This U.S. documentary from 2008, freely available on Youtube, sells the virtues of the New Urban town centre to the general video-watching population. Unfortunately it uses scare tactics to do so. The first two-thirds warns of impending doom in the peak oil sense. It is only after about an hour of this that we get to their solution, which involves lots of footage of street-side cafes and light rail. The doco supports multi-residential developments alongside transit stops, but not really as a positive in itself, more because doing so will relieve the pressures on ailing freeway infrastructure without breaking the bank.
Wow. I am in the midst of watching a documentary about the suburbs. It isn’t your usual documentary though. Maybe it’s even ground-breaking, and there is a lot of ground being broken out in the neighbourhood of Evergreen, in Cranston, Canada.
An intelligent review of a 2010 debate at Harvard GSD, at Urban Omnibus.
Registration deadline: August 30
Submission deadline: September
An Atlantic special report in May 2010 on American cities – though Wellington NZ does get its own review.
A fascinating look at all of the 46 shortlisted entries for the 1912 competition to design Canberra, provided by the National Archives. Entries by Eliel Saarinen and Berrnard Maybeck are included.
SELF MADE URBANITY is a multidisciplinary, collaborative and participatory research project initiated by urbanXchange.
The project observes the city of Rome as a cross point where urban phenomena of the Northern and Southern hemisphere are very near together.”
Bleeding big website with a lot of contributors. They say: “It is a one-stop source for urban planning news, commentary, interviews, event coverage, book reviews, announcements, jobs, consultant listings, training, and more.”
“AHURI is dedicated to drawing together researchers, policy-makers, industry and the community in order:
a U.S. blog on, “cities, architecture, the ‘new urbanism,’ real estate, historic preservation, urban design, land use law, landscape, transport etc etc from a mildly libertarian stance.”
Lucio Costa’s presentation in 1957 of his hastily assembled plan for Brasilia, with pics.
“It was not my intention to enter the competition, and as a matter of fact I am not doing so – I am merely passing on a possible solution which was not sought but, so to speak, took shape almost spontaneously.”