of Illinois, has been banned from city planting lists, and swamp oaks and sweet gum trees from the South have been given new priority. Thermal radar is being used to map the city’s hottest spots, which are then targets for pavement removal and the addition of vegetation to roofs. And air-conditioners are being considered for all 750 public schools, which until now have been heated but rarely cooled.

At certain points in the history of architecture and urban plan­ning, the disciplinary debate on how to apply new technologies surpasses the boundaries of the professions involved. At those times, the hopes and fears found in the disputes between architects, policy makers, engineers and planners are extended to a broader discussion about urban and societal change. Then, the central issue is not merely how to solve a specific spatial problem or improve a construction method with the help of a new technology. Rather, the debate revolves around its possible impact on urban society at large. What does this new technol­ogy mean for urban culture, what impact does it have on how we shape our identities and live together in the city? When those questions surface, Dutch philosopher René Boomkens argues, the professional debate has turned ‘philosophical’. [1]

The discourse on ‘Sentient Cities’, that has arisen over the last few years can be understood as such a philosophical enter­prise. [2] What is at stake in the debate is not so much the issue of how to engineer smarter buildings that sense — and adapt to — our daily routines or idiosyncratic preferences. Rather, our in-car navigators, friend finding ‘solutions’, location based information systems and other urban sensing technologies may very well force us to rethink some of the core concepts through which we understand and value urban life.

utnereader:

Has urban planning, as Design Observer frets, lost its allure?

Sure hope not!

With it’s vertical farms and ability to produce its own power, Sydney’s Central Park is set to become a model community for the 21st century. (via webuildit)