#urban-planning

#urban-planning

Record-breaking heat is now routine. The devastating heatwave that wracked southwestern Europe in 2003 and claimed more than 70,000 lives produced temperatures not experienced in the region since the sixteenth century. Subsequent summers have extended this trend. In 2024, the continent recorded its hottest summer on record. In urban environments, where most of the world's population lives, the problem is especially acute. "If you build a city, inevitably it will be hotter," says Edward Ng, an architect at the Chinese University of Hong Kong.

B.Red House is situated within an urban development governed by fixed planning regulations, where the latitude for architectural self-expression is narrowed by the imperative to maintain a unified overall appearance. The extended sameness across successive building masses has, perhaps inevitably, produced a sense of order bordering on monotonyan environment in which individual houses appear to share a common formal vocabulary.

The future of urban planning and architecture is promising if the world, collectively, looks beyond the concept of mere sustainability and instead embraces a nature-positive approach. As global population growth drives rapid urbanization-requiring humanity to build the equivalent of a city the size of Madrid every week for decades to come-the construction sector faces a defining challenge: how to build durable, energy-efficient, and resilient urban environments in harmony with natural ecosystems.

Regular people make political transportation decisions all the time without realizing it. For example, when a person in a car-dependent place decides to go anywhere, they may not feel like they are making a transportation choice, and they may not be aware of how their choice affects others. From their perspective, they are not choosing to drive to a destination; they are just choosing to go there, and they may feel like a car is their only option.

The key to these neighborhoods, which have no exact equivalent in America's biggest city, are "modal filters" that divert car traffic while allowing bicycles and pedestrians to roll and walk freely. Green-Eames shows off two types: The first employs bollards to physically block automobiles, and the second uses cameras that allow certain cars and buses to pass through without paying a fine.

Imagine freeways along Lady Bird Lake in Austin, through Georgetown in Washington, along the beach in Santa Monica, through the French Quarter in New Orleans, or bisecting Cambridge between Harvard and MIT. Freeway builders had their sights set on all these places. They would've had their way, too, if not for the meddling protesters who foiled their schemes. The freeway revolt of the 1960s and '70s changed the course of American history, saving some of the nation's oldest and most-beautiful neighborhoods.

"Cars ruin everything." That's the bold opening line of Life After Cars, the new book by celebrated transportation media figures Sarah Goodyear, Doug Gordon, and Aaron Naparstek. The writers make a case for that initial assertion, detailing the various ways cars-or, more specifically, car culture as we currently know it-ruin childhoods, destroy wildlife, perpetuate societal injustices, and kill people, to name a few particularly negative effects.

When Archigram published their fanatical vision for pneumatic cities and walking megastructures in the 1960s, they seemed to be designing buildings. Beneath the surface, the avant-gardeists were pushing culture through radical alternatives to lifestyles and forms of organizing in the city. Laboratories found themselves between the lines of copy on Domus or Casabella magazines, propositions doubling as blueprints for the civilizations to come.

Yes, London can squeeze in more skyscrapers. In fact, over the next decade, it's thought that nearly 600 more high rises could be added to the capital's skyline. There's a one next to the Walkie Talkie that's just been approved, one being built above Roman basilica ruins, and another right next to the Gherkin that's been given the green light.

Laurian Ghinitoiu + 12 More SpecsLess Specs Laurian Ghinitoiu Text description provided by the architects. SCENIUS 26003 is the winning proposal developed by Daryan Knoblauch for a 10-year infrastructural adaptation plan for the city of Logrono. The competition entry received the first prize after an open call launched by Concentrico and Porto Academy. The Berlin-based studio foresees using temporal pavilions within a biyearly rhythm across the next decade.

From reproductive rights to climate change to Big Tech, The Independent is on the ground when the story is developing. Whether it's investigating the financials of Elon Musk's pro-Trump PAC or producing our latest documentary, 'The A Word', which shines a light on the American women fighting for reproductive rights, we know how important it is to parse out the facts from the messaging. At such a critical moment in US history, we need reporters on the ground.

Car culture has a higher body count than both World Wars combined. So why don't we think of automobility in the same way we think about the bloody and destructive global conflicts that dominate the news - and what would it take to transform our streets into a tool to make our whole society more peaceful, rather than more violent?

Mayor Adams's Brooklyn Marine Terminal plan to transform the waterfront south of Brooklyn Bridge Park from the Columbia Street Waterfront to the Atlantic Basin in Red Hook into a mixed-use community with 6,000 new apartments and a modern marine freight hub won the required two-thirds approval from an oversight task force with local lawmakers and civic groups. The plan got through the

During the coronavirus pandemic, the city closed a stretch of a four-lane highway along San Francisco's Pacific Coast and made it an automobile-free sanctuary where bicyclists and walkers flocked to exercise and socialize under open skies and to the sound of crashing waves. But with the post-pandemic return to school and work, resentment grew among neighborhood residents who relied on the artery to get around.

Car-centric planning has hollowed out our cities. Zoning regulations, freeways, and cheap fuel gave rise to sprawling suburbs and isolated communities, dependent on personal vehicles for even the most basic tasks. It's a system that punishes the poor, marginalizes the elderly and disabled, and makes public life thinner and more precarious. The car promised freedom, and delivered debt, pollution, and dependence.

AMONG A GROWING ARRAY of government-sanctioned informational systems, motion sensors, acoustic monitors, biometric scanners, and thermal cameras work in tandem with sprawling private networks of data brokers to track social and environmental flows with forensic precision. They measure footfalls, scan license plates, log financial transactions, and inspect the movement of people alongside particulate matter. As sensing technologies increasingly oversee and overwrite the spatial production of contemporary life, proposals for "smart cities" and other data-dependent composites-proliferating since the early 2010s-obfuscate regimented environments of surveillance and control through rosy prospects of connectivity, security, and risk management, all sustained by the tenacious dystopian dream we call information.

Given the unaffordable prices of a standalone house in Randwick, a vibrant suburb in the city's east, they opted to renovate a sunroom. We had to take a creative approach and create a flexible third bedroom, Henderson says. Otherwise we would need to move away from here, and we'd be moving further away from jobs, further away from work and schools. The compromise we came up with was to remain where we were, but create a third space.

Having lived in Delhi and now in Mumbai, I find Delhi streets are poorly lit and unsafe. I faced ogling, eve-teasing [public sexual harassment] and inappropriate touching on buses while I was a college student. Even in upscale areas, I was chased by drunk men. You are always on high alert, especially after 8:30 at night,

As the exhibition explains, the council was granted new powers to direct local development in 1963, and its new department was led by a London County Council architect, Edward Hollamby, giving them a significant advantage when planning large estates. He was more interested in Scandinavian style modernism than the British New Brutalism exemplified elsewhere, and despite what you might see if you travel through the area, was more interested in low-rise developments instead of tall blocks.

But as I said in my last column, L.A.'s roughly 500 parks and 100 rec centers, occupying 16,000 acres, are generally in bad shape and not easily accessible to many residents. In fact, in the latest annual ranking by the Trust for Public Land, they fell to 90th out of the 100 largest recreation and parks systems in the nation on the basis of access, acreage, amenities, investment and equity.

How do nature and landscape dialogue within spaces designed for children? How are architecture and urban design capable of shaping natural atmospheres that integrate practices of play, participation, and exploration? From participatory projects that involve children in the design process to built environments that incorporate furniture adapted to their needs, the conception of spaces for childhood entails the creation of places for encounter, learning, and coexistence.

"The present situation is intolerable and all other proposed solutions of it are uneconomic, disruptive, unhealthy, non-urban or impractical," they wrote.

The changes will create two clearly defined zones: a Park Zone on the west side and a Multi-Use Zone on the east side. The Park Zone will be calm, designed for walking, yoga, play, and picnics. Non-motorized bikes will be welcome if ridden by children. The Multi-Use Zone will accommodate cyclists, runners, walkers, and e-bikes. Users will be guided to keep to their right side to create predictable movement. Pedestrians will always have the right of way at crosswalks.

The closure of Elm Street to cars allows Tenderloin Community Elementary students to play and engage in creative activities, transforming it into a safe and welcoming space.