Archive for July, 2011

 
  • Brand X Urbanism and Cultural Diversity

    Brand X Urbanism and Cultural Diversity

    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 […]

     
  • The 15% Solution

    The 15% Solution

    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 […]

     
  • Coming Contractions

    Coming Contractions

    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 […]

     
  • Imagining a Signature Building at 9th and Colorado

    Imagining a Signature Building at 9th and Colorado

    Yesterday representatives of The Sembler Company and the project architect Davis Partnership gave their third presentation about the planned development of the 9th and Colorado property to a public meeting of the Colorado Boulevard Healthcare District (CBHD) advisory board.   […]

     
  • The Greatest Work of Architecture Built in this Century?

    The Greatest Work of Architecture Built in this Century?

    Upon hearing, in 1860, the suggestion that humankind was descended from apes the wife of the Bishop of Worcester is reported to have exclaimed: “Let us hope it is not true, but if it is, let us pray it will not […]

     
  • Celebrating ‘City of Quartz’

    Celebrating ‘City of Quartz’

    It was good to notice that Mike Davis’s classic book has just been written up by Los Angeles Times architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne as part of his “Reading LA” series. In fact Hawthorne identifies Quartz as one of the three […]

     
  • People or Place in Urban Planning?

    People or Place in Urban Planning?

    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 […]

     
  • Researching Urban Hydro-Sustainability

    Researching Urban Hydro-Sustainability

    I’m fortunate to be part of a transdisciplinary research collaborative that’s just received a $10,000 Institute for Enterprise Ethics grant from the University of Denver’s Daniels College of Business for a project entitled “Front Range Urbanism and Hydro-Sustainability.”  It has long […]

     
  • Interdisciplinarity in Urban Studies

    Interdisciplinarity in Urban Studies

    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 […]