An Interdisciplinary Perspective on Urban Culture, Space, Architecture, and Design
I’m interested in the Occupy Wall Street (OWS) movement for several reasons, not least how it relates to the idea of The Right to the City and what we might learn about using public space to secure such a right for […]
In this series of posts (for earlier ones see the “9th and Colorado” category) we’ve been chronicling Sembler Company plans for developing the old University of Colorado Health Sciences Center campus at 9th Avenue and Colorado Boulevard, and also editorializing as […]
New York Times commentators have always figured prominently in my urban studies reading lists, whether its Paul Krugman advocating Old World urbanism, David Brooks explaining American exurbanism, or the extant architecture critic opining about the latest addition to the global […]
Kaid Benfield’s recent post about the BMW-Guggenheim Lab’s Urbanology game inspired me to play the game a few times myself. Then I asked my University of Denver Culture and The City class (which met for the first time last week) to […]
Well, not exactly dead on arrival, but close. Almost from the start the great Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava’s designs for Denver International Airport’s South Terminal Project were assailed by critics for disrespecting the original (and now iconic) Curtis Fentress design […]
Public monuments are an important aspect of the good city. In his Art of Building Cities (1889)—a book that helped to establish the modern study of urban design—Camillo Sitte suggested that monuments “bring back historical memories” and constitute “the glory […]
A recurring theme in the urban studies literature and blogosphere (including this blog) is critical comparison of different approaches to city-building. Such an exercise can have practical utility in the street and also pedagogical utility in the classroom. Although any […]
The Colorado Boulevard Healthcare District Board was scheduled to meet last week to receive an update from the 9th and Colorado developer and architect, but when I showed up at the designated place no one was there except another confused […]
Last Sunday (August 14) Denver held its first ciclovía, known locally as “Viva Streets.” A two mile stretch of East 23rd Avenue in my neighborhood of Park Hill was closed to motor vehicles. For four hours bicyclists, skateboarders, rollerbladers, joggers, pedestrians […]
Criminologists offer up an array of usual suspects, including social exclusion, poverty, racism, and cultures of violence combined with weak policing. In an inspired move, The Architects Journal asked a group of architectural thinkers and urbanists whether architecture could have anything […]
This week the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation—widely known for creating iconic buildings to house its museums, including Frank Lloyd Wright’s classic spiraled ribbon on Fifth Avenue in New York City and Frank Gehry’s twisted curves in Bilbao, Spain—joined the “Pop-Up […]
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 […]