Archive for March, 2012

 
  • The Retreat at Twin Lakes (Reuters)

    Did the Built Environment Kill Trayvon Martin?

    Or, help kill him?  So asks Planetizen, in advertising an article by Robert Steuteville in Better! Cities and Towns.  Steuteville’s argument is that gated communities like The Retreat at Twin Lakes create “a fortress mentality” replete with paranoia and suspicion […]

     
  • Parking Lot at Fiat Lingotto, Turin, Italy

    The Parking Lot as Public Space

    Yesterday’s Atlantic Wire listed MIT Urban Planner Eran Ben-Joseph’s column in The New York Times called “When a Parking Lot is so Much More” as a top Monday read. The essence of Ben-Joseph’s argument: The ubiquity of parking lots has…led […]

     
  • Conceptual Rendering of BMW-Guggenheim Lab in Kreuzberg Vacant Lot

    A Defeat for Berlin’s BMW-Guggenheim Lab?

    As long as we’re revisiting topics from last August we can’t ignore last week’s big news that the BMW-Guggenheim Lab won’t be opening this coming May in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin. Local activists mounted a vigorous campaign to stop the […]

     
  • Olympic Stadium, View from Hackney

    A Victory for London’s 99%?

    Last August we wondered, in the course of writing about the London riots, whether that city’s 2012 Olympic Games would live up to their billing as the “Regeneration Games” for the blighted East End where they’ll be located. Michael Powell, […]

     
  • Arapahoe Acres, Aerial View

    Saving Arapahoe Acres

    Arapahoe Acres is a nationally famous suburban subdivision located just south of the University of Denver in Englewood.  It was  built between 1949-1957 by the developer Edward Hawkins, with help from the architect Eugene Sternberg. Sternberg was then employed by […]

     
  • Water and The Wilderness City

    Water and The Wilderness City

    My title comes from that of the Rocky Mountain Land Use Institute’s 21st annual conference held last week at The University of Denver’s Sturm College of Law.  “The Wilderness City: Nature, Culture, and Economy in the Next West” was framed […]