Stand in a surface parking lot in Phoenix on a July afternoon and you are standing on one of the hottest surfaces a human body can approach without being burned. Phoenix has 12.2 million of these spaces. That figure comes from a peer-reviewed inventory published in 2019 by researchers at Arizona State University, among them Mikhail Chester, who led the study, and David King, an associate professor of urban planning and a student of the late Donald Shoup, whose work on parking economics reshaped the field. They counted off-street residential spaces, off-street commercial spaces, on-street spaces - all of it.
The main street will be car-free, "like a linear park," he says, and filled with 400 trees. Other streets will allow cars, but prioritize large swaths of green space. The design gives residents public space, and doubles as climate infrastructure that can reduce urban heat, support biodiversity, and capture water in storms.
Even before any drawing or formal decision, the place now occupied by Praça do Mercado in Parque Realengo, Rio de Janeiro, already pulsed with movement. Improvised stalls, informal gatherings, music, children running, and adults gathered beneath temporary shelters composed a vibrant landscape, sketching an ephemeral architecture.
In 1895, an eccentric businessman named Henry Gaylord Wilshire began developing a luxury residential community on what was then the western edge of Los Angeles. In a gesture of civic pride, or perhaps shrewd self-promotion, he cut a strip of land running four blocks down the middle of the subdivision and donated it to the city for a grand boulevard. But his gift had two conditions. The first was that the road be named for him. The second was that rail lines be banned from the thoroughfare.
Fulton-Howard West shows what's possible when we treat public land as a public good. This project will help longtime Bed-Stuy residents stay in their neighborhood while creating new space for the organizations and services that communities rely on every day. And as this process moves forward, neighbors will help shape what gets built here, from the housing to the public space to the services that will serve this community for decades to come.
Until the last decade, it has had sunshine on it, which is part of the beauty of the building and why it's architecturally important. An atheist would agree with that.
The Tour & Taxis Towers project combines offices, housing, and public amenities across 58,000 m², forming a landmark in the neighbourhood and reaching 126 metres at its highest point.
"The '15-minute city' model is based on the original concept of a city: having the things we want and need closer to where we live. The idea is that we should be able to get to our everyday essentials within, ideally, 15 minutes on foot, bike, or public transit."
The podium-tower is a hybrid structure consisting of a high-coverage, low-rise podium supporting one or more slender vertical towers, maximizing urban density while maintaining a 'human-scaled' street wall.
Access to public toilets is a universal need that we all have, and we shouldn't shy away from talking about it. One public toilet per 15,000 people simply isn't good enough and, without action, that figure will keep rising as we lose more facilities.
