cities
NPR Cities: Urban Life In The 21st Century
“What do we want our cities to be in the Urban Century? The NPR Cities Project aims to capture the vibrancy of urban life today.”
The Elegant Shed - The Extroverts
An Wellington-focused episode from the important 1984 documentary series on New Zealand architecture, hosted by David Mitchell. Included are interviews with Wellington architects Ian Athfield and Roger Walker. Includes footage of John Scott’s Futuna Chapel and Ernst Plischke’s Massey House.
Hometown Boomtown
This TV documentary from 1983 guides us through the rapid changes in Wellington in the 1970s to earthquake proof the city, and build a motorway through it. Aside from the cheesy music, it’s pretty darn interesting for anyone with an association with the city.
Time and Place
This Philip Mark Law film for the Australian Film Commission in 1970 could be a KOYAANISQATSI for the Australian city. A slow beginning pans through tumbledown Victorian buildings. Steadily the modern world is juxtaposed, with jarring musical shifts to suit. After a race through a car park building and a look at what residential architects were up to at the time, the film ends in the new frontier, with a couple emerging from their wedding into an empty treeless subdivision. Sci-fi soundtrack by Leslie Dempsey.
Polis
“Polis is a collaborative blog about cities, with a global scope. It is a space for regular contributors and readers to share ideas and information about anything and everything urban, from multiple lenses. Our contributors come from a range of perspectives – from planning to art to architecture to social science. We have lived in cities as far-flung as Barcelona, Hong Kong, Jerusalem, London, Moscow, Mumbai, and New York. We have worked in places like Bogota, Dhaka and San Salvador. We have walked the streets of Bangkok, Istanbul, São Paulo, Singapore, and Tehran.”
Ecological Urbanism vs. New Urbanism
An intelligent review of a 2010 debate at Harvard GSD, at Urban Omnibus.
The Future of the City
An Atlantic special report in May 2010 on American cities – though Wellington NZ does get its own review.
Auckland
New Zealand’s largest city, Auckland nestles between tens of dormant volcanoes and is home to the world’s biggest polynesian population. The weather is temperate, public transport is a joke, and the houses are wooden.
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Bad Subjects: The Congestion Coalition?
A debunking of a Washington Post article in 2007 that suggested that suburbs and their cars are good.
Passageways of Paris
By Christopher Rollason. Walter Benjamin’s Arcades Project draft did not get an English translation until 1999. Rollason walks us through the arcades and places Benjamin’s work in the context of the day. He also traces the effects the text has had on current thought.[04/04]
New Plymouth streets
Some photos of the local architecture I took in November 2007, while at the local NZIA awards .
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