An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Urban Culture, Space, Architecture, and Design
I’d like to revisit an issue raised in my recent summary of James Kunstler’s view of the urban future. This issue is the relative merits of competing urbanisms for addressing the contemporary challenges that confront city designers and planners. Kunstler […]
Which is a better city: Melbourne or Sydney? Geoffrey West’s and Luis Bettencourt’s provocative ideas (reported here and popularized here) got some play today in the Sydney Morning Herald. Reprising their argument that cities are 85% alike in the way […]
James Kunstler’s essay in the new issue of Orion Magazine speculates about the future of cities by playing off of “city-of-the-future” tropes that have long been a staple of American popular culture. Kunstler is well-known for a brand of dystopian futurism […]
In his deservedly well-reviewed book Triumph of the City the Harvard economist Edward Glaeser unambiguously opts for people as the key element that determines a city’s success. He argues that a place-centered approach to urban planning—that is, one informed by […]
Urban Studies is generally recognized as a textbook example of an interdisciplinary field of inquiry. Contributors look to synthesize observations and insights from multiple disciplines including anthropology, geography, history, sociology and many others. Such integrative work has the potential to […]
The June 9 issue of the journal Nature (volume 474:146-149) has an interesting article about the work that evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson is doing in Binghamton NY to improve life in that blighted city (the home of Binghamton University, Wilson’s […]
(A version of the following appeared in The Denver Post, co-authored with Kyle Cascioli, February 7, 2011). Former mayor Federico Peña once implored Denverites to “Imagine a Great City.” The Denver Post is regularly filled with opinions about how we might […]
It has become commonplace to view cities as cultural artifacts that reflect and reproduce human relationships, values, and aspirations. Intercultural Urbanism is an interdisciplinary approach to urban design and planning that takes stock of the cultural values that shape how […]