Plan 1010 Midterm

High Speed Rail

a type of passenger rail transport that operates significantly faster than the normal speed of rail traffic. While high-speed rail is usually designed for passenger travel, some high-speed systems also carry freight service.

Spanish Laws of the Indies

design requirements for a new settlement that consisted of a plaza in the center, gridded streets, residence zones, elevated, good soil, sufficient fortification, good crops, and wood. In Book IV of the 1680 compilation of The Laws of the Indies, plans were set forth in detail on every facet of creating a community, including town planning. Examples of the range of rules include: Those [Colonists] who should want to make a commitment to building a new settlement in the form and manner already prescribed, be it of more or less than 30 vecinos (freemen), (know that) it should be of no less than twelve persons and be awarded the authorization and territory in accordance with the prescribed conditions. Having made the selection of the site where the town is to be built, it must, as already stated, be in an elevated and healthy location; [be] with means of fortification; [have] fertile soil and with plenty of land for farming and pasturage; have fuel, timber, and resources; [have] fresh water, a native population, ease of transport, access and exit; [and be] open to the north wind; and, if on the coast, due consideration should be paid to the quality of the harbor and that the sea does not lie to the south or west; and if possible not near lagoons or marshes in which poisonous animals and polluted air and water breed. They [Colonists] shall try as far as possible to have the buildings all of one type for the sake of the beauty of the town. Within the town, a commons shall be delimited, large enough that although the population may experience a rapid expansion, there will always be sufficient space where the people may go to for recreation and take their cattle to pasture without them making any damage. Plan of the walled city of Manila with elements of colonial planning present The site and building lots for slaughterhouses, fisheries, tanneries, and other business which produce filth shall be so placed that the filth can easily be disposed of. These rules are part of a body of 148 regulations configuring any settlement according to the rule of Spain and its colonies. This continued as a precedent in all towns under Spanish control until the relinquishing of the land to others, as in the case of the American colonies and their growth. The Laws of the Indies are still used as an example to design guidelines for communities today[citation needed]. The Laws specify many details of towns. A plan is made centered on a Plaza Mayor (main square) of size within specified limits, from which twelve straight streets are built in a rectilinear grid. The directions of the streets are chosen according to the prevailing winds, to protect the Plaza Mayor. The guidelines recommend a hospital for non-contagious cases near the church, and one for contagious diseases further away.[3] Most townships founded in any part of the Spanish Empire in America before the various parts became independent countries were planned according to the Laws. These include many townships with Spanish names located in what is now the United States. The creation of a central square and rectilinear grid of streets was different from the haphazard and organic growth that led to meandering streets in many old townships in Iberia.

Frederick Law Olmsted Sr.

the father of American landscape architecture, may have more to do with the way America looks than anyone else. Beginning in 1857 with the design of Central Park in New York City, he created designs for thousands of landscapes, including many of the world's most important parks. His works include Prospect Park in Brooklyn, Boston's Emerald Necklace, Biltmore Estate in North Carolina, Mount Royal in Montreal, the grounds of the U.S. Capitol and the White House, and Washington Park, Jackson Park and the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 in Chicago. (The last of those documented excellently in Erik Larson's book The Devil in the White City.) Plus, many of the green spaces that define towns and cities across the country are influenced by Olmsted. Below, ten lessons from Olmsted's approach: 1) Respect "the genius of a place." Olmsted wanted his designs to stay true to the character of their natural surroundings. He referred to "the genius of a place," a belief that every site has ecologically and spiritually unique qualities. The goal was to "access this genius" and let it infuse all design decisions. This meant taking advantage of unique characteristics of a site while also acknowledging disadvantages. For example, he was willing to abandon the rainfall-requiring scenery he loved most for landscapes more appropriate to climates he worked in. That meant a separate landscape style for the South while in the dryer, western parts of the country he used a water-conserving style (seen most visibly on the campus of Stanford University, design shown at right). 2) Subordinate details to the whole. Olmsted felt that what separated his work from a gardener was "the elegance of design," (i.e. one should subordinate all elements to the overall design and the effect it is intended to achieve). There was no room for details that were to be viewed as individual elements. He warned against thinking "of trees, of turf, water, rocks, bridges, as things of beauty in themselves." In his work, they were threads in a larger fabric. That's why he avoided decorative plantings and structures in favor of a landscapes that appeared organic and true. 3) The art is to conceal art. Olmsted believed the goal wasn't to make viewers see his work. It was to make them unaware of it. To him, the art was to conceal art. And the way to do this was to remove distractions and demands on the conscious mind. Viewers weren't supposed to examine or analyze parts of the scene. They were supposed to be unaware of everything that was working. He tried to recreate the beauty he saw in the Isle of Wight during his first trip to England in 1850: "Gradually and silently the charm comes over us; we know not exactly where or how." Olmsted's works appear so natural that one critic wrote, "One thinks of them as something not put there by artifice but merely preserved by happenstance." 4) Aim for the unconscious. Related to the previous point, Olmsted was a fan of Horace Bushnell's writings about "unconscious influence" in people. (Bushnell believed real character wasn't communicated verbally but instead at a level below that of consciousness.) Olmsted applied this idea to his scenery. He wanted his parks to create an unconscious process that produced relaxation. So he constantly removed distractions and demands on the conscious mind. For example, his designs subtly direct movement through the landscape. Pedestrians are led without realizing they're being led. If you've ever gotten lost on one of Prospect Park's paths, you'll understand the point. It's a strange sensation of feeling lost yet completely confident that you can easily return to your starting point. 5) Avoid fashion for fashion's sake. Olmsted rejected displays "of novelty, of fashion, of scientific or virtuoso inclinations and of decoration." He felt popular trends of the day, like specimen planting and flower-bedding of exotics, often intruded more than they helped. For example, he contrasted the effect of a common wild flower on a grassy bank with that of a gaudy hybrid of the same genus, imported from Japan and blooming under glass in an enameled vase. The hybrid would draw immediate attention. He observed, but "the former, while we have passed it by without stopping, and while it has not interrupted our conversation or called for remark, may possibly, with other objects of the same class, have touched us more, may have come home to us more, may have had a more soothing and refreshing sanitary influence." 6) Formal training isn't required. Olmsted had no formal design training and didn't commit to landscape architecture until he was 44. Before that, he was a New York Times correspondent to the Confederate states, the manager of a California gold mine, and General Secretary of the United States Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. He also ran a farm on Staten Island from 1848 to 1855 and spent time working in a New York dry-goods store. His views on landscapes developed from travelling and reading. When he was young, he took a year-long voyage in China. And in 1850, he took a six-month walking tour of Europe and the British Isles, during which he saw numerous parks, private estates, and scenic countryside. He was also deeply influenced by Swiss physician Johann Georg von Zimmermann's writings about nature's ability to heal "derangements of the mind" through imagination. Olmsted read Zimmermann's book as a boy and treasured it. 7) Words matter. Olmsted wrote often and thought hard about the words he used. For example, he rejected the term "landscape gardening" for his own work since he felt he worked on a larger scale than gardeners. He wrote, "Gardening does not conveniently include exposing great ledges, damming streams, making lakes, tunnels, bridges, terraces and canals." Therefore, he said, "Nothing can be written on the subject in which extreme care is not taken to discriminate between what is meant in common use of the words garden, gardening, gardener, and the art which I try to pursue." He also wrote extensively on design principles and his words still inspire many in the field to this day. 8) Stand for something. By the time he began work as a landscape architect, Olmsted had developed a set of social values that gave purpose to his design work. From his New England heritage he drew a belief in community and the importance of public institutions of culture and education. His southern travels and friendship with exiled participants in the failed German revolutions of 1848 convinced him of the need for the United States to demonstrate the superiority of republican government and free labor. A series of influences, beginning with his father and supplemented by reading such British writers on landscape art as Uvedale Price, Humphry Repton, William Gilpin, William Shenstone, and John Ruskin convinced him of the importance of aesthetic sensibility as a means of moving American society away from frontier barbarism and toward what he considered a civilized condition. His writings show that, in his view, he wasn't just making pretty, green spaces. He was democratizing nature... It is one great purpose of the Park to supply to the hundreds of thousands of tired workers, who have no opportunity to spend their summers in the country, a specimen of God's handiwork that shall be to them, inexpensively, what a month of two in the White Mountains or the Adirondacks is, at great cost, to those in easier circumstances. ...and healing people's mental conditions. It is a scientific fact that the occasional contemplation of natural scenes of an impressive character, particularly if this contemplation occurs in connection with relief from ordinary cares, change of air and change of habits, is favorable to the health and vigor of men...The want of such occasional recreation where men and women are habitually pressed by their business or household cares often results in a class of disorders the characteristic quality of which is mental disability, sometimes taking the severe forms of softening of the brain, paralysis, palsey, monomania, or insanity, but more frequently of mental and nervous excitability, moroseness, melancholy, or irascibility, incapacitating the subject for the proper exercise of the intellectual and moral forces. 9) Utility trumps ornament. There was always a "purpose of direct utility or service" to Olmsted's work. Service preceded art in his work. He felt trees, flowers, and fences without purpose were "inartistic if not barbarous." He wrote, "So long as considerations of utility are neglected or overridden by considerations of ornament, there will be not true art." This could be seen in the way he treated practical aspects of his work. Providing for adequate drainage and other engineering considerations mattered as much as arranging surface features. He was also into sustainable design and environmental conservation long before it was in vogue. He wrote, "Plant materials should thrive, be non invasive, and require little maintenance. The design should conserve the natural features of the site to the greatest extent possible and provide for the continued ecological health of the area." 10) Never too much, hardly enough. Olmsted fought against distracting elements. He constantly simplified the scene, clearing and planting to clarify the "leading motive" of the natural site. Though he often faced criticism from those who found his style too rough and unkempt, Olmsted was as proud of what he didn't do as what he did do. Thirty years after he helped to design Central Park, he observed to his ex-partner, Calvert Vaux, "The great merit of all the works you and I have done is that in them the larger opportunities of the topography have not been wasted in aiming at ordinary suburban gardening, cottage gardening effects. We have let it alone more than most gardeners can. But never too much, hardly enough."

Social LIfe of Small Urban Spaces

"Just bring your own contents, and you create a sparkle of the highest power," Anaïs Nin wrote about the poetics of New York in 1939. But what, exactly, are those contents, and how does a city keep its sparkle? In 1970, legendary urbanist and professional people-watcher William "Holly" Whyte formed a small, revolutionary research group called The Street Life project and began investigating the curious dynamics of urban spaces. At the time, such anthropological observation had been applied to the study of indigenous cultures in far-off exotic locales, but not to our most immediate, most immersive environment: the city, which hides extraordinary miracles of ordinary life, if only we know how to look for them. So Whyte and his team began by looking at New York City's parks, plazas, and various informal recreational areas like city blocks — a total of 16 plazas, 3 small parks, and "a number of odds and ends" — trying to figure out why some city spaces work for people while others don't, and what the practical implications might be about living better, more joyful lives in our urban environment. Their findings were eventually collected in The Social Life of Small Urban Spaces (public library) in 1980 and synthesized in a 55-minute companion film, which you can watch below for some remarkably counterintuitive insights on the living fabric of the city. Far more intriguing than the static characteristics of the architectural landscape, however, are the dynamic human interactions that inhabit them, and the often surprising ways in which they unfold. Whyte writes in the preface: What has fascinated us most is the behavior of ordinary people on city streets — their rituals in street encounters, for example, the regularity of chance meetings, the tendency to reciprocal gestures in street conferences, the rhythms of the three-phase goodbye. Whyte's team went on to investigate everything from the ideal percentage of sitting space on a plaza (between 6% and 10% of the total open space, or one linear foot of sitting space for every thirty square feet of plaza) to the intricate interplay of sun, wind, trees, and water (it's advantageous to "hoard" the sun and amplify its light in some cases, and to obscure it in others). These factors and many more go into what makes a perfect plaza: A good plaza starts at the street corner. If it's a busy corner, it has a brisk social life of its own. People will not just be waiting there for the light to change. Some will be fixed in conversation; others in some phase of a prolonged goodbye. If there's a vendor at the corner, people will cluster around him, and there will be considerable two-way traffic back and forth between plaza and corner. [...] The area where the street and plaza or open space meet is key to success or failure. Ideally, the transition should be such that it's hard to tell where one ends and the other begins. New York's Paley Park is one of the best examples. The sidewalk in front is an integral part of the park. An arborlike foliage of trees extends over the sidewalk. There are urns of flowers and the curb and, on either side of the steps, curved sitting ledges. In this foyer you can usually find somebody waiting for someone else — it is a convenient rendezvous point — people sitting on the ledges, and, in the middle of the entrance, several people in conversation. Urban parks, Whyte discovered, were an integral mechanism for stimulating our interaction with the city — perhaps one reason they are so enduringly beloved: The park stimulates impulse use. Many people will do a double take as they pass by, pause, move a few steps, then, with a slight acceleration, go on up the steps. Children do it more vigorously, the very young ones usually pointing at the park and tugging at their mothers to go in, many of the older ones breaking into a run just as they approach the steps, then skipping a step or two. And so we get to the surprisingly intricate science of yet another seemingly mundane element of the urban experience: steps. Watch these flows and you will appreciate how very important steps can be. The steps at Paley are so low and easy that one is almost pulled to them. They add a nice ambiguity to your movement. You can stand and watch, move up a foot, another, and, then, without having made a conscious decision, find yourself in the park. Other factors that spur a lively and robust social interaction include public art and performance: Sculpture can have strong social effects. Before and after studies of the Chase Manhattan plaza showed that the installation of Dubuffet's "Four Trees" has had a beneficent impact on pedestrian activity. People are drawn to the sculpture, and drawn through it: they stand under it, beside it; they touch it; they talk about it. At the Federal Plaza in Chicago, Alexander Calder's huge stabile has had similar effects. Then there's music, known to enchant the brain and influence our emotions in profound ways: Musicians and entertainers draw people together [but] it is not the excellence of the act that is important. It is the fact that it is there that bonds people, and sometimes a really bad act will work even better than a good one. In another chapter, Whyte considers the problem of urban "undesirables" — drunks, drug dealers, and other uncomfortable reminders of how our own lives might turn out "but for the grace of events." Here, too, Whyte's findings debunk conventional wisdom with an invaluable, counterintuitive insight: rather than fencing places off and flooding them with surveillance cameras (which he finds are of little use in outdoor spaces — something that would delight artist and provocateur Ai Weiwei), we should aim to make them as welcoming as possible The best way to handle the problem of undesirables is to make a place attractive to everyone else. ... The way people use a place mirrors expectations. This, in fact, reflects the most fundamental and timeless insight of the entire project, echoing the famous Penguin Books maxim that "good design is no more expensive than bad": It is far easier, simpler to create spaces that work for people than those that do not — and a tremendous difference it can make to the life of a city.

MObile Libraries / Little Libraries

A Little Free Library is a "take a book, return a book" free book exchange. They come in many shapes and sizes, but the most common version is a small wooden box of books. Anyone may take a book or bring a book to share. Little Free Library book exchanges have a unique, personal touch.

Live Work Units

A live/work unit is defined as a single unit (e.g., studio, loft, or one bedroom) consisting of both a commercial/office and a residential component that is occupied by the same resident. The live/work unit shall be the primary dwelling of the occupant.

Roundabouts

A roundabout, is a type of circular intersection or junction in which road traffic is permitted to flow in one direction around a central island, and priority is given to traffic already on the junction. Modern roundabouts observe various design rules to increase safety.

Personal Rapid Transit

Podcar, a public transportation mode featuring small automated vehicles operating on a network of specially built guide ways

***Hotspot cities

Projected population growth and biodiversity loss we chose to zoom in on the city in each hotspot with the greatest population growth and the largest projected destruction of biodiversity habitat

Seaside, FL

The plan for the town of Seaside began in 1978 after Robert Davis was gifted an 80 acre plot of land in the Florida Panhandle. Following in his grandfather's footsteps, Robert and his wife Daryl set out to build a "livable" resort town in the "Redneck Riviera" and create a haven for those who missed the communities that were developed when cars were not the dominant form of transportation. Enter Andrés Duany and Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk, a lauded husband and wife team from the prestigious architectural firm Arquitectonica. The four of them, along with European classicist and town planner Léon Krier, set out to design the kind of place that had been overlooked in contemporary American town planning. The kind of community we all wish we could be from. Planning Seaside developed over several years; first in the offices of Arquitectonica and later in the firm of Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company (DPZ). The final plan, the result of many drafts, was completed in about 1985 and is the result of the efforts of DPZ, contributions by Leon Krier, and numerous tests and charrettes. Seaside was employing green infrastructure for stormwater management before we environmentalists knew there was such a thing - not because the developer or architects were environmentally conscious, but because they were adverse to debt. Things like pervious pavement and bioretention ponds simply cost less than building conventional "gray" stormwater infrastructure with underground pipes. Lawns were costly and difficult to maintain on the site, so the design emphasized use of native vegetation. Narrow streets, also built to save money, slowed vehicle traffic and supported safe streets for kids. There were plenty of other innovations, too, and they are newly chronicled in two new works: First, Dhiru Thadani's beautifully written and illustrated new book, Visions of Seaside, tells the complete story of Seaside's conception and evolution. It's not a small volume at 600 pages, but Visions is as seriously impressive as its subject. Lovers of architecture and town planning will be fascinated, as much by the book's depiction of proposals for the town that, for one reason or another, did not get built as by the descriptions of what did.

The High Line

When Robert Hammond first conceived of turning a disused elevated railway on Manhattan's West Side into a high-design "linear park," he thought it would attract maybe 300,000 visitors a year. He and co-founder Joshua David didn't really think about what the High Line could do to the neighborhood, apart from adding a little extra breathing room. "This was right after 9/11," Hammond says almost two decades later, sitting in his glassy office perched above the now-famous planked pathway. On a February afternoon, walkers are admiring views of the Hudson River and park greenery hushed grey by winter. "People were worried about buildings falling apart, and whether the stock exchange would leave town," he says. "New York's future was not guaranteed." In 2016, seven years after it opened, nearly 8 million bodies would flock to the High Line—that's more visitors than to any other destination in New York City. With those visitors came riches the park's founders never predicted: Between the glossy condos, eateries, and museums that have flowered around its steel girders, the High Line is set to generate about $1 billion in tax revenues to the city over the next 20 years. "Instead of asking what the design should look like, I wish we'd asked, 'What can we do for you?' People have bigger problems than design." By these measures, the High Line is a runaway success. But by one critical metric, it is not. Locals aren't the ones overloading the park, nor are locals all benefiting from its economic windfall. The High Line is bookended by two large public housing projects; nearly one third of residents in its neighborhood, Chelsea, are people of color. Yet anyone who's ever strolled among the High Line's native plants and cold-brew vendors knows its foot traffic is, as a recent City University of New York study found, "overwhelmingly white." And most visitors are tourists, not locals. "We were from the community. We wanted to do it for the neighborhood," says Hammond, who is now the executive director of Friends of the High Line, the nonprofit that funds, maintains, programs, and built the space (New York City owns it, and the parks department helps manage it). "Ultimately, we failed." Now he's course-correcting. Hammond is striving to bring in more diverse park-goers to the High Line's narrow pathways, and to new public spaces around America. On top of changes to how FHL engages with neighbors, Hammond has founded the High Line Network, a coalition of designers and planners building "adaptive reuse" parks in the High Line mold. Leaders from 17 projects at different stages of life in the U.S. and Canada—think Atlanta's rails-to-trail BeltLine, Dallas' highway cap park, and the 51-mile L.A. River overhaul—have been meeting over the past year to share insights on how to turn disused infrastructure into bustling public amenities. A lot of the conversation focuses on nuts-and-bolts topics, like capital financing and marketing strategies, attendees say. But at every convening (there have been four since June, in New York, D.C., Toronto, and Houston), Hammond and others have opened up the question of equity—"sort of like a Trojan Horse," he says—and driven at it hard, to figure out strategies for keeping public parks inclusive. It's harder than it should be, and the stakes are much higher than visitor statistics. The network of project leaders is tackling a long overdue conversation about how to improve neglected neighborhoods, without pushing away the very people they intend to serve. Going up: A stairwell entry beneath the High Line. (Shannon Stapleton/Reuters) The ugly side of "adaptive reuse" As American downtowns repopulate and densify, green space is at more and more of a premium. Very few open lots that could be turned into parks remain around urban cores; often, land that becomes available holds remnants of the industrial past. That's why so many of these "adaptive reuse" projects—with sleek aesthetics that often highlight, rather than hide, the old highway/flood channel/railway—are getting built. Meanwhile, city governments rarely have room in their budgets, or even imaginations, to redevelop those tracts on their own. It's largely up to private funders to bankroll these projects—and it's mostly private individuals who dream them up. From an investor standpoint, the High Line's stunning successes make these projects no-brainers to back: Green space draws new businesses and dwellings. There's big redevelopment money to be made. So they partner with city governments, hungry for a heftier tax base, to do it. But these obsolete bits of infrastructure generally have people living near them, and often, they are park-poor, low-income communities of color, forgotten in the shadows of that very strip of concrete or steel. This is true for many of the 17 projects involved in the High Line Network. Planners and designers—who are usually white—may try to engage residents in dialogue; often, they fail.

Village of Euclid v. Ambler Realty (1926)

It was the first significant case regarding the relatively new practice of zoning, and served to substantially bolster zoning ordinances in towns nationwide in the United States and in other countries of the world including Canada

Civano, AZ

The guiding plan for Civano Solar Village, a project now in the land-acquisition phase of development that can be expected to be the premier example of a resource-based planned community in the United States when completed, was crafted by a consultant team directed by Wayne Moody, principal project manager for Community Design Associates of Tucson, working under contract to The Planning Center and in cooperation with the Arizona State Land Department and the Tucson/Pima County Metropolitan Energy Commission. The master plan for Civano Solar Village, to be located at the eastern edge of the Tucson Basin in semiarid southern Arizona, proposes an 820-acre mixed-use community of 2,500 dwelling units organized around three neighborhood centers, a community school (kindergarten through eighth grade), and a visitor center and conference center with hotel. Forming the village center will be 285,000 square feet of retail/commercial space. Immediately adjacent to the village center will be a light industrial, office, service, and research zone designed to generate 1,500 jobs. Consistent with its location at the base of the roadless Rincon Mountains, the Civano community plan incorporates 400 acres of public open space and recreation areas. Although each parcel will be accessible by automobile, the primary internal circulation system is designed to encourage both bicycle and pedestrian traffic. Provisions have been made for a future internal community tram system. Civano is linked with the existing regional bus system, bicycle trails system, and recreational hiking trails system. Residential units will be clustered in small developments around the Village Center and the adjacent Employment Center. The highest residential densities are within one-quarter mile of the Village Center and decline with distance from it. Residential densities range from a high of 35 units per acre at the Village Center to one per acre at the periphery of the development. This is in marked contrast to density patterns in traditional neighborhoods. An open space system, composed of a Resource Conservation Area of 300 contiguous acres, will form a continuous linkage system, enabling an open space/pedestrian linkage between each residential unit, the commercial center, and all civic uses. Specific energy and resource conservation goals established by the Tucson/Pima County Metropolitan Energy Commission guided all planning and design efforts. The major performance targets cited here are in comparison with actual 1989 levels for Tucson: reduce energy consumption by 75 percent reduce water consumption by 65 percent reduce air pollution by 40 percent reduce solid waste production by 90 percent provide one job on site for every two homes built. In a phased plan, the community will contain a balance of land uses at all stages. The Village Center and Plaza provide a central social and business focus and are linked to all parts of the village by pedestrian, bicycle, and community tram systems. Land use is distributed so that 50 percent of the residents and 70 percent of the jobs are within one-quarter mile of the Village Center. Thanks to an increase in housing densities, 37 percent of the site will be devoted to recreational, agricultural, and educational uses. Pedestrian, bicycle, and public transportation systems will be conveniently located to origins and destinations in Civano, reducing the need to rely on personal automobiles. The residential development is oriented to maximize southern and northern exposures and access to natural breezes, thus maximizing the use of passive solar design for summer cooling and winter heating. In addition, photovoltaic solar arrays for energy production will be used to shade parking areas, large rooftops, and unusable areas within utility easements. Reclaimed effluent is to be used for all exterior irrigation. The organization of each neighborhood is around a neighborhood center, with pedestrian/bike linkage to the Village Center. The smaller residential clusters (25 to 35 units) are each oriented around common pedestrian paths reflecting the natural drainage systems of the site. Perimeter automobile access will be permitted to each housing unit.

Climate mitigation

any action taken to permanently eliminate or reduce the long-term risk and hazards of climate change to human life, property, or the environment. Land use patterns and urban form can strongly impact an urban community's contribution to global climate change through the production of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG). Key contributors to a city's climate footprint include the physical arrangement of streets and public transportation infrastructure, building types, and land uses that influence both vehicle use and energy consumption in buildings.

Wicked Problems

problems complex enough to have no simple solution and whose very nature changes over time. A wicked problem is a problem that is difficult or impossible to solve because of incomplete, contradictory, and changing requirements that are often difficult to recognize. The use of the term "wicked" here has come to denote resistance to resolution, rather than evil.

Pocket Neighborhoods/ Cottage housing

All homes are designed to leave a small footprint but to live large, and every space is designed to accommodate more than one use. This cottage-housing pocket neighborhood is the result of a design competition sponsored by the city of Federal Way to showcase cottage housing and sustainable development

Ultra Small Vehicles (USVs)

Designed in Tokyo to reduce traffic on roads and take away some commuter rail traffic Really futuristic and small

Radburn, NJ

Elements of The Radburn Idea: Super Block. Specialized Highway system. Complete separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic. Park as backbone of the neighborhood. Turned around houses 4. INTRODUCTION: Radburn is located within the Borough of Fair Lawn, Bergen County, New Jersey, 12 miles from New York City. Radburn, a planned community, was started in 1929 by the City Housing Corporation from the plans developed by Clarence Stein and Henry Wright. The concept of the "new town" grew out of the older planned communities in Europe and the work of Ebenezer Howard and Patrick Geddes. The intent was to build a community which made provisions for the complexities of modern life, while still providing the amenities of open space, community service and economic viability. The community was intended to be a self-sufficient entity, with residential, commercial and industrial areas each supplementing the needs of others. It is America's first garden community, serving as a world wide example of the harmonious blending of private space and open area. Radburn provided a prototype for the new towns to meet the requirements for contemporary good living. The residential areas include every type of housing unit with a wide range of cost. 5. Radburn means Saddle River in Old English Size of 149 acres, includes 430 single family homes, 90 row houses, 54 semi-attached houses and a 93 apartment unit, as well as a shopping center, parks and amenities. One of the most publicized, long-lived and influential models of rational planning A partially built, planned settlement in northern New Jersey Represents the influence of the English Garden City rational, scientific planning Represented many of the basic principles of planning theory from 1930s to 1960s that the maximum radius for walking distance from the home to the community center should be only 1/4 mile (400m). Shopping areas are situated at intersecting traffic streets on the outside corners rather than at the center of the unit. 6. The basic layout of the community introduced the "super-block" concept, cul- de-sac (cluster) grouping, interior parklands, and separation of vehicular and pedestrian traffic to promote safety. Every home was planned with access to park walks. There are extensive recreation programs planned for the entire community. While the orientation is primarily toward children, there is also a full range of adult activities. Some of the programs are: Tot Lot, Radburn PreSchool, sports, aerobics, amateur dramatics, library, clubroom facilities. A diagram showing the street network structure of Radburn and its nested hierarchy. Separate pedestrian paths run through the green spaces between the culs-de-sac and through the central green spine (Note: the shaded area was not built) Diagram of the Radburn street pattern showing the cellular structure of the network and the nested road hierarchy 7. Objectives of Radburn: Decentralized, self-contained settlements, organized to promote environmental considerations by conserving open space, harnessing the auto and promoting community life; key features: hierarchical transportation systems cul-de-sacs footpath systems underpasses shopping center ideal size of 30,000 ppl homogeneity large-scale development clustered superblock mixed-use Interior park 8. Innovations of Radburn Separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic: This was accomplished by doing away with the traditional grid-iron street pattern and replacing it with an innovation called the superblock. What is a superblock? The superblock is a large block of land surrounded by main roads. The houses are grouped around small cul-de-sacs, each of which has an access road coming from the main roads. Finally, to further maintain the separation of pedestrian and vehicular traffic, a pedestrian underpass and an overpass, linking the superblocks, were provided. The system was so devised that a pedestrian could start at any given point and proceed on foot to school, stores or church without crossing a street used by automobiles. 9. EMERGENCE OF RADBURN PLANNING. Inspired by the garden city idea, the city housing corporation of New York acquired a vacant site in new jersey within commuting distance of New York city for the community of Radburn. The industrialization of the United States after World War I led to a dramatic growth of the cities during the 1920's. Population shift led to a severe housing shortage. In answer to the needs of "modern society", Radburn, the "Town for the Motor Age" was created in 1929. 10. Planning of radburn The street plan formed a pattern of rectangular blocks divided into rectangular lots that were usually very narrow to conserve on utility lines and very deep to conserve on streets. The curvilinear design was then revised to give some resemblance of character to the subdivision to subdue to deadly monotony of parallel streets stretching to infinity. When parking is desired on each side of the street, the right of way is between 54- 64 feet wide, pavement width 36 feet. It suggests parking on one side only since the traffic lanes should not be less than 10 feet wide. 11. Cul-de-sac and the loop street The cul-de-sac, or dead-end street, came into use to eliminate through traffic in a positive manner. Cul-de-sac terminate in a circular to retain their inherent advantages, they should be short-a maximum length of 450 feet is recommended. Long cul-de-sacs, induce accelerated traffic speeds and render access for service and fire protection more complicated. It eliminates the necessity for the turnaround and provides the continuous circulation that is required by some communities to assure no interference with the accessibility of fire protection and other services. 12. Layout of housing units The houses were oriented in reverse of the conventional placement on the lot. Kitchens and garages faced the road, living rooms and bedrooms turned toward the garden. Pathways provided uninterrupted pedestrian access to a continuous park strip, which led to large common open spaces within the center of the superblock. 13. The 2900 residents of Radburn share 23 acres of interior parks, which yield 345 square feet / person. These parks provide small districts for the city. The Plaza Building is Radburn's only neighborhood shopping center, and its tall clock tower has been a neighborhood landmark since 1927. Radburn works as a garden city and a wonderful example of a well designed community because every piece is integrated perfectly into one body. 14. The parks were secured without additional cost to the residents. The savings in expenditures for roads and public utilities at Radburn, as contrasted with the normal subdivision, paid for the parks. The Radburn type of plan requires less area of street to secure the same amount of frontage. In addition, for direct access to most houses, it used narrower roads of less expensive construction, as well as smaller utility lines. In fact, the area in streets and length of utilities is 25% less than in the typical American street. The savings in cost not only paid for 12 - 14% of the total area that went into internal parks, but also covered the cost of grading and landscaping the play spaces and green links connecting the central block commons. 15. Failure of Radburn planning The design of Radburn believed that people would actively use the front of the houses facing the greenways. In reality, people come and "leave" from the back of the houses and the vehicles, not pedestrian access. More people and children walking and playing in the little driveways and cul-de-sacs than on the actual greenways. Second, the market has repeatedly shown that homeowners prefer more personal land around their homes to living on tiny lots and sharing a large green space in common. The Depression pushed the builder, City Housing Corporation, into bankruptcy. 16. CONCLUSION: 1. Compared to contemporary developments the Radburn plan is more safer, orderly, convenient, spacious and peaceful. 2. Many developers have used one or more aspects of the Radburn plan and its implementation in their own suburbs. 3. Radburn idea is now the suburban model of choice. 4. From a sociological point of view, Radburn not only exemplifies an ideally planned place to live, but it establishes a real mode or plan of living

Death and Life of Great American Cities

Jacobs' book is an attack on "orthodox" modern city planning and city architectural design. Looking into how cities actually work, rather than how they should work according to urban designers and planners, Jacobs effectively describes the real factors affecting cities, and recommends strategies to enhance actual city performance Jacobs briefly explains influential ideas in orthodox planning, starting from Howard's Garden city, indeed a set of self-sufficient small towns, ideal for all but those with a plan for their own lives. Concurrently, City Beautiful was developed to sort out the monuments from the rest of the city, and assemble them in a unit. Later Le Corbusier devised the Radiant City, composed of skyscrapers within a park. Jacobs argues that all these are irrelevant to how cities work, and therefore moves on to explain workings of cities in the first part of the book. She explores the three primary uses of sidewalks: safety, contact, and assimilating children. Street safety is promoted by pavements clearly marking a public/private separation, and by spontaneous protection with the eyes of both pedestrians and those watching the continual flow of pedestrians from buildings. To make this eye protection effective at enhancing safety, there should be "an unconscious assumption of general street support" when necessary, or an element of "trust". As the main contact venue, pavements contribute to building trust among neighbors over time. Moreover, self-appointed public characters such as storekeepers enhance the social structure of sidewalk life by learning the news at retail and spreading it. Jacobs argues that such trust cannot be built in artificial public places such as a game room in a housing project. Sidewalk contact and safety, together, thwart segregation and racial discrimination. A final function of sidewalks is to provide a non-matriarchy environment for children to play. This is not achieved in the presumably "safe" city parks - an assumption that Jacobs seriously challenges due to the lack of surveillance mechanisms in parks. Successful, functional parks are those under intense use by a diverse set of companies and residents. Such parks usually possess four common characteristics: intricacy, centering, sun, and enclosure. Intricacy is the variety of reasons people use parks, among them centering or the fact that parks have a place known as their centers. Sun, shaded in the summer, should be present in parks, as well as building to enclose parks. Jacobs then explores a city neighborhood, tricky to define for while it is an organ of self-governance, it is not self-contained. Three levels of city neighborhoods; city, districts, and streets, can be identified. Streets should be able to effectively ask for help when enormous problems arise. Effective districts should therefore exist to represent streets to the city. City is the source of most public money - from federal or state coffers.

Portland, OR

One of the first cities to invest back into its transit system. John Charles Olmstead began movement for green space in 1903. In 1955, 8100 acres have been permanently protected from development. THE city most comparable to Portland might be Vancouver in Canada, reckons Sam Adams, Portland's mayor, although "we look to Amsterdam, Helsinki and Stockholm" for ideas. Ethan Seltzer, a professor of urban planning in Portland, thinks little Freiburg, in Germany, is the best comparison, with its similar obsessions about recycling, sustainability, public transit and bicycling. Others pick Zurich, which, like Portland, has a view of snow-capped mountains, orderly (bordering on staid) streets with trams, even the same peculiar fondness for direct democracy and tolerance of assisted suicide. This might seem odd for a city on the American West Coast that once was the terminus of the Oregon Trail and has a cowboys-and-rodeos heritage. The locals, in fact, enjoy feeling odd: "Keep Portland weird", say bumper stickers on the city's cars, which all seem to be hybrid-electric vehicles. "Keep Portland sanctimonious," mumble a few contrarians, while others savour the irony that Portland had to steal the slogan from Austin, Texas. But on the whole, Portlanders not only love their city but believe that it is, and ought to be, a model for the rest of America. Mr Adams has personally contributed by becoming the first (though no longer the only) openly gay mayor of a big American city, and even surviving a recall attempt after a sex scandal (he is now confronting another). Mr Adams has a vision of progressive urbanism: a city where most people cycle or ride the streetcar, recycle what they consume, exist in harmony with nature and live in communities rather than the suburban sprawl of cities like Los Angeles, Houston, Phoenix or Atlanta. Nature, in fact, is the main draw for the mostly young and single newcomers to this city, almost the fastest-growing on the West Coast, says Joe Cortright, a Portland economist: the ocean to the west; the Cascade mountains to the east; and the high desert beyond them. The vineyards of pinot noir and chardonnay along the Willamette Valley are all within a manageable drive. In Portland, "business casual" means wearing a fleece. The area's main industrial cluster is "activewear", led by Nike and Columbia Sportswear and including thousands of smaller companies. The environment is also the main theme of public policy. The biggest force in local politics is not a party (Democrats in effect rule without opposition) but cyclists. The bike lanes are impressive and getting even better now as streets get "bioswales", patches of turf and shrub that capture and filter storm water and simultaneously calm traffic and separate pedestrians and cyclists from the Priuses. Those who can't bike are encouraged to use public transport, which is free downtown. Mr Adams says Portland's success is "totally replicable". But much of it seems to be an unintended consequence of land-use policies dating back to 1973. Back then, Oregon adopted "urban-growth boundaries" (UGBs) to preserve the farmlands that were then the mainstay of Oregon's economy. Over time the rationale for UGBs changed to "don't Californicate Oregon"—ie, don't become Los Angeles, a freeway sprawl with no centre. The result has been unusually compact living, which is in turn easily served by public transport. But cities with sprawling, California-style layouts will find it harder to make people use public transport. Phoenix, for example, has an excellent light-rail system, but it is often empty. And it may be even harder for such cities to get their residents to live more closely together. Joel Kotkin, a Los Angeles-based demographer and author, thinks that places like Portland, San Francisco and Boston have become "elite cities", attractive to the young and single, especially those with trust funds, but beyond the reach of middle-class families who want a house with a lawn. Indeed Portland, for all its history of Western grit, is remarkably white, young and childless. Most Americans will therefore continue to migrate to the more affordable "cities of aspiration" such as Houston, Atlanta or Phoenix, thinks Mr Kotkin. As they do so, they may turn decentralised sprawl into quilts of energetic suburbs with a community feeling. That is not to belittle Portland's vision. It is a sophisticated and forward-looking place. Which other city can boast that its main attraction is a bustling independent book store (Powell's) and that medical students can go from one part of their campus to another by gondola, taking their bikes with them? Other cities will see much to emulate. Minneapolis, for example, this month displaced Portland as Bicycling magazine's most bike-friendly city ("they got extra points for biking in the snow," grumble Mr Adams's staff). Adam Davis of Davis, Hibbitts & Midghall, a Portland polling firm, says that Oregonians like to consider themselves leaders but also exceptions. They are likely to remain both.

Cohousing

an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space. s an intentional community of private homes clustered around shared space. Each attached or single family home has traditional amenities, including a private kitchen. Shared spaces typically feature a common house, which may include a large kitchen and dining area, laundry, and recreational spaces. Shared outdoor space may include parking, walkways, open space, and gardens. Neighbors also share resources like tools and lawnmowers. Households have independent incomes and private lives, but neighbors collaboratively plan and manage community activities and shared spaces. The legal structure is typically a homeowner association or housing cooperative. Community activities feature regularly-scheduled shared meals, meetings, and workdays. Neighbors gather for parties, games, movies, or other events. Cohousing makes it easy to form clubs, organize child and elder care, and carpool. Cohousing facilitates interaction among neighbors and thereby provides social, practical, economic, and environmental benefits.[2][3]

Flexible Architecture

buildings that are intended to respond to changing situations in their use, operation, or location. This is architecture that adapts rather than stagnates; responds to change rather than rejects it; is motive rather than static. It is a design form that is by its essence crossdisciplinary and multi-functional and consequently, is frequently innovative and expressive of contemporary design issues. By revealing its basis and the factors that are determining its development, the value and relevancy of flexible architecture to contemporary problems associated with technological, social and economic change can be revealed.

Monterrey Housing (Monterrey, Mexico)

is a Chilean architect from Santiago. He is executive director of the firm Elemental S.A. He won the Pritzker Architecture Prize in 2016.[1] He was the director and curator of the Architecture Section of the 2016 Venice Biennale.[2] Aravena designed the "Siamese Towers", a workshop building at the school of architecture and faculty buildings at the Universidad Católica. He designed the Colegio Huelquen Montessori; the Casa para una Escultora (House for a Sculptor); Casa en el lago Pirehueico (House on Lake Pirehueico); Hunt, Le Mans and Johnson residential halls of St. Edward's University in Austin, Texas; art workshops on the Vitra campus at Weil am Rhein; Villa en Ordos Inner Mongolia (Villa in Ordos Inner Mongolia) and projects for the Elemental initiative. He also designed a children's playground at the Metropolitan Park of Santiago.[3]

Vision Zero

is a multi-national road traffic safety project that aims to achieve a highway system with no fatalities or serious injuries involving road traffic. It started in Sweden and was approved by their parliament in October 1997.

Build A Better Block

started in April 2010, when a group of community organizers, neighbors, and property owners gathered together to revitalize a single commercial block in an underused neighborhood corridor. The area was filled with vacant properties, wide streets, and few amenities for people who lived within walking distance. The group brought together all the resources from the community and converted the block into a walkable, bikeable neighborhood destination for people of all ages complete with bike lanes, cafe seating, trees, plants, pop-up businesses, and lighting. The project was developed to show the city how the block could be revived to improve area safety, health, and economics if ordinances that restricted small business and multi-modal infrastructure were removed. Since that time, Better Block projects have been developed throughout the world with many of the temporary infrastructure improvements and businesses made permanent. The Better Block is an open-sourced project that is free to re-use and build upon, though we ask that individuals and organizations that use our work credit us under our Creative Commons License. This site is developed to provide help for communities that wish to build their own Better Blocks complete with news, tools, and other resources they may need to help rapidly revitalize neighborhoods. Our consulting firm, Team Better Block, assists cities with planning, designing, and measuring the impacts of Better Block as an alternative to the typical urban planning process. We have a variety of services that will elevate the success of your project. For more information on consulting, email [email protected]. y (Real and Perceived). If an area feels unsafe, then everything breaks down. Whether it be business, school, or neighborhood revitalization, the key to changing a place is addressing its perceived safety. When approaching blocks, we ask: Does it feel safe to cross the street? Does it feel safe to stand on the sidewalk? Does it feel safe to linger in the area? Does the area have hidden corners or large obstacles that reduce open sightlines? Is the area filled with debris, graffiti, overgrown landscaping, etc.? Do the businesses have bars on the windows or opaque windows? Our goal is to address each of these questions and find ways to improve the area rapidly. Shared Access. The next goal we focus on is looking at ways to bring more people into the area by various modes of transportation. We ask: Do pedestrians have easy and clear access to the area? Do bicycles feel welcome in the area? Is the area easily accessible from neighborhoods? Are there way-finding signs that direct people into and out of the area? Are there amenities that allow people to linger in the space (seating, tables, etc.)? Stay Power. By stay power, we mean how can we encourage people to visit the area, have them linger, and invite their friends? To answer this question, we ask: Are there food options on the block? Are there places to eat outdoors? Are there maps, bulletin boards, games, or other amenities that encourage people to linger? Is the identity of the area prominent (arts district, cultural district, historic area)? 8-80, Dog-Owners. Lastly, we look at amenities that create invitations for everyone—from babies to 8-year-olds to 80-year-olds, and beyond. These groups tend to be indicators of a healthy environment that feels welcoming and attracts other people. Preview the area for best possible Better Block locations. We've created a quick survey that helps us identify strong candidates. Ideally, locations with a block of buildings that have good pedestrian form, but lack a complete street are preferred, but we've developed Better Block projects in areas that failed to meet much of the criteria identified in the survey. It's still possible, but the project will only be as successful as the community you partner with. Typically, areas built pre-war have good possibilities. Also, review former streetcar intersections at your local library to help identify small commercial corridors that are nestled into neighborhoods. Proximity to a neighborhood is the most important factor when putting together a Better Block. Create a free wordpress.com or blogspot.com site to provide the community information on the project. Also, create a facebook event so others can like the project and begin forwarding details to your contacts within the community. Post your event on the Better Block Group Map. We've setup a collaborative map for anyone interested in developing a Better Block project here. Pin the block you want to repair and be sure to provide links so others can take part. Assemble a team of grassroots community activists, nonprofit groups, businesses, artists, and DIY'ers. College students, urban planning/architect associations, young business professionals, and local Etsy groups have been some of our strongest partners for Better Block projects. Latch the Better Block to an existing event, such as an art crawl, ciclovia, fun run, etc. More than likely, the area you're revitalizing has been offline and most residents don't know to return to the area. We've developed food events, bike rides, and more that celebrate a community's identity while aligning the effort with a Better Block area. Work with your city to permit the project using either a block party permit or assembly permit. Start this process at least 60 days prior to your date. Work with area property owners to allow access to vacant spaces for a weekend. In the past, we pitched events as giant "art installations," so the vacant spaces become defacto art galleries. Our property owners were excited to freely allow access because we were actively marketing their properties. Also, immediately following our original Better Block, several of these vacant spaces were leased. Create groups to develop and install temporary "pop-up" businesses to show the potential for what could be if the street had a more inviting presence. Also, try and keep in mind all users (young, old, etc.). We installed a cafe with outdoor seating to highlight the ability to re-utilize the space given to cars. We also created a kids' art studio so families could be involved, and a flower/gift market filled with local craft goods. You could also do a book-drive collection, and create your own small bookstore as well with what is collected. You don't have to get overly elaborate with your product offerings. For cafes, coffee out of a pump urn is simple, inexpensive, and can create an inviting experience. If possible, work with existing local businesses to help fill the storefront with product. The goal should be to place as many local products as possible in each of the shops. Include as many people-friendly aesthetics. We've worked with local props warehouses to bring in planters and temporary street lighting to help divide the street. You can also build your own planters and sandwich boards from old pallets. We've strung simple bailing wire between buildings at 15′ high (above a semi-truck's lowest clearance), and attached recycled holiday lights to help provide more ambiance. Calm the street with bike lanes. Work with your city to test the viability of bike lanes, cycle tracks, dedicated transit lanes, or expanded sidewalks. White duct tape works extremely well as a replacement for paint. Also, we've mixed our own removable paint using equal parts flour, corn starch, and water which quickly dissolves at the end of the project. Spray chalk or tempera paint is also an alternative. Invite artists to perform in the street. Music is a key component to having an exciting street. Use a guitar amplifier and play tracks from an iPod or invite DJs or drum circles to bring a soundscape to the block. - Remember that people want a reason to stay and be apart of the environment. Be sure to provide plenty of seating, things to read (maps, build simple kiosks to use as community boards, food/drink). Chess boards, et cetera. Print out and post the story of the block (its history, its present, its future as a neighborhood place). - Promote throughout the neighborhood, city, and more. Send fliers to local universities, schools, and more. - You'll more than likely need a permit to close a portion of the street. We specifically asked to allow one lane of vehicle traffic so that residents could see that a "complete street" that allowed all modes of transit was a viable solution. Had we simply blocked off the entire street, the message would not have been conveyed as well. - Insurance. Oftentimes, property owners will ask for insurance before allowing access to their buildings. We take out simple "Block Party event" insurance policies and add property owners as "additional insured" for our projects. - Invite your Mayor, council members, and city staff so they can see the possibilities for themselves. Be sure to track sales to show the increase in area business (potential for increased tax revenue is a city's largest motivator for change), and spotlight how traffic slows but people still have easy access and come out. We will be releasing a handful of tools shortly to help with analytics for your project. Check back soon! - Lastly, have fun! Remember that if you want creativity, take away a zero from your budget. Oftentimes groups get stifled by the lack of funds, but since the project is a demonstration, you can often borrow the majority of the items needed for the project. If funds are definitely required, use indiegogo.com to setup a crowdfund to help with the effort.

Brownfields, Greenfields, Greyfields

- Greyfield land (or grayfield) is economically obsolescent, outdated, failing, moribund or underused real estate assets or land. The term was coined in the early 2000s from the 'sea' of empty asphalt that often accompanies these sites. "Greyfield" is a relative neologism as compared to more commonly known terms such as brownfield or greenfield. - Brownfield land is a term used in urban planning to describe any previously developed land that is not currently in use, whether contaminated or not or, in North America, more specifically to describe land previously used for industrial or commercial purposes with known or suspected pollution including soil contamination due to hazardous waste.[1][2] - Greenfield land is undeveloped land in a city or rural area either used for agriculture or landscape design, or left to evolve naturally. These areas of land are usually agricultural or amenity properties being considered for urban development. Greenfield land can be unfenced open fields, urban lots or restricted closed properties, kept off limits to the general public by a private or government entity. Rather than building upon greenfield land, a developer may choose to redevelop brownfield or greyfield lands, areas that have been developed but left abandoned or underused.

Accessory Dwelling Unit (ADU)

A separate housing arrangement within a single-family home. The ADU is a complete living unit and includes a private kitchen and bath. an apartment over the garage a tiny house (on a foundation) in the backyard a basement legally an ADU is part of the same property as the main home. It cannot be bought or sold separately, as a condominium or a dwelling on wheels might be. The owner of the ADU is the owner of the main home. (For an extremely rare exception see here). Though accessory dwellings are an old idea (think of the old alley apartments in DC, or the carriage houses you see in fine old Seattle homes), they fell out of favor in the middle of the 20th century. Now, however, they're coming back, and they have lots of names. Planners call them ADUs (Accessory Dwelling Units), but they're also known as granny flats, in-law units, laneway houses, secondary dwelling units, and a hundred other names. ADUs can be tiny houses, but tiny houses aren't always ADUs People build them for lots of reasons, but the most common goals, according to one study, are gaining income via rent and housing a family member. Flexibility in housing makes sense for environmental, lifestyle, and financial reasons. Though many people buy houses and live in them for decades, their actual needs change over time. But the way that houses are currently built doesn't reflect those changes, especially the way households may spend decades with just 1 or 2 members. Many American houses are too big for 1- or 2-person households, which is too bad, because size is probably the biggest single factor in the environmental impact of a house. If you have a reasonably sized house, and an even more reasonably sized ADU, you've likely got a pretty green combination with some social benefits as well. You could have your best friend, your mother, or your grown kid, live with you. This kind of flexibility and informal support could really help as the nation's population ages. Most people want to stay in their homes as they age, but finances and design can be problematic. An ADU could help aging people meet their needs without moving. In many localities you can get legal rental income from a permitted ADU, or, if you want, you can live in the ADU and rent out the other dwelling. That should add a lot of flexibility to finances. So that's the potential this form of housing has. Here on this site we're going to focus on real ADU stories and data-driven research to figure out if ADUs are living up to that promise. We're also going to recognize that ADUs are major construction projects, and do what we can to guide you through design, financing, permitting, and so forth. We hope it helps.

Edward Glaeser

Ed Glaeser is the Fred and Eleanor Glimp Professor of Economics at Harvard, where he also serves as Director of the Taubman Center for State and Local Government and the Rappaport Institute for Greater Boston. He studies the economics of cities, and has written scores of urban issues, including the growth of cities, segregation, crime, and housing markets. He has been particularly interested in the role that geographic proximity can play in creating knowledge and innovation. He received his Ph.D. from the University of Chicago in 1992 and has been at Harvard since then.

Jane Jacobs

Jane Jacobs OC OOnt (née Butzner; May 4, 1916 - April 25, 2006) was an American-Canadian journalist, author, and activist who influenced urban studies, sociology, and economics. Her book The Death and Life of Great American Cities (1961) argued that urban renewal did not respect the needs of city-dwellers. It also introduced the sociological concepts "eyes on the street" and "social capital".[1][2] Jacobs organized grassroots efforts to protect neighborhoods from "slum clearance", in particular Robert Moses' plans to overhaul her own Greenwich Village neighborhood. She was instrumental in the eventual cancellation of the Lower Manhattan Expressway, which would have passed directly through SoHo and Little Italy. She was arrested in 1968 for inciting a crowd at a public hearing on that project. After moving to Toronto in 1968, she joined the opposition to the Spadina Expressway and the associated network of expressways in Toronto planned, and under construction. As a mother and a writer who criticized experts in the male-dominated field of urban planning, Jacobs endured scorn from established figures. She did not have a college degree or any formal training in urban planning, and her lack of credentials was seized upon as grounds for criticism.

Gentle Density

Navigating the density debate might be easier if more cities embraced "gentle density," which Brent Toderian defines as "attached, ground-oriented housing that's more dense than a detached house, but with a similar scale and character. Think duplexes, semi-detached homes, rowhouses, or even stacked townhouses." While even this mild form of densification draws opposition, it's less drastic than big blocky mid-rises. "Many people don't mind sharing a common wall and are eager to cut their costs and carbon footprint, but still appreciate a direct relationship with the ground. That's why fellow urbanist Daniel Parolek in San Francisco calls this kind of density the 'missing middle.'" Rowhouses, townhouses and the like used to be an urban staple. But now, planners in many cities will have to relearn them. "In most cities though, deliberate zoning decisions have made this kind of housing illegal." "Gentle Density" is a strategy for responding to changing conditions and growth by supporting a variety of housing forms that absorb growth and change while minimizing their impacts. Gentle Density provides opportunities for intergenerational living, changing lifestyles, new families, and aging-in-place. It provides opportunities for housing diversity and more attainable housing options.

Park(ing) Day

Originally invented in 2005 by Rebar, a San Francisco design firm, PARK(ing) Day is an annual, global event where artists, activists and ordinary citizens transform parking spaces into temporary public parks.Rebar's original PARK(ing) project in 2005 transformed a single metered parking space into a temporary public park in an area of San Francisco that the city had designated as lacking public open space. The great majority of San Francisco's downtown outdoor space is dedicated to movement and storage of private vehicles, while only a fraction of that space is allocated to serve a broader range of public needs. It challenges people to rethink the way streets are used and reinforces the need for broad-based changes to urban infrastructure. - is about re-imagining the possibilities of the urban landscape and how we use our public spaces, it instigates change and offers local ideas to our planning challenges. The mission of PARK(ing) Day is to call attention to the need for more urban open space, to generate critical debate around how public space is created and allocated, and to improve the quality of urban human habitat ... at least until the meter runs out!

Density Bonuses

One approach, widely used in the United States, is for a municipality to leverage its regulatory power in order to incentivize private sector investment in a designated urban regeneration area through the offer of a density bonus. A density bonus is an incentive-based tool that permits a developer to increase the maximum allowable development on a site in exchange for either funds or in-kind support for specified public policy goals. This tool works best in cities in which market demand is strong and land availability limited, or for projects or sites in which the developer's financial incentives outweigh alternative development options. Density bonuses have been used to promote, among other policy goals, environmental conservation, public spaces, and production of additional units of low-income (or "social") housing. The density bonus program was introduced in New York City in 1961. It granted developers the right to build three additional square feet of construction in return for every one square foot of public space improvement they carried out at the street level within their property (usually a setback to create a plaza or the development of an arcade). This density bonus was later revised to 10 square feet for every square foot of public space improvement, up to a certain upper threshold for such a construction bonus. This program was responsible for the development of over 500 privately built public spaces in Manhattan over three decades. São Paulo, Brazil, had a similar program called outorga onerosa, which gives property owners an as-of-right construction bonus of up to 20 percent of their existing development if they make a predetermined cash contribution to a city-wide general purpose infrastructure improvement fund. This tool's usefulness is limited to robust market environments in which a project's developer can "afford" the additional cost of incorporating subsidized housing units. Nonetheless, an advantage of deploying this tool is to encourage creation of a mixed-income community. For example, it allows a municipality to stimulate construction of a public good (in this case, additional affordable low-income residential units) without having to spend precious capital funds.

Daniel Burnham

designed the slender 285-foot tower in 1902, the Flatiron Building. American architect and urban planner whose impact on the American city was substantial. He was instrumental in the development of the skyscraper and was noted for his highly successful management of the World's Columbian Exposition of 1893 and his ideas about urban planning. His work on the fair had developed in Burnham a keen interest in parks and city planning. He believed that an improved urban environment could provide a positive transformative experience for its inhabitants. Burnham's first opportunity to put his ideas in action (he had set forth his ideas to no avail earlier in Chicago) came in 1901, when he became the de facto chairman of the Senate Park Commission, also called the McMillan Commission (for Michigan's U.S. Sen. James McMillan, who was chairman of the Senate Committee on the District of Columbia). Burnham invited his friend McKim and Frederick Law Olmsted, Jr. (son of the famous landscape architect with whom Burnham had worked on the fair), to join him in re-envisioning and enlarging Pierre-Charles L'Enfant's original 1791 plan: they undertook much of the actual work. Under Burnham's leadership and based on precedents in Paris and especially Rome, the team envisioned a grand, ordered national capital to reflect America's status as an emerging world power. Their plan for the capital city included a comprehensive park system and redefined the National Mall and surrounding area. Burnham further conceived of Union Station, the railway station, as a formal public gateway to the city's monumental core and as a feature integral to the city plan. Upon publication the McMillan Plan received widespread attention and approval. Union Station facade (Washington, D.C.) Union Station interior (Washington, D.C.) Union Station facade (Washington, D.C.) The grand facade of Union Station, Washington, D.C., by Daniel H. Burnham. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (reproduction no. LC-DIG-det-4a20012) Union Station interior (Washington, D.C.) The general waiting room, looking west, at Union Station, Washington D.C., by architect Daniel H. Burnham. Library of Congress, Washington, D.C. (neg. no. LC-USZ62-92471) Fueled by the Progressive era's interest in municipal improvement, other cities requested Burnham's planning services. In 1902-03 Burnham, with architects Arnold W. Brunner and John M. Carrère, prepared for the city of Cleveland a "Group Plan" for a new downtown civic centre of Beaux Arts buildings formally arranged around a rectangular park. In 1905, under the auspices of leading private citizens organized as the Association for the Improvement and Adornment of San Francisco, Burnham devised for San Francisco a far more comprehensive plan. However, in the aftermath of the 1906 earthquake, this plan was not implemented. In the meantime, Burnham's architectural practice continued to flourish. So famous had he become as a city planner that, when the Philippines were ceded to the United States after the Spanish American War, Burnham was asked by the federal government to create a "Beautification Plan" for Manila and to design an entirely new summer capital, Baguio, in the Luzon highlands. He responded by recommending the preservation of Manila's old walled Spanish city, and in both cities he utilized familiar City Beautiful components: a system of parks, a network of diagonal roadways for traffic efficiency, and a civic centre complex, formally arranged as the heart of the community.

Traffic Calming

- Used to slow traffic and make the roads safer for vulnerable road users. - One of the most common is road humps - Stay within the speed limit and don't overtake in these areas. - lane narrowing Corner radii building rees gateway treatments pinch points chicanes and one shifts medians and refuge islands mini roundabouts speed humps speed cousins speed tables pavement materials and apperance two way streets signal progression diverters shared street

Reston, VA

It's rare for a 1960s suburban development to exert a cultural pull distinct from its neighboring city, but Reston pulled it off. Situated about 20 miles from Washington, D.C., in what used to be northern Virginia farmland, this settlement has attracted generations of urbanists for its people-first brand of development. When Robert E. Simon Jr. bought the land and planned his flagship project, he insisted on walkability, density, access to nature and green space, and diversity of races and income levels. He didn't invent these principles—his inspirations were hundreds of years old—but he and his successors managed to realize them at a scale and level of success that hadn't been seen before The new documentary Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA charts Simon's project from its genesis to now, through some of the last interviews he gave before passing away last year at 101. He's a complicated fellow: an idealist dedicated to principles of quality, but also a grounded extrovert who understood—unlike most post-war suburban developers—that there are place-based requirements to happy living. The film, which screens Thursday at the Environmental Film Festival in D.C., makes the case that the best ideas driving urban revival today were actually tested and implemented by the team that built Reston 50 years ago. Official Trailer: Another Way of Living: The Story of Reston, VA from Rebekah Wingert-Jabi on Vimeo. A developer who bikes Simon's career as a developer began in a way that would be impossible to emulate: he inherited Carnegie Hall at the age of 23. His father had been an uneducated, self-made real estate businessman, and assembled a robust portfolio before he passed away. After some years pursuing more conventional projects, Simon sold Carnegie Hall in 1960 and bought a swath of farmland in northern Virginia. His goal was to create a new kind of suburbia. The film shows how Simon's ideas on urban design dated back to his early twenties, when he bicycled through Europe. As a gregarious conversationalist, he loved how this mode of transit allowed him to meet so many people. But he also loved what he saw in the ancient cities of the continent, particularly the Italian hill towns. These communities clustered densely around a central hilltop plaza, where people of all shapes and sizes mingled and did business within an easy walk from home. In the documentary, Simon says of bicycling: "That's the only way to travel, because you meet so many people." (Courtesy of the family of Robert Simon) At a time when suburban development generally meant rambling streets of single-family homes, Simon decided to build Reston as a series of dense village centers that just happened to be in the middle of the countryside. Each would have its own architectural style and a central plaza with shops and things to do. Concentrating the development around these points also let Reston preserve more of the surrounding woodlands. "He fell absolutely in love with the beauty of the land, these rolling hills and the wooded areas, and he really wanted to preserve that as much as possible," Wingert-Jabi tells CityLab. "Density was a vehicle. If you're spreading single family homes ... all across the landscape then you've pretty much taken that away." The villages were designed with a range of housing units available for people in different income brackets. This was both inclusive and economical: Simon wanted a place where families could spend their whole lives, swapping up as their incomes rose. He also insisted on the principle of racial equality: Reston welcomed anyone who wanted to live there, at a time when racial housing covenants were plentiful.

Urban Sprawl

the uncontrolled expansion of urban areas, almost always has negative connotations. Urban sprawl strongly impacts the urban ecosystems it creates and the natural and agro-ecosystems that it displaces and fragments..

Rachel Carson

was an American marine biologist, author, and conservationist whose book Silent Spring and other writings are credited with advancing the global environmental movement. turned her attention to conservation, especially some problems that she believed were caused by synthetic pesticides. The result was the book Silent Spring (1962), which brought environmental concerns to an unprecedented share of the American people. Although Silent Spring was met with fierce opposition by chemical companies, it spurred a reversal in national pesticide policy, which led to a nationwide ban on DDT and other pesticides. It also inspired a grassroots environmental movement that led to the creation of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.[3] Carson was posthumously awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Jimmy Carter.

Woonerf

road in a residential district which uses various measures to calm traffic. is a living street, as originally implemented in the Netherlands and in Flanders, the Dutch-speaking northern portion of Belgium. Techniques include shared space, traffic calming, and low speed limits. Under Article 44 of the Dutch traffic code, motorised traffic in a woonerf or "recreation area" is restricted to walking pace.[1] The term "woonerf" has been adopted directly by some English-language publications. In the UK, these areas are called home zones. In the US, complete streets are a distinct concept where equal priority is given to all modes of transportation including automobiles, bicycles, and pedestrians, usually with separate rather than shared right-of-way.

City Beautiful Movement

was a reform philosophy of North American architecture and urban planning that flourished during the 1890s and 1900s with the intent of introducing beautification and monumental grandeur in cities. The movement, which was originally associated mainly with Chicago, Cleveland, Detroit, and Washington, D.C., promoted beauty not only for its own sake, but also to create moral and civic virtue among urban populations.[1] Advocates of the philosophy believed that such beautification could promote a harmonious social order that would increase the quality of life, while critics would complain that the movement was overly concerned with aesthetics at the expense of social reform; Jane Jacobs referred to the movement as an "architectural design cult."[2]. in response to crowding in tenement districts, a consequence of high birth rates, increased immigration and internal migration of rural populations into cities. The movement flourished for several decades, and in addition to the construction of monuments, it also achieved great influence in urban planning that endured throughout the 20th century, particularly in regard to United States public housing projects. The "Garden City" movement in Britain influenced the contemporary planning of some newer suburbs of London, and there was cross-influence between the two aesthetics, one based in formal garden plans and urbanization schemes and the other, with its "semi-detached villas" evoking a more rural atmosphere.

Greenbelt, MD

• Constructed in the 1930s to provide housing for low-income families as well as construction work for the unemployed • Design meant to encourage resident interaction, strong community life: residents had to be willing to participate in the life of the town (cooperative community) • Homes grouped into superblocks, series of walkways, homes facing garden-side

Walking School Bus

• Group of children walking to school with one or more adults supervising them and leading the route to pick up the kids.

Freiburg, Germany

• Shining example of sustainability - green in appearance and practice • Excels in the areas of transportation, energy, waste management, land conservation, and green economy • Auto-independent o Car-sharing, tram, bicycles o Roads built just wide enough for a tram track, not for more lanes of cars • Successful in incorporating nature into the urban fabric o Plenty of green spaces - home to Germany's largest communal forest o **the city has bachle: narrow charnels of water that run alongside the pavements • Vibrant, liveable, green city

Community Land Trusts

A community land trust (CLT) is a nonprofit corporation that develops and stewards affordable housing, community gardens, civic buildings, commercial spaces and other community assets on behalf of a community. "CLTs" balance the needs of individuals to access land and maintain security of tenure with a community's need to maintain affordability, economic diversity and local access to essential services.

Half-Earth (EO WIlson idea)

Half-Earth: Our Planet's Fight for Life is a 2016 book by E. O. Wilson, in which the author proposes that half of the Earth's land should be designated a human-free natural reserve to preserve biodiversity.[1] Wilson noted that the term "Half-Earth" was coined for this concept by Tony Hiss in his Smithsonian article "Can the World Really Set Aside Half the Planet for Wildlife?"[2][3]

Ian McHarg

He founded the University of Pennsylvania's Department of Landscape Architecture. His 1969 book, Design with Nature, a work revered in the environmental movement as well as in planning, laid out his ideas on land use planning, landscape architecture, and ecological planning. The book also explored some of the basic concepts that would later become Geographic Information Systems (GIS).

Tactical Urbanism

"relating to small-scale actions serving a larger purpose", an approach to neighborhood building and activation using short-term, low-cost, and scalable interventions and policies. Makes use of open and iterative development processes, the efficient use of resources, and the creative potential unleashed by social interaction. -Flexible responses -Creates tactile proposals for change instead of plans or computer generated renderings that remain abstract

Dutch Hofjes

A hofje is a Dutch word for a courtyard with almshouses around it. They have existed since the Middle Ages. A hofje provided housing for elderly people (mostly women). They were privately funded, and served as a form of social security. In the Netherlands there are still a number of hofjes in use. Hofjes are usually built in a U-shape with a yard or garden in the middle, and a gate as entrance. The shape of hofjes was most likely inspired by the (older) Begijnenhofjes -- groups of small houses inhabited exclusively by religious women. A distinction is usually made between the Begijnenhofjes and 'regular' hofjes. The former were used only by (Catholic) women, who were supporting themselves. They were a sort of cloister. The latter were more charitable institutions. To be eligible to live in a hofje one had to meet four criteria: Sex: almost all hofjes were founded for women, as they could be relied on to keep a household running Religion: many hofjes were founded for people of the same faith as the founder (some hofjes were founded by church communities) Age: from the 17th century a minimum age was often used. Fifty years was common, and this was an old age in those years Social-economic background: hofjes were targeted for poorer people

Zoning

A planning tool used to separate industry and business from residential neighborhoods. process of dividing land in a municipality into zones (e.g. residential, industrial) in which certain land uses are permitted or prohibited.[1] In addition, the sizes, bulk, and placement of buildings may be regulated. The type of zone determines whether planning permission for a given development is granted. Zoning may specify a variety of outright and conditional uses of land. It may also indicate the size and dimensions of land area as well as the form and scale of buildings. These guidelines are set in order to guide urban growth and development.[2][3]

Trackless Trams

A self-driving vehicle that is like a train, but which doesn't run on tracks. Identified as a cross between a bus, train, and tram, the so-called rail bus follows markings painted on the road, instead of conventional rail tracks. The electric vehicle is billed as being a cheaper and more eco-friendly alternative to current transportation systems in China. Ten minutes of charge can power the electric vehicle for 25 kilometres (15.5 miles). It can reach speeds of up to 43 miles per hour (69 kilometres per hour) and is said to have a life-span of around 25 years. The system is also significantly cheaper to install than a subway system - which in China typically costs between £45 and £80 million. CRRC estimates the construction and implementation of a rail-bus network at about 20 per cent of this.

Adaptive Reuse

Adaptive reuse refers to the process of reusing an old site or building for a purpose other than which it was built or designed for. Along with brownfield reclamation, adaptive reuse is seen by many as a key factor in land conservation and the reduction of urban sprawl. However adaptive reuse can become controversial as there is sometimes a blurred line between renovation, facadism and adaptive reuse. It can be regarded as a compromise between historic preservation and demolition.

Hyperloop

An electric motor to accelerate a levitated pod through a low-pressure tube. A Hyperloop is a proposed mode of passenger and/or freight transportation, first used to describe an open-source vactrain design released by a joint team from Tesla and SpaceX.[1] Drawing heavily from Robert Goddard's vactrain, a hyperloop is a sealed tube or system of tubes through which a pod may travel free of air resistance or friction conveying people or objects at high speed while being very efficient. Elon Musk's version of the concept, first publicly mentioned in 2012,[2] incorporates reduced-pressure tubes in which pressurized capsules ride on air bearings driven by linear induction motors and axial compressors.[3]

Willis Carrier

Born November 26, 1876, in Angola, N.Y. Received engineering degree from Cornell University in 1901 Started working at Buffalo Forge Company in 1901 Designed the world's first modern air conditioning system in 1902 Developed Rational Psychrometric Formulae in 1911 Founded Carrier Engineering Corporation in 1915 Awarded honorary doctorates from Lehigh University (1935) and Alfred University (1942) Died October 7, 1950, in New York, N.Y. Inducted into the National Inventors Hall of Fame in 1985 Named one of TIME magazine's "100 Most Influential People of the 20th Century" in 1998. Willis Carrier, in full Willis Haviland Carrier, (born November 26, 1876, Angola, New York, U.S.—died October 7, 1950, New York City), American inventor and industrialist who formulated the basic theories of air conditioning. In 1902, while an engineer with the Buffalo Forge Company, Carrier designed the first system to control temperature and humidity. His "Rational Psychrometric Formulae," introduced in a 1911 engineering paper, initiated scientific air-conditioning design. He was a founder (1915) of the Carrier Corporation, manufacturer of air-conditioning equipment.

Urban Renewal

Melbourne Docklands urban renewal project, a transformation of a large disused docks area into a new residential and commercial precinct for 25,000 people 1999 photograph looking northeast on Chicago's Cabrini-Green housing project, one of many urban renewal efforts. Urban renewal (also called urban regeneration in the United Kingdom and urban redevelopment in the United States[1]) is a program of land redevelopment in cities, often where there is urban decay. Modern attempts at renewal began in the late 19th century in developed nations, and experienced an intense phase in the late 1940s under the rubric of reconstruction. The process has had a major impact on many urban landscapes, and has played an important role in the history and demographics of cities around the world. Urban renewal is a process where privately owned properties within a designated renewal area are purchased or taken by eminent domain by a municipal redevelopment authority, razed and then reconveyed to selected developers who devote them to other uses. Until 1970, the displaced owners and tenants received only the constitutionally-mandated "just compensation" specified in the Fifth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. This measure of compensation covered only the fair market value of the taken property, and omitted compensation for a variety of incidental losses like, for example, moving expenses, loss of favorable financing and notably, business losses, such as loss of business goodwill. In the 1970s the federal government and state governments enacted the Uniform Relocation Assistance Act which provides for limited compensation of some of these losses. However the Act denies the displaced land owners the right to sue to enforce its provisions, so it is deemed an act of legislative grace rather than a constitutional right. Historically, urban redevelopment has been controversial because of such practices as taking private property by eminent domain for "public use" and then turning it over to redevelopers free of charge or for less than the acquisition cost (known as "land write-down"). Thus, in the controversial Connecticut case of Kelo v. City of New London (2005) the plan called for a redeveloper to lease the subject 90-acre waterfront property for $1 per year. This process is also carried out in rural areas, referred to as village renewal, though it may not be exactly the same in practice.[2] In some cases, renewal may result in urban sprawl and less congestion when areas of cities receive freeways and expressways.[3] Urban renewal has been seen by proponents as an economic engine and a reform mechanism, and by critics as a mechanism for control. It may enhance existing communities. On the other hand, some redevelopment projects have been failures, including the Kelo case, in which the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the taking by a 5 to 4 vote, but where nothing was built on the taken property. Many cities link the revitalization of the central business district and gentrification of residential neighborhoods to earlier urban renewal programs. Over time, urban renewal evolved into a policy based less on destruction and more on renovation and investment, and today is an integral part of many local governments, often combined with small and big business incentives.

Columbia, MD

When the Howard Hughes Corporation (HHC) inherited control of the pioneering mixed-use town center of Columbia, Maryland, in 2010, the company became steward of the task of urbanizing Columbia's still-suburban downtown for a city that had grown to a population of 99,615. In the 1960s, developer James Rouse had conceived of Columbia, which was to be built on open land between Baltimore and Washington, D.C., as a 14,000-acre (5,700 ha) new town of ten villages, including its designated Town Center. The vision was roughly based on Rouse's native Easton, Maryland, although Easton was a mid-19th-century village built on a rectilinear street grid of mostly 200-by-400-foot (61 by 122 m) blocks. Instead of laying Columbia out as a grid, chief planner Morton Hoppenfeld followed the planning trends that were popular in the 1960s: he created curvilinear village pods which were separated by the stream valleys the developer was committed to preserving, using the overlay model explained by landscape architect Ian McHarg in his 1969 book Design with Nature. As Columbia exists today, the strong east-west axis never materialized. A slender bridge provides the only pedestrian link between the civic and economic centers of the downtown. (Google Earth) Original Town Center Three four- to six-lane divided-median parkways define the 400-acre (162 ha) Town Center and divide it into three loops around three major areas—the Columbia Mall, the Lake Kittamaqundi lakefront, and Symphony Woods. Elevation changes further separate the areas. The mall occupies the high ground about 60 feet (18 m) above the lakefront and 30 feet (9 m) above the parkway that separates them. Envisioned by enclosed-mall pioneer Rouse to serve as the Main Street of Columbia, the mall was built in 1971, only four years after Columbia opened, to pre-service the city and its environs. Surrounded by inner- and outer-ring roads, the mall is still a primary economic driver. It contains 1.4 million square feet (130,000 sq m) of retail space that includes more than 215 shops and restaurants supported by 7,200 parking spaces serving a population of 870,000. Rouse built the 35-acre (14 ha) Lake Kittamaqundi on the Little Patuxent River at the eastern edge of downtown. A two-acre (0.8 ha) plaza and a lakefront amphitheater only 750 feet (230 m) from the mall act as the civic heart of the city, centered on its 3,400-foot-long (1,000 m) lakefront. From Columbia's inception, the ten-story American City Building, an office structure located at the lakefront and flanked by restaurants, a hotel, a cinema, and a shared parking lot, signaled that a mixture of uses would be sought reasonably near each other, unlike in typical suburban centers at the time. However, the only pedestrian link between the downtown civic and economic centers is a slender pedestrian bridge that starts at the American City Building, traverses the six-lane Little Patuxent Parkway, and climbs the elevation rise to link to a path that goes around another office building, then crosses the inner-ring road to reach a tertiary mall entrance. The third major loop of downtown, the 150-acre (61 ha) Merriweather District, is built around the ten-acre (4 ha) Merriweather Post Pavilion, accommodating 20,000 patrons and surrounded by the 30 acres (4 ha) of Merriweather Park at Symphony Woods. The pavilion, park, and additional protected open space occupy about half the district, but its central location shifts future development to its peripheral crescent. A four-lane parkway also divides Merriweather from the other two districts, but the southern-sloping grade change is more gradual than between the mall and lakefront. An early Rouse Company rendering conceived of an urban-scaled waterfront closely connected to the mall. (Rouse Company) HHC's decision to pay $16.5 million for the ten-story American City tower opposite the mall only to demolish and replace it with larger-scale urban mixed-use projects, such as those depicted here, substantiates its strategy to intensify lakefront development. (Design Collective, courtesy Howard Hughes) The Urban Challenges As a city planned to have a town center with a broad mix of retail, office, hotel, entertainment, educational, cultural, and civic uses within its central zone, Columbia is different from many suburbs. But the planning decisions—to forswear a rectilinear street grid, to break up the downtown with multilane parkways, to concentrate the retail heart in an enclosed mall, to have a paucity of urban housing, and to build at an automobile-centered, set-back building scale—present Columbia with challenges common to many suburbs seeking urban retrofits. The mall, lakefront, and pavilion remain physically and functionally separated. HHC now has approval for about 13 million square feet (1.2 million sq m) of new downtown development, roughly half the size of downtown Baltimore, including an additional 5,500 market-rate residential units, 900 units of affordable housing, 4.3 million square feet (399,000 sq m) of new office space, 1.3 million square feet (400,000 sq m) of new retail space, and 640 new hotel rooms. Greg Fitchitt, HHC senior vice president of development, says the result will be a "21st-century urban village." This program adds to the current downtown, which contains the 1.4 million-square-foot (130,000 sq m) mall; 900,000-square-foot (84,000 sq m) Symphony Overlook offices; the former 100,000-square-foot (9,300 sq m) Rouse headquarters (the building, designed by Frank Gehry, now houses a Whole Foods, spa, and office space); the 120,000-square-foot (11,000 sq m) American City Building; a variety of other small office buildings; a 228-room Sheraton hotel; and the 530-unit Columbia Town Center Apartments, along with a mixture of medium-density condominiums and townhouses. The dominance of the mall, surrounded by parking lots, inner- and outer-ring roads, and three four- to six-lane divided parkways, shows the challenges to transforming the downtown into an integrated, urban-scaled place. (Design Collective) Downtown Columbia Plan The Rouse Company had acquired HHC in 1996, then General Growth Properties (GGP) bought Rouse in 2004. GGP spun off HHC as a public company in 2010 when it exited its 2008 reorganization bankruptcy. HHC inherited the Rouse town center properties, except for Columbia Mall and the 725,000 square feet (67,000 sq m) of office space and 3,000 parking spaces in six buildings south of the mall; HHC in December 2014 paid GGP $130 million for the six office buildings. Control of developable downtown land and the majority of developed space by a single developer is a characteristic shared with suburban redevelopers, but not typically enjoyed by their urban counterparts. As ownership changes were being completed, the Howard County planning department held a ten-day charrette in 2005, facilitated by Baltimore-based architects Design Collective, to initiate a master plan for downtown Columbia. Design Collective partner Matt D'Amico notes that it was a broad-based public charrette with more than 1,000 participants, including downtown property owners, county representatives, elected officials, nonprofit organizations, and residents. That effort culminated in the county's adoption of the 2010 30-year Downtown Columbia Plan, which recites Rouse's vision: "Downtown Columbia will be a diverse, mixed-use, livable, physically distinctive, and human-scaled place with a range of housing choices and recreational, civic, cultural, and educational amenities." The plan notes that though Columbia had been successful in attracting a wide spectrum of uses for people with a broad range of incomes, the downtown is "still primarily suburban in nature . . . sparsely populated . . . automobile-dependent" and separated by vehicular thoroughfares. To start retrofitting downtown to create a mixed-use, dynamic, walkable downtown, the plan defines six neighborhoods within the three loops around the mall, lakefront, and woods. A modified street grid articulates 21 blocks of various sizes around the mall, 13 lakefront blocks around the waterfront plaza, and four large blocks that occupy a crescent west and south of the pavilion and woods. Framework plans define land uses, streets, blocks, building heights, bicycle and pedestrian networks, and open space. In addition, the plan outlines policies for public facilities and sustainability programs. The 2010 Downtown Columbia Plan overlays a modified street grid on the site. Framework plans define land uses, streets, blocks, building heights, bicycle and pedestrian networks, and open space. (Design Collective) The enhanced network of planned gridded streets is intended to define a more urban scale for buildings and streetscapes. The streets divide mall environs into development blocks and multiply potential links among the new buildings. Buildings are to be brought forward to the sidewalks. Ring roads are to be transformed into urban streets. The planners seek to implement road diets to use road widths for bicycle and pedestrian movement as well as for vehicles. To replace the slender link between the lakefront and the mall across the divided parkway, planners envision a fountain terrace stepping down to channel gardens leading to the main waterfront plaza. In January 2017, HHC acquired the American City Building for $16.5 million and plans to demolish it to make way for a denser mixed-use development with new office, multifamily, retail, and restaurant components in nine- to 15-story buildings on four parcels in the lakefront core. Implementation Structures The plan creates a system of downtown "community enhancements, programs, and public amenities" (CEPPAs). Enhancements include a variety of environmental assessments, site restorations, stormwater management measures, wetland enhancements, transportation and transit improvements, arts projects, infrastructure renovation, bicycle and pathway improvements, renovation of the pavilion and its dedication to the nonprofit Downtown Columbia Arts and Culture Commission (DCACC), dedication of a site for an elementary school, lakefront terraces, neighborhood squares, and affordable housing. To implement the downtown plan, the county created the Downtown Columbia Partnership (DCP), an independent public entity that is the commercial district management authority separate from the county's legislative and executive branches. It is governed by a seven-member board that includes the regional head of the HHC community developer, the Columbia Mall manager, the county executive, and the president of the Columbia Association, the nonprofit community services corporation that manages Columbia. The board has a wide variety of powers and essentially acts as a downtown business improvement district. Funds to manage the partnership and the enhancements come from annual fees assessed on new commercial uses within the district in the amount of 25 cents per square foot ($2.69 per sq m) of gross leasable area for office and retail uses and net floor area for hotels. This amounts to about $150,000 per year, which is being supplemented by HHC and the Columbia Association but is expected to become self-sustaining as downtown Columbia continues to develop. The enclosed mall (looking to the north) is still successful and economically viable. Restrictive parking covenants with department stores encumber large parking areas where new mixed-use development would logically be placed. As an alternative strategy, HHC chose to build urban neighborhoods on unencumbered land at the periphery of the mall. (Design Collective) Affordable Housing The county also created the Columbia Downtown Housing Corporation (CDHC) to implement affordable housing objectives. Development fees are assessed on developers before issuance of building permits on a sliding scale: $2,000 per unit up to the 1,500th unit of planned housing in downtown Columbia; then $7,000 per unit up to the 3,500th unit; and $9,000 per unit up to the 5,500th unit. HHC also contributed $3 million in seed funding to CDHC under the CEPPA requirements, paid with the fees on the first two new residential projects. CDHC can use the proceeds to acquire land for affordable housing, for predevelopment studies, to make loans, or to pay housing operating expenses. The Downtown Columbia Plan conceives of a full spectrum and mix of downtown rental and for-sale housing. CDHC also can help families that meet income eligibility rules acquire primary housing. In February 2017, HHC, the county, the Howard County Housing Commission, and the CDHC signed a 30-year binding agreement to replace the in-lieu development fees on rental units and instead provide 900 units of affordable housing downtown, including 400 inclusionary units dispersed in market-rate buildings; 417 units in mixed-income tax-credit projects; and 83 units in a live-where-you-work program, which provides rental assistance to qualified households. As a density bonus, the agreement exempts the 744 units, both affordable and market rate, to be built in tax-credit projects by the housing commission from counting against the 5,500-unit entitlement cap permitted to HHC. Another implementing entity is the DCACC, to which HHC transferred ownership of the Merriweather Post Pavilion in November 2016. The commission manages arts, cultural, educational, and civic programming. Simultaneously, the county approved $90 million in tax increment financing (TIF) for public improvements to the Merriweather District, which will include in its first phase a shared 2,000-space parking structure, 1 million square feet (93,000 sq m) of office space, 250,000 square feet (23,000 sq m) of retail space, and 750 apartment units. In 2017, HHC completed 350,000 square feet (33,000 sq m) of space in two new office towers in the district—new education offices for Pearson Connections and a corporate headquarters for health care company MedStar. While formulating the outside-in strategy, HHC was able to see an opportunity closer to the mall. The Warfield area west of the mall consisted of several large parking lots, an office building, and small retail outbuildings just outside the ring road. The downtown plan projected that this ten-acre (4 ha) open lot should be reorganized into three smaller blocks (shown below on the map). Each block of the Metropolitan complex (above) contains a central parking structure, wrapped with single-loaded-corridor units to conceal it, as well as landscaped courtyards that contain pools and other amenities. The southern building (at right in the photo above) was the first built and is the largest, with 380 smaller units. The middle building contains 170 larger units, and the northernmost contains 267 units. (Design Collective) Development Strategy Defining the appropriate development strategy is critical to the success of transforming a suburban development into an urban downtown. Commonly, a dying mall is at the heart of the development, and if that is the case, the easiest starting point, if it is possible, is usually to close the mall and extinguish its restrictive covenants. A mall is typically an agglomeration of 50 to 150 acres (20 to 60 ha) of land in a single zone, owned by a single entity (except for department stores that own their own sites) in a visible location, served by good access roads, with large structures that can be demolished or sometimes adapted. The site is usually easily divisible into a rectilinear block pattern. (An office park with similar characteristics might be suitable for such transformation as well.) In those situations, one could simply superimpose a street grid, start development at the core, and phase the growth outward. But downtown Columbia presents a different array of development challenges. The enclosed mall is still economically viable. In addition, the critical mass of retail space needed to sustain the mall's success challenges the market for new streetfront retail on a scale that would be common in an urban downtown. Restrictive parking covenants with department stores encumber large areas where new mixed-use development would logically be placed. The capitalized value of the income stream makes the mall too valuable to be demolished and replaced with more-urban streetfront retail space. The opportunity costs are enormous. So instead, HHC chose to build urban neighborhoods on unencumbered land at the periphery of the mall at a scale necessary to be viable on their own, then to work toward the current center of Columbia at the mall. At full buildout, just one of those neighborhoods, the Merriweather Crescent, alone will constitute a dense urban neighborhood of nearly 5 million square feet (465,000 sq m) of new development, including more than 2 million square feet of office space (186,000 sq m) and 2,000 apartments, plus shops, restaurants, hotels, and the new central branch of Howard County's public library. HHC's decision to buy the American City Building opposite the mall only to demolish and replace it with larger-scale urban mixed-use projects substantiates the company's strategy to intensify lakefront development. And because GGP, not HHC, owns the mall, HHC's strategy is to create vibrant new urban cores on the southern and eastern flanks of the retail core, then link those back to that core. From a development perspective, creating and controlling new urban cores on open land is more productive than trying to overcome the physical, legal, and financial challenges of developing on more restrictive properties. Moreover, those intermediate properties will become more valuable later when alternative cores flank them, which will make it easier economically to develop them in later phases. The western mall ring road has added the Metropolitan complex. Retail space lines and activates the streetscape on the first floor of each building facing the mall. The space is leased to service retail tenants and restaurants that face the ring road, which has been transformed into a commercial street with on-street parking, sidewalks, and pedestrian crosswalks. (Design Collective) The Metropolitan While formulating the outside-in strategy, HHC also saw an opportunity closer to the mall. The Warfield area west of the mall consisted of several large parking lots, an office building, and small retail outbuildings just outside the ring road. The downtown plan projected that this ten-acre (4 ha) open lot should be reorganized into three smaller blocks of two-to-four acres each (0.8 to 1.6 ha) with new connecting streets. HHC determined that about 800 housing units could be developed in three buildings on the three blocks, but decided that for its first downtown Columbia residential project, it would team up in a joint venture with the Kettler Company, a large East Coast apartment developer/manager based in McLean, Virginia. HHC and Kettler hired Design Collective. The three parties determined that each block would contain a central parking structure, wrapped with single-loaded-corridor units to conceal the parking, and landscaped courtyards with pools and other amenities. Double-loaded corridors face the courtyards and the streetscape. To accommodate their quasi-urban location in downtown Columbia, each of the parking structures is a modified shared-use garage, with the bottom one-and-a-half floors reserved for retail parking. Exclusive residential parking is on upper floors; residents can park on their respective apartment levels and avoid elevators. Because parking is allocated by use, it is not yet fully shared parking that could reduce parking ratios. Ground-floor retail space lines and activates the streetscape on the mall ring road, which has been transformed into a commercial street with on-street parking, sidewalks, and marked pedestrian crosswalks. Opposite the mall, across from older apartment buildings and townhouses, the Metropolitan, the first of the three-residential-building complex built, has ground-floor units that include stoops, stairs, unit entrances, and garden walls, mimicking the stoops and stairs of existing buildings across the street. A linear landscaped park about 80 feet (24 m) wide lines the eastern, retail side of the three buildings. In addition to playful sculptures and street furniture, the park contains a stormwater management system that integrates with the larger districtwide strategy. Signs inform park users of the project's sustainability goals, the environmental benefits of micro-bioretention, and the benefits of districtwide water management. The Metropolitan, the southern building, is the largest of the three residential buildings, with 380 mostly smaller units that have been leased to younger professionals. Empty nesters mainly chose the 34 available three-bedroom units. The building on the middle block contains 170 larger units to attract different market segments, including empty nesters, retirees, and single people, and the northernmost building contains 267 units, including the first studio units in downtown Columbia. These 817 apartments, with 45,000 square feet (4,200 sq m) of streetfront retail space, establish a prototype for redevelopment of mall parking lots. Suburban Urbanization Model? D'Amico notes that the 16-step process to implement the 2010 plan is intricate. However, he contends that it is essential that the various frameworks for streets, blocks, land uses, density, and open space be followed in order to ensure that a true downtown can be created. Projects must conform to the Downtown Columbia Plan, neighborhood plans, and design guidelines. In addition, the policies and programs for affordable housing, arts and culture, sustainability, and community enhancements are precisely the things that can make a downtown culturally authentic and distinguish it from suburban development, he says. Those community networks are the very things that James Rouse sought when he conceived Columbia and may well count for its designation by Money magazine in 2016 as the n

Capital Bikeshare (Washington)

is a bicycle sharing system that serves Washington, D.C.; Arlington County, Virginia; the city of Alexandria, Virginia; Montgomery County, Maryland and Fairfax County, Virginia. It has more than 440 stations and 3,700 bicycles, all owned by these local governments and operated in a public-private partnership with Motivate International.[4][5] Opened in September 2010, the system was the largest bike sharing service in the United States[6] until New York City's Citi Bike began operations in May 2013.[7]

Home Owners' Loan Corporation (HOLC)

was a government-sponsored corporation created as part of the New Deal. The corporation was established in 1933 by the Home Owners' Loan Corporation Act under the leadership of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[2] Its purpose was to refinance home mortgages currently in default to prevent foreclosure. The HOLC issued bonds and then used the bonds to purchase mortgage loans from lenders. The loans purchased were for homeowners who were having problems making the payments on their mortgage loans "through no fault of their own". The HOLC then refinanced the loans for the borrowers. Many of the lenders gained from selling the loans because the HOLC bought the loans by offering a value of bonds equal to the amount of principal owed by the borrower plus unpaid interest on the loan plus taxes that the lender paid on the property. This value of the loan was then the amount of the loan that was refinanced for the borrower. The borrower gained because he or she was offered a loan with a longer time frame at a lower interest rate. It was rare to reduce the amount of principal owed.

Naturally Occurring Retirement Communities (NORC)

A naturally occurring retirement community (NORC; /nɔːrk/) is a term used to describe a community that has a large proportion of residents over 60 but was not specifically planned or designed to meet the needs of seniors living independently in their homes. NORCs may develop in three different ways: Aging in place: numerous persons moved into a community when they were younger Emigration: older people remain in a community as younger residents move out Immigration: numerous older people move into a community

Green Cycle Routes (Copenhagen)

An extensive network of bicycle paths and footpaths in Copenhagen that run through recreational areas of the city such as parks and waterfronts. This separated network of paths allows for cyclists to avoid automobile traffic and the safety hazards they pose. There are 110 planned and existing kilometers of routes throughout the city that are marked off with posts and signs for guidance to key destinations for the cyclists.

Bus Rapid Transit (BRT)

Bus rapid transit (BRT), also called a busway or transitway, is a bus-based public transport system designed to improve capacity and reliability relative to a conventional bus system.[2] Typically, a BRT system includes roadways that are dedicated to buses, and gives priority to buses at intersections where buses may interact with other traffic; alongside design features to reduce delays caused by passengers boarding or leaving buses, or purchasing fares. BRT aims to combine the capacity and speed of a metro with the flexibility, lower cost and simplicity of a bus system.

Floor Area Ratio (FAR)

Floor area ratio (FAR) is the ratio of a building's total floor area (gross floor area) to the size of the piece of land upon which it is built. The terms can also refer to limits imposed on such a ratio through zoning. As a formula FAR = (gross floor area) / (area of the plot)

Intersection Repair

In Portland, Oregon, a community organization called City Repair Project transforms ordinary intersections into vibrant public spaces. Working with communities and volunteers to paint giant murals onto intersections, they focus on turning car-centered roadways into lovable places. Two of the most impressive components of its Intersection Repair initiative are its quick results and cost effectiveness. As a first step in this Placemaking process, community members are invited to paint together, which helps to connect people from of different ages and walks of life in a project of co-creation. The resulting mural then turns the intersection into both a gathering place and a point of pride for the neighborhood, and it ultimately helps in calming traffic and making streets safer.

Vancouver, BC

In Vancouver, urban planning focuses on liveability. That means creating a city of neighbourhoods where people can work, play, and shop. It also means creating urban environments where residents feel supported and engaged, and can enjoy a vibrant street life and their fellow residents. In building our liveable, sustainable city, the City: Creates communities that prioritize sustainable modes of transportation, minimizing our dependance on cars Facilitates high-quality urban design that contributes to an attractive, functional, memorable, and safe city Incorporates parks and open spaces, sidewalks and walkways, bodies of water, trees, landscaping and lighting into our urban fabric Protects the beauty of the city and its surroundings, while allowing for density and growth

Kentlands, MD

Kentlands is a neighborhood of the U.S. city of Gaithersburg, Maryland. Kentlands was one of the first attempts to develop a community using Traditional Neighborhood Design planning techniques (also known as 'neo-traditional new town planning') that are now generally referred to under the rubric of the New Urbanism.

Legibility or Imagability of the city

Kevin Lynch's book, The Image of the City, is a detailed study of the way we structure our cities psychologically. For Lynch, the "imageability" of a city is directly related to the success of its urban plan. Lynch argues that the ease in which one can recognize the patterns and meanings of their environment, the more pleasure and utility they will extract from it. Lynch's book is an attempt to connect legibility of a city's composition to its success as a place. Without legibility, confusion sets in. This, for Lynch, is the ultimate failure of an urban environment. Confusion robs us of our emotional security and puts us at odds with the outside world. A strongly structured image of the city, however, establishes a harmonious relationship between city and user. Imageability, therefore, is a gauge of success in the design of cities.

Thermal Delight

Our thermal environment is as rich in cultural associations as our visual, acoustic, olfactory, and tactile environments. This book explores the potential for using thermal qualities as an expressive element in building design. Until quite recently, building technology and design has favored high-energy-consuming mechanical methods of neutralizing the thermal environment. It has not responded to the various ways that people use, remember, and care about the thermal environment and how they associate their thermal sense with their other senses. The hearth fire, the sauna, the Roman and Japanese baths, and the Islamic garden are discussed as archetypes of thermal delight about which rituals have developed—reinforcing bonds of affection and ceremony forged in the thermal experience. Not only is thermal symbolism now obsolete but the modern emphasis on central heating systems and air conditioning and hermetically sealed buildings has actually damaged our thermal coping and sensing mechanisms. This book for the solar age could help change all that and open up for us a new dimension of architectural experience. As the cost of energy continues to skyrocket, alternatives to the use of mechanical force must be developed to meet our thermal needs. A major alternative is the use of passive solar energy, and the book will provide those interested in solar design with a reservoir of ideas.

Silent Spring

Silent Spring, Carson's best-known book, was published by Houghton Mifflin on 27 September 1962.[30] The book described the harmful effects of pesticides on the environment, and is widely credited with helping launch the environmental movement.[31] Carson was not the first, or the only person to raise concerns about DDT,[32] but her combination of "scientific knowledge and poetic writing" reached a broad audience and helped to focus opposition to DDT use.[33] In 1994, an edition of Silent Spring was published with an introduction written by Vice President Al Gore.[34][35] In 2012 Silent Spring was designated a National Historic Chemical Landmark by the American Chemical Society for its role in the development of the modern environmental movement.[36]

Inclusionary Zoning

Specifies inclusions within a development, such as a playground or that a percentage of homes must be affordable for low-income families. is an affordable housing tool that links the pro- duction of affordable housing to the production of market-rate housing. IZ policies either require or encourage new residential developments to make a certain percentage of the housing units affordable to low- or moderate- income residents

Toronto

The City Planning Division is helping to build Toronto's future by managing the growth and physical form of the city - how it looks, feels, and moves, and the opportunities it provides in terms of jobs and services to its residents. City Planning works with stakeholders and other City divisions to set goals and policies for responsible development. It provides support and advice to City Council to help to ensure that Toronto's growth contributes to the kind of communities and neighbourhoods Torontonians want. The division also reviews and processes development approval applications from a community planning and an urban design perspective. City Planning staff gather public input and conduct research to develop and review plans, regulations and projects that protect and enhance our urban environment.

London Congestion Charge

The Congestion Charge is an £11.50 daily charge for driving a vehicle within the charging zone between 07:00 and 18:00, Monday to Friday. The easiest way to pay is by registering for Congestion Charge Auto Pay. Exemptions and discounts are available. s a fee charged on most motor vehicles operating within the Congestion Charge Zone (CCZ)[1] in Central London between 07:00 and 18:00 Mondays to Fridays.[2] It is not charged on weekends, public holidays or between Christmas Day and New Year's Day (inclusive).[3] The charge was introduced on 17 February 2003. As of 2017, the London charge zone remains as one of the largest congestion charge zones in the world, despite the cancellation of the Western Extension which operated between February 2007 and January 2011. The charge aims to reduce high traffic flow and pollution in the central area and raise investment funds for London's transport system.

Image of the City (by Kevin Lynch)

The Image of the City is a 1960 book by American urban theorist Kevin Lynch. The book is the result of a five-year study of Boston, Jersey City and Los Angeles on how observers take in information of the city, and use it to make mental maps. Lynch's conclusion was that people formed mental maps of their surroundings consisting of five basic elements Lynch's Five Elements Paths These are the streets, sidewalks, trails, canals, railroads, and other channels in which people travel; They arrange space and movement between space. Edges Boundaries; They can be either Real or Perceived; These are walls, buildings, and shorelines, curbstone, streets, overpasses, etc. Districts Medium to large areas that are two-dimensional; An individual enters into and out of these areas; Have common identifying characteristics. Nodes Large areas you can enter, serve as the foci of the city, neighborhood, district, etc.; Offers the person in them multiple perspectives of the other core elements. Landmarks Points of reference person cannot enter into; These are buildings, signs, stores, mountains, public art; Mobile Points (such as Sun) can be used as well.

Pavement to Plazas

The Pavement to Parks program seeks to transform the dialogue about San Francisco's public realm and the role of public spaces in the life and vitality of the city. Experiments typically begin with short week-long and low-cost demonstration closures in unused portions of the street. Successful experiments are then temporarily closed for a year or more. Embraced by the community, some plazas are now transitioning to permanent status and capital upgrades, and new plaza locations are being discussed for the future

Quinta Monroy and Half a House

The challenge of this project was to accommodate 100 families living in a 30-year old slum, using a subsidy of USD $7,500 that in the best of the cases allowed for 36 square meters of built space in a 5,000-square-meter site, the cost of which was three times what social housing could normally afford. The aim was to keep the families' social and economic networks, which they had created close to the center city, instead of evicting the families to the periphery. And we wanted the families to live in houses able to achieve a middle-class standard instead of condemning them to an everlasting social housing one. None of the solutions in the market solved the equation. So we thought of a typology that, as buildings could make a very efficient use of land and as houses allowed for expansion. We provided the families with the "half a house" that would be difficult for them to build for themselves and we gave them space to "complete the house" as their means allowed. After a year, property values tripled and yet, all the families have preferred to stay and keep on improving their homes. half a house new housing for people displaced in the disaster. But the structures that Elemental delivered were a radical and controversial approach toward housing. from urban planners to the housing deficit in cities around the world. The approach has its roots in a building methodology made popular by the 1972 essay, "Housing as a Verb," by architect John F.C. Turner. Turner made the case that housing ought not be a static unit that is packaged and handed over to people. Rather, housing should be conceived of as an ongoing project wherein residents are co-creators.

Granny Pods

The granny pod (a name that is off-putting to many, but the alternatives, ADU/accessory dwelling unit, in-law apartment and care cottage aren't much better) is a modern solution for an age-old problem: How to care for aging family members without completely taking away their independence. A granny pod is a tiny home built, or placed, on the same property as the home of someone who will look after the occupant. Having their own living space gives the senior some privacy while the proximity to the caregiver makes it easier for them to monitor their loved one's health and safety. Here's what you need to know about granny pods.

Naked Streets and Intersections

Urban design concept aimed at integrated use of public spaces. These shared spaces remove the traditional segregation of motor vehicles, pedestrians, and other road users by eliminating traffic lights thus people have to be very attentive and interact to keep safe (*Think Charlottesville Downtown Mall).

Village Homes

Village Homes is a planned community in Davis, Yolo County, California. It is designed to be ecologically sustainable by harnessing the energies and natural resources that exists in the landscape, especially stormwater and solar energy. The 225 homes and 20 apartment units that now are the Village Homes community use solar panels for heating, and they are oriented around common areas at the rear of the buildings, rather than around the street at the front. All streets are oriented east-west, with all lots positioned north-south. This feature has become standard practice in Davis and elsewhere since it enables homes with passive solar designs to make full use of the sun's energy throughout the year. The development also uses natural drainage, called bioswales, to collect water to irrigate the common areas and support the cultivation of edible foods, such as nut and fruit trees and vegetables for consumption by residents, without incurring the cost of using treated municipal water

CitiBikes (NYC)

n an effort to reduce emissions, road wear, collisions, and road and transit congestion and to improve public health, the New York City Department of Transportation (NYCDOT) researched alternative forms of transportation, publishing a strategic plan in 2008.[1]:51-68 According to NYCDOT statistics, 56% of all automobile trips within the city are under 3 miles (4.8 km) (with 22% under 1 mile (1.6 km) and 10% under 0.5 miles (0.80 km)), well within distances readily served by bicycle. To encourage residents to use bicycles more, the city committed to expanding bike lane miles, bike racks, and bike-parking shelters.[1]:17 In the 2009 bicycle share feasibility report, the New York City Department of City Planning (DCP) recommended building out the system in three phases in the four most populous boroughs, but no timeline was made public.[2] The city, which had already been encouraging cycling as transportation, decided to establish a bicycle share program of the kind that had seen success in other cities. In 2011, it selected Alta Bicycle Share to operate the bike share in New York City.[3] Citi Bike was created as a public-private partnership operated by NYC Bike Share LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alta.[3][4]

Monte Albán

the first real urban center in the Americas built by the Zapotec. pre-Columbian archaeological site in the Santa Cruz . the terraces, dams, canals, pyramids and artificial mounds of Monte Albán were literally carved out of the mountain and are the symbols of a sacred topography. The nearby city of Oaxaca, which is built on a grid pattern, is a good example of Spanish colonial town planning. The solidity and volume of the city's buildings show that they were adapted to the earthquake-prone region in which these architectural gems were constructed. Xoxocotlán. was the capital of a major regional polity that exerted a dominating influence over the Valley of Oaxaca and across much of the Oaxacan highlands. As mentioned earlier, evidence at Monte Albán is suggestive of high-level contacts between the site's elites and those at the powerful central Mexican city of Teotihuacan, where archaeologists have identified a neighbourhood inhabited by ethnic Zapotecs from the valley of Oaxaca (Paddock 1983). By the Late Classic (Monte Albán IIIB/IV, ca. CE 500-1000) the site's influence outside and inside the valley declined, and elites at several other centers, once part of the Monte Albán state, began to assert their autonomy, including sites such as Cuilapan and Zaachila in the Valle Grande and Lambityeco, Mitla, and El Palmillo in the eastern Tlacolula arm

Urban Infill

the process of building up underused lands within a city. Urban infill is defined as new development that is sited on vacant or undeveloped land within an existing community, and that is enclosed by other types of development. The term "urban infill" itself implies that existing land is mostly built-out and what is being built is in effect "filling in" the gaps. The term most commonly refers to building single-family homes in existing neighborhoods but may also be used to describe new development in commercial, office or mixed-use areas. Prescriptive steps towards implementation: Identify area(s) within the community that seem to be subject to inappropriate infill development or those areas that perhaps aren't dealing with infill development just yet but are in need of measures to prevent inappropriate infill in the future Work with municipal staff and officials and the community to craft new regulations designed to control development within those areas Keep the controls limited, focusing primarily on building height, building setbacks and lot layout Test proposed regulations by mock- designing a development from start to finish as if it were to be built according to the regulations, then analyzing whether the design meets the community's goals Use existing staff and officials to provide additional commentary and reports on the proposed changes Prepare staff and officials for the administration of the proposed changes Adopt proposed policy changes utilizing the standard process for the municipality

Guerilla Wayfinding

• use of physical signs pointing to tourist attractions; includes estimated distance and travel time by foot ust some simple signs, lashed to light poles, at a few of the city's key intersections, letting residents and visitors know what attractions and amenities could be found within walking distance and how many minutes it would take to reach them on foot. "Guerrilla wayfinding" is what people called it.

Skyville@Dawson

Commissioned by the Housing and Development Board as an exploration of the future of affordable public housing, WOHA's public housing design for Skyville @ Dawson consists of 960 homes in Singapore. As a response to the enthusiasm received by the public, their project is currently under construction and is estimated to be completed February 2015. The design focuses on 3 themes - community, variety and sustainability. More images and architects' description after the break. Community: There is a variety of community space. Each home is part of a Sky Village: 80 homes which share a naturally ventilated community terrace and garden. The block is composed of 3 villages, stacked 4 high, for a total of 12 villages. Other community areas include: the Community Living Rooms at ground level, which provides seating areas overlooking the park, and is located on the main entrance route of the development; the Landscaped Park, which retains enormous historic rain trees and provides two community pavilions for weddings and funerals, play and fitness areas, courts and lawns; the Rooftop Park, which houses a 400m jogging track and rooftop pavilions which support a PV array that powers the common lighting; the Urban Plaza, located along a public linear park and provides supermarket, coffee shop and retail spaces. Save this picture! Courtesy of WOHA Variety: The design gives variety by offering buyers flexible floor plans with a column free, beam free main space, eliminating waste and allowing diverse lifestyles, such as home office or loft living as well as future flexibility. 3 versions of each type were offered. Save this picture! Courtesy of WOHA Sustainability: The design has been awarded Singapore's Platinum rating, the highest rating possible. The project uses passive means and avoids the use of energy-intensive solutions rather than using high technology. Every unit is fully naturally ventilated, with every room (including bathrooms and kitchens) having windows. The common areas, lift lobbies and access walkways are all naturally ventilated and lit. The apartments are cross ventilated, with CFD simulations performed at the block and unit level. The units use passive means for comfort - all walls have vertical and horizontal sun breakers to shade both the walls and the windows, all windows have overhangs and special mid-height top hung panels that direct breeze to seating height and allow the windows to remain open during the monsoon period, the units face north and south and have openings on all sides. Save this picture! Courtesy of WOHA PV cells at the rooftop power the common areas, and a swale which is a major landscape feature treats storm water before discharging it to the storm water system. The project uses landscaping throughout the tower in the sky villages, additionally it covers 50% of all roof surfaces. Two major landscaped external spaces totaling 1.5Ha are provided and open to the wider community. Save this picture! Courtesy of WOHA The design is fully precast, to avoid on site waste and make construction efficient. This design uses passive design for the tropics. The innovation is the external, covered spaces between the blocks. These social and community spaces in the sky are a way to ensure that high rise, high density projects do not cause alienation, but instead can be vibrant living, low energy communities. Save this picture! Courtesy of WOHA This innovation is an important transferable device that can be used across equatorial South East Asia, Africa, India and South America, where some of the fastest urbanization is occurring. The design was exhibited to the public for feedback and comments, and then redesigned based on the feedback. The Sky Village concept gives a greater sense of community and identity within the large precinct, and is designed to be a social space to enhance cohesiveness. Save this picture! Courtesy of WOHA Flexible layouts were developed, giving 3 options for every unit type, avoiding waste and allowing diverse family sizes and lifestyles, for instance home office or extended family. The history of the site is maintained in the community artwork project. The design includes blue glass elements which reflect the old Hokkien dialect name for the district Lam Po Lay which means blue glass. Old rain trees were kept and incorporated into the landscaping. The units were sold for less than half the price of a comparable private development, and were awarded based on a fair balloting system. The development was tendered through a completely open public tender. The design allows tropical living without air conditioning, and all areas, whether common or private are naturally ventilated and lit. The design is north south facing, and fully shaded. All units are cross ventilated. The design is highly repetitive, and is fully precast and prefabricated, reducing waste and errors on site. Only 5 window types are used in the entire development. The design creates variety through the re-arrangement of the modules, through color, and light and shade. The site coverage is low, enabling a park to be created around conserved huge existing rain trees. A 150m long landscaped swale treats all the water before discharge and infiltration. Over 1.5Ha of public gardens are provided. The roof landscape, vertical creepers to the car park and sky gardens provide 100% green plot ratio. PV panels are provided on the rooftop pavilions, enough to power the common area lighting. Dual Refuse Chutes for separation of Organic and Recyclable waste are provided at every apartment block. The design allows tropical living without air conditioning, and all areas, whether common or private are naturally ventilated and lit. The design is north south facing, and fully shaded. All units are cross ventilated. The design is modular, and is fully precast and prefabricated, reducing waste and errors on site. Only 5 window types are used in the entire development. The design creates variety through the re-arrangement of the modules, through colour, and light and shade. The site coverage is low, enabling a park to be created around conserved huge existing rain trees. A 150m long landscaped swale treats all the water before discharge and infiltration. Over 1.5Ha of public gardens are provided. The roof landscape, vertical creepers to the carpark and sky gardens provide 100% green plot ratio. PV panels are provided on the rooftop pavilions, enough to power the common area lighting. Dual Refuse Chutes for separation of Organic and Recyclable waste are provided at every apartment block. Singapore's public housing system provides high quality social housing at very affordable prices. It is integrated with the superannuation scheme, and aims for 100% home ownership. It has promoted social stability and independence and pride in the transformation in one generation from a country of tenants to one of home ownership and prosperity. The homes in this project were over 7 times oversubscribed when launched, and are 100% sold. The design gives an urban plaza with shops and cafes to the surrounding neighborhood, and landscaped park with community facilities. The design uses quality of form, space, light, ventilation and proportion for its impact. The block is perforated, folded, and studded with gardens to avoid the appearance of a large mass. Rather than luxury of materials, the precast, painted design proposes resolution of social, technical and aesthetic objectives as the creation of the most value.

Pruit Igoe

Large urban housing project. Built in st. louis Missouri in 1954. Designed by Minoru yamasaki who designed the world trade center. The complex was demolished by explosives in the 1970's. Few buildings in history can claim as infamous a legacy as that of the Pruitt-Igoe Housing Project of St. Louis, Missouri. Built during the height of Modernism this nominally innovative collection of residential towers was meant to stand as a triumph of rational architectural design over the ills of poverty and urban blight; instead, two decades of turmoil preceded the final, unceremonious destruction of the entire complex in 1973. The fall of Pruitt-Igoe ultimately came to signify not only the failure of one public housing project, but arguably the death knell of the entire Modernist era of design.

Urban Growth Boundary (UGB)

a line used by city planners to separate areas that will remain urban from areas that will remain rural. An urban growth boundary, or UGB, is a regional boundary, set in an attempt to control urban sprawl by, in its simplest form, mandating that the area inside the boundary be used for urban development and the area outside be preserved in its natural state or used for agriculture. Legislating for an "urban growth boundary" is one way, among many others, of managing the major challenges posed by unplanned urban growth and the encroachment of cities upon agricultural and rural land.[1] An urban growth boundary circumscribes an entire urbanized area and is used by local governments as a guide to zoning and land use decisions, and by utility and other infrastructure providers to improve efficiency through effective long term planning (e.g. optimising sewerage catchments, school districts, etc.). If the area affected by the boundary includes multiple jurisdictions a special urban planning agency may be created by the state or regional government to manage the boundary. In a rural context, the terms town boundary, village curtilage or village envelope may be used to apply the same constraining principles. Some jurisdictions refer to the area within an urban growth boundary as an urban growth area, or UGA. While the names are different, the concept is the same. Another term used is urban service area.

Dumb-bell tenement design

Old Law Tenements are commonly called "dumbbell tenements" after the shape of the building footprint: the air shaft gives each tenement the narrow-waisted shape of a dumbbell, wide facing the street and backyard, narrowed in between to create the air corridor. They were built in great numbers to accommodate waves of immigrating Europeans. The early 21st century side streets of Manhattan's Lower East Side are still lined with numerous dumbbell structures. Stylistically, Old Law Tenements are unique and conspicuous. Though each uniformly occupies a twenty-five-foot lot just like the pre-Old Law tenement, the Old Law facade - with its fanciful sandstone human and animal gargoyles (sometimes in full figure), its terracotta filigree of no apparent historical precedent,[citation needed] its occasional design aberrations (e.g., dwarf columns), and its often varicolored brick - departs radically from the plain, dignified simplicity of the unassuming and largely unornamented older structures. Later in the Old Law period, the ornaments settle into a Queen Anne style,[4] as the human representational forms gradually disappear into the more abstract extravagance of the following Beaux Arts style. The symmetrical floor plan of the typical Old Law Tenement included four virtually identical apartments per floor, three rooms each, with the entry opening to the kitchen containing a washtub alongside a sink opposite a wood-burning stove feeding into a flue. Two bathrooms were located on the landing in the hallway for common use. failure of the Tenement House Act of 1867, which required fire escapes from each suite as well as windows in each room. Builders met the letter of the 1867 law by merely inserting meaningless windows between interior rooms.[1] Without air shafts, the 1867 requirement failed to increase natural light or fresh air ventilation in the crowded tenement "dark bedroom".[2] Responding to the new requirements, a magazine, Plumbing and Sanitation Engineer, held a tenement design contest in 1879. James Ware's winning dumbbell design represented a compromise between legal health standards and commercial viability. By indenting the sides of the structure three feet, he opened a slender airshaft between abutting buildings. The three-foot indentation required only a minimal sacrifice of rent-revenue space, placating the landlords, and provided just enough aperture for ventilation and natural, if not direct, light. The 1879 Act, though well-intentioned, failed even worse than the 1867 Act. Tenement dwellers tossed garbage, bilge water and waste into these air shafts which were not designed for garbage removal. As a result, the law's attempt to improve sanitation only created a new sanitation problem. Worse, the air shaft acted as a flue spreading fire from apartment to apartment.[3] The 1901 law did away with the air shaft, replacing it with the large courtyard for garbage storage and removal. In later structures, the introduction of elevators reduced garbage defenestration by upper-story tenants.

Out of Reach report

A report every year that documents the gap between renters' wages and the cost of rental housing. The report's Housing Wage is the hourly wage a full-time worker must earn to afford a modest rental home without spending more than 30% of his or her income on housing costs. It is based on HUD's Fair Market Rent (FMR), which is an estimate of what a family moving today can expect to pay for a modest rental home in the area. In order to afford a modest, two-bedroom rental home in the U.S., renters need to earn a wage of $22.10 per hour. This Housing Wage for a two-bedroom home is $14.85 higher than the federal minimum wage of $7.25, and $5.22 higher than the estimated average hourly wage of $16.88 earned by renters nationwide. In seven states and the District of Columbia, the two-bedroom Housing Wage is more than $25.00 per hour.

Downzoning / Upzoning

Downzoning - assign (land or property) to a zoning grade under which the permitted density of housing and development is reduced. - Upzoning - The practice of changing the zoning in an area typically from residential to increased commercial use. This is a controversial practice because upzoning allows for greater density and congestion in the area which affects the current occupants.

Ebenezer Howard and Garden Cities

Founder of utopian city living harmoniously with nature: Letchworth --> planned,self-contained communities surrounded by "greenbelts". containing proportionate areas of residences, industry, and agriculture. The idea was initiated in 1898. A green belt or greenbelt is a policy and land use zone designation used in land use planning to retain areas of largely undeveloped, wild, or agricultural land surrounding or neighbouring urban areas. Similar concepts are greenways or green wedges which have a linear character and may run through an urban area instead of around it. In essence, a green belt is an invisible line designating a border around a certain area, preventing development of the area and allowing wildlife to return and be established.

Pierre L'Enfant

French architect who designed the layout of Washington, DC with broad avenues and park-like areas. ommissioners of the city, and particularly for his high-handed procedure in removing the house of Daniel Carroll, an influential Washington resident, to make way for an avenue. Nevertheless, his plan of the city was generally followed. L'Enfant later attempted to obtain $95,500 as payment for his services. Congress gave him what it thought to be proper, the sum of about $3,800. In his old age L'Enfant lived with friends at Green Hill, a Maryland estate, where he died penniless. In 1909 his body was removed to Arlington National Cemetery, where a suitable monument was erected to him by Congress.

Transfer of Development Rights (TDR)

Transferable development rights (TDR) is a method for controlling land use to complement land-use planning and zoning for more effective urban growth management and land conservation. The TDR process can be considered a tool for controlling urban sprawl by concentrating development. TDR is a legal mechanism offered in some local government jurisdictions as a form of development control. The procedure offers landowners financial incentives or bonuses for the conservation and maintenance of the environmental, heritage or agricultural values of their land. TDR is based on the concept that with land ownership comes the right of use of land, or land development. These land-based development rights can in some jurisdictions be used, unused, sold, or otherwise transferred by the owner of a parcel.[1]:3 [2]

Majora Carter

redefined the field of environmental equality, starting in the South Bronx at the turn of the century. Now she is leading the local economic development movement across the USA." American urban revitalization strategist[1] and public radio host from the South Bronx area of New York City. Carter founded and led the non-profit environmental justice solutions corporation Sustainable South Bronx[2] from 2001 onward, before entering the private sector in 2008.

Kampung Admiralty (Singapore)

"vertical village" which has transformed a compact 2.2 acres site into a dynamic community heart. Tropical rainforest Ramboll (Ramboll Studio Dreiseitl) is responsible for design of the greenery and landscape, which includes a tropical rainforest, as well as water management systems. The landscape is designed as layers of green and blue infrastructure woven into the building to connect residents and the greater Admiralty neighborhood to the historical "Kampung" village spirit within today's highly densified urban context. Prior to development, the site remained as an empty unutilized field between residential towers, a marketplace and a train station. Over 100% landscape replacement was achieved through ground level planting, green roofs and vertical green walls. Climate adaptation and water cleansing The average annual rainfall in Singapore is 92 inches (2340mm). The design of the Hydrological system allows for over a million gallons of tap water can be conserved each year as stormwater runoff is stored in the rainwater harvesting tank and reused for irrigation. Water can be seen trickling down from the rain curtain mesh during storm events as a reinterpretation of the tropical downpour experience. The eco-pond promotes biodiversity and provides a natural cooling effect for the adjacent urban surroundings. The bioretention basin located at the medical centre provides a calm and therapeutic environment for patients while also functioning as a system to harvest, cleanse and recycle rainwater.

William Penn

A Quaker that founded Pennsylvania to establish a place where his people and others could live in peace and be free from persecution. The plan was centered on a 1,200-acre plot, laid out by surveyor general Thomas Holme in 1682. It was organized into a rectangular grid pattern with lettered and numbered streets perpendicular to each other and broader civic-oriented streets for commerce and transportation forming the grid's main axes. Each quadrant features a public square with open green space, today known as Logan, Franklin, Washington, and Rittenhouse Squares. Evenly spaced lots allowed residents to have private outdoor space for gardens and retain a sense of country living within the rapidly-expanding city. Penn's concept set a precedent for planning in many early American cities. The greatest alteration to Penn's plan is the Benjamin Franklin Parkway, begun by Jacques Gréber in 1917. Sections of streets and buildings were removed to create the tree-lined, mile-long parkway that cuts diagonally from City Hall northwest to Fairmount Park, where it terminates on axis with the Philadelphia Museum of Art. Logan Square was transformed to a grand traffic circle, and the parkway is now lined with the museums and cultural institutions envisioned by Gréber. Expressways have also changed the city's Penn-era fabric, bordering the grid on three sides and particularly affecting Logan and Franklin squares on the Northern side.

Sky City / Acoma Pueblo

Acoma Pueblo is built atop a sheer-walled, 367-foot sandstone bluff in a valley studded with sacred, towering monoliths. Since 1150 A.D., Acoma Pueblo has earned the reputation as the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America. The mesa-top settlement is known worldwide for its unique art and rich culture. A federally recognized Indian Tribe, Acoma Pueblo has a land base covering 431,664 acres and is home to 4,800 tribal members with more than 250 dwellings, none of which have electricity, sewer, or water. In 1629, construction began on the massive San Esteban del Rey Mission, a Catholic mission. Both the Mission and the Pueblo are Registered National Historical Landmarks and are on the National Register of Historic Places. Acoma Pueblo was named the 28th Historic Site by the National Trust for Historic Preservation (NTHP) in 2007 and is the only Native American site to be designated. Acoma assists the NTHP to expand its preservation activities and mission beyond bricks and mortar and into community development. NTHP members receive a discount for the Pueblo tour by showing their membership card.

Liuzhan forest city (China)

Air pollution china has been a huge problem for the city and for the safety and health of those who live there. Over the past couple years, there have been a multitude of attempts to reduce the amount of pollutants going into the air, however, there is still a concern it their AQI. Therefore, the architect Stefano Boeri, decided to focus on creating some green architecture in Liuzhan. The idea is simple, creating a new green city that fights air pollution by using greenery in architecture and by covering ever building with plants, it will allow for even more carbon dioxide to be absorbed while introducing oxygen into the atmosphere simultaneously. The city will hopefully be finished by 2020 and will absorb 57 pollutants per year. It will have all the characteristics of an energy self-sufficient urban establishment: geothermal energy for interior air-conditioning and solar panels over the roofs for collecting renewable energy. To decrease the average air temperature, to create noise barriers and to improve the biodiversity of living species, generating the habitat for birds, insects and small animals that inhabit the Liuzhou territory.

Missing Middle Housing

Missing Middle is a range of multi-unit or clustered housing types compatible in scale with single-family homes that help meet the growing demand for walkable urban living. These types provide diverse housing options along a spectrum of affordability, including duplexes, fourplexes, and bungalow courts, to support walkable communities, locally-serving retail, and public transportation options. Missing Middle Housing provides a solution to the mismatch between the available U.S. housing stock and shifting demographics combined with the growing demand for walkability.

Robert Moses

Robert Moses (1888-1981) was the "master builder" of mid-20th century New York City, Long Island, and Westchester County, New York. As the shaper of a modern city, he is one of the most polarizing figures in the history of urban planning in the United States. Although he never held elected office, Moses was arguably the most powerful person in New York state government from the 1930s to the 1950s. He changed shorelines, built roadways in the sky, and transformed neighborhoods forever. His decisions favoring highways over public transit helped create the modern suburbs of Long Island and influenced a generation of engineers, architects, and urban planners who spread his philosophies across the nation. Moses' projects were considered by many to be necessary for the region's development after being hit hard by the Great Depression. During the height of his powers, New York City participated in the construction of two huge World's Fairs: one in 1939 and the other in 1964. Moses was also in large part responsible for the United Nations' decision to headquarter in Manhattan as opposed to Philadelphia. His supporters believe he made the city viable for the 21st century by building an infrastructure that most people wanted and that has endured. However, his works remain extremely controversial. His critics claim that he preferred automobiles to people, that he displaced hundreds of thousands of residents in New York City, uprooted traditional neighborhoods by building expressways through them, contributed to the ruin of the South Bronx and the amusement parks of Coney Island, caused the departure of the Brooklyn Dodgers and the New York Giants Major League baseball teams, and precipitated the decline of public transport through disinvestment and neglect.

Eco-Density

The EcoDensity Initiative was officially launched in 2006 in the City of Vancouver in conjunction with the World Urban Forum.[1] It was an unprecedented planning effort and a response to deconcentration of urban land use due to urban sprawl. The Initiative used density, design and land use as catalysts towards livability, affordability and environmental sustainability. The Program aimed to reduce car reliance, deliver more efficient urban land use, improve green energy systems and build a resilient and adaptable community. In high-density urban areas, utilizing the existing infrastructure and transit and community amenities tends to lead towards a more sustainable and livable state.[2][3][4] Accordingly, EcoDensity was designed to strategically enhance densification with the primary aim of efficiently structured neighbourhoods, denser urban-patterns and increased affordable housing.[5][6]

Southern Megalopolis

The Southern Megalopolis: Using the Past to Predict the Future of Urban Sprawl in the Southeast U.S. Giant urban sprawl could pave over thousands of acres of forest and agriculture, connecting Raleigh to Atlanta by 2060, if growth continues at its current pace, according to a newly released research paper from the U.S. Geological Survey. Development on that scale would result in losses of 15 percent of agricultural land, 12 percent of grasslands and 10 percent of forests, the study said. It would take the form of tract housing developments, business centers and thousands of miles of paved roads.The research paper was published last month in the journal PLOS One. Its co-authors include Jaime Collazo and Alexa McKerrow, also researchers at USGS, and Curtis Belyea and Rob Dunn, researchers at North Carolina State..

Vauban (eco-neighbrohood in Freiburg)

The Vauban Sustainable Urban District process took place in the German city of Freiburg between 1993 and 2006. It is based on the city government's aim of restoring an old military barracks based on ecological and social cohesion criteria, and creating a participatory process that would generate the NGO Forum Vauban and would have inter- and intra-administrative coordination structures to enable proposals emerging from the process to be implemented and permit a high degree of coordination between the public participation process and the local government. Impact of the program There are many similar experiences in Europe which show that many of the criteria used in the Vauban Sustainable Urban District have a very high level of replicability. Of particular importance is the commitment by the majority of these experiences to participation as a cornerstone of a policy that aims to link environmental sustainability and social cohesion. PDF icon See the whole case study

The Neighborhood Concept (Clarence Perry)

The concept of the neighborhood unit, crystallised from the prevailing social and intellectual attitudes of the early 1900s by Clarence Perry, is an early diagrammatic planning model for residential development in metropolitan areas.[1] It was designed by Perry to act as a framework for urban planners attempting to design functional, self-contained and desirable neighbourhoods in the early 20th century in industrialising cities.[2] It continues to be utilised (albeit in progressive and adapted ways, see New Urbanism), as a means of ordering and organising new residential communities in a way which satisfies contemporary "social, administrative and service requirements for satisfactory urban existence".[1]

Vinegar Hill

Vinegar Hill (originally known as Random Row) was a historically black neighborhood that was razed in 1964 as part of a Charlottesville-led redevelopment program.[1] The neighborhood extended along Main Street from the eastern end of today's Downtown Mall.[2]. The neighborhood was first settled by Irish families in the early 1800s and annexed by the City of Charlottesville in 1835. James Alexander, a newspaper editor who lived in Charlottesville in the 19th century, said the name Vinegar Hill was given to the neighborhood by George Toole in honor of his family home by the same name in Ireland.[2] African American families first moved to the neighborhood following the Civil War.[3] Another account states that one day a barrel of vinegar fell off of the back of a truck and left the neighborhood reeking for some time. Another story is that "vinegar" was a code for liquor.[4] The neighborhood became the center of the African-American community by the mid 1920's and was the home of many black-owned businesses.[4] Urban Renewal In 1960, Charlottesville voters approved a referendum authorizing the redevelopment of Vinegar Hill. A poll tax prevented many of the neighborhood's residents from participating in the vote. In a 1960 survey conducted by the city, 29 businesses in the Vinegar Hill neighborhood were determined to have a combined gross income of $1.6 million.[5] The area was leveled in 1964. Many of the approximately 500 displaced residents moved into the Westhaven public housing project.[6]

Mannahatta

We're going beyond Mannahatta, launching the Welikia Project Hear Welikia pronounced to encompass all of New York City, including the Bronx, Queens, Brooklyn and Staten Island, and surrounding waters. Welikia Hear Welikia pronounced means "my good home" in Lenape, the original Native American language of the region. But Mannahatta hasn't gone anywhere. For all who have come to love Mannahatta, the same block-by-block data is available above by clicking anywhere on Manhattan Island after pressing the "Launch the Map Explorer" button above. For those who want to know more about Welikia Hear Welikia pronounced, press the button, then click on any block in the other four boroughs on the map, where you can support Welikia. "The goal of the Mannahatta Project has never been to return Manhattan to its primeval state. The goal of the project is discover something new about a place we all know so well, whether we live in New York or see it on television, and, through that discovery, to alter our way of life. New York does not lack for dystopian visions of the future.... But what is the vision of the future that works? Might it lie in Mannahatta, the green heart of New York, and with a new start to history, a few hours before Hudson arrived that sunny afternoon four hundred years ago?" - from Mannahatta: A Natural History of New York City

Impervious cover

is any surface in the landscape that cannot effectively absorb or infiltrate rainfall. This includes driveways, roads, parking lots, rooftops, and sidewalks. When natural landscapes are intact, rainfall is absorbed into the soil and vegetation. When natural landscapes are intact, rainfall is absorbed into the soil and vegetation. These mediums naturally slow down, spread out, and soak up precipitation and runoff. Water percolating into the soil becomes a stable supply of groundwater, and the runoff is naturally filtered of impurities before it reaches creeks, streams, rivers, and bays. As areas become more developed, the amount of impervious cover increases, and natural filter systems are no longer in place to intercept the runoff. This has serious implications for water quality and flood control. Typical pollutants in runoff from impervious areas include pesticides, oil, litter, fertilizers, sediment, salt, and bacteria. A growing body of scientific literature has shown that groundwater recharge, stream base flow, and water quality measurably change and can decrease as impervious cover increases. Studies have shown a direct relationship between the intensity of development, as indicated by the amount of impervious surface, and the degree of damage in a watershed.

William (Holly) Whyte

• American urbanist, journalist, people-watcher (aka stalker lol) • Wrote book "The Organization Man" and "the social Life of Small Urban Spaces" which observed human behaviour in urban settings. William H. (Holly) Whyte (1917-1999) is the mentor of Project for Public Spaces because of his seminal work in the study of human behavior in urban settings. While working with the New York City Planning Commission in 1969, Whyte began to wonder how newly planned city spaces were actually working out - something that no one had previously researched. This curiosity led to the Street Life Project, a pioneering study of pedestrian behavior and city dynamics. PPS founder and president Fred Kent worked as one of Whyte's research assistants on the Street Life Project, conducting observations and film analyses of corporate plazas, urban streets, parks, and other open spaces in New York City. When Kent founded PPS shortly thereafter, he based the organization largely on Whyte's methods and findings. More than anything, Whyte believed in the perseverance and sanctity of public spaces. For him, small urban places are "priceless," and the city street is "the river of life...where we come together." Whyte's ideas are as relevant today as they were over 30 years ago, and perhaps even more so.

The Happiest Kids in the World

"Bringing up children the Dutch way" Book - kids spend their afternoons largely unsupervised, scaling trees, playing games, getting dirty (i.e., doing what kids do best). That is partly because young kids don't have homework in The Netherlands, and are free to just be kids when they're done with school. Play is emphasized at school as well, and kids are encouraged to learn at their own pace . And even though reading and math are not stressed at early ages like they are in America, Dutch kids do exceptionally well academically, outranking every single other industrialized country in terms of educational success. And Dutch kids aren't the only ones living a pretty stress-free life — their parents do, too. Acosta and Hutchison say that the Dutch enjoy an amazing work/life balance, with neither parent generally working more than a 29-hour work week (what?!), and both parents having the option of a day off each week to be with their kids. Dads seem to be as involved and hands-on as mothers, and mothers have the choice as to whether they want to stay home or work. Many seem to choose part-time work, so that they feel fulfilled both in motherhood and in their career.

Bike Share / Dockless BIkeshare

A bicycle-sharing system, public bicycle system, or bike-share scheme, is a service in which bicycles are made available for shared use to individuals on a short term basis for a price or free. Many bike share systems allow people to borrow a bike from a "dock" and return it at another dock belonging to the same system. Docks are special bike racks that lock the bike, and only release it by computer control. The user enters payment information, and the computer unlocks a bike. The user returns the bike by placing it in the dock, which locks it in place. Other systems are dockless. For many systems, smartphone mapping apps show nearby available bikes and open docks. As the name suggests, dockless bike share does not require a docking station — an expense that could sometimes limit the number of bikes a city could afford. With dockless systems, bicycles can be parked within a defined district at a bike rack or along the sidewalk. Dockless bikes can be located and unlocked using a smartphone app. designed for short, spontaneous trips. While the cost of using traditional bike share for a single trip (typically, $7/day) could be seen as a barrier to ridership, most dockless bike share models offer single trips for $1. Although $1 per ride isn't great for multiple trips in one day, it is great for that one way trip for a tourist, to cruise around shortly, or the quick ride to meet friends or ride to a meeting. To address more frequent users, LimeBike offers a monthly package of $30/100 rides. Dockless bike share adds even more convenience for users who no longer need to worry about empty bike share stations at the front end of the trip or full stations upon arrival. However, this convenience for users can be a problem for both system operators (who must rebalance bikes to meet demand) and cities (who must manage a clutter of bicycles on sidewalks already under pressure from competing uses). The wide, scattered nature of operations also poses drawbacks related to maintenance, bicycle durability, economic sustainability, and potential lack of visibility that established stations provide.

Green Streets

A green street is a stormwater management approach that incorporates vegetation (perennials, shrubs, trees), soil, and engineered systems (e.g., permeable pavements) to slow, filter, and cleanse stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces (e.g., streets, sidewalks). Green streets are designed to capture rainwater at its source, where rain falls. Whereas, a traditional street is designed to direct stormwater runoff from impervious surfaces into storm sewer systems (gutters, drains, pipes) that discharge directly into surface waters, rivers, and streams. Green streets protect water quality in rivers and streams by removing up to 90% of pollutants. They replenish groundwater supplies, absorb carbon, improve air quality and neighborhood aesthetics, and provide green connections between parks and open space. Vegetated curb extensions improve pedestrian and bicycle safety, and calm traffic. Green streets reduce peak stormwater flows, free capacity in the pipes to carry more wastewater to the sewage treatment plant, and reduce or stop sewer backups in basements. They can eliminate the need to install or replace expensive underground collection, conveyance and treatment systems. (Source: The City of Portland, Oregon: A Green Street Overview EXIT). A green street minimizes or reduces energy costs for the community. For example, the street lights can use efficient bulbs and ballasts and be powered by an alternative energy source. A green street may minimize material cost and the carbon footprint of its construction by using locally sourced and recycled materials in its design whenever possible. Green streets also make accommodations for greener and healthier transportation such as walking, running, biking, and public transportation. Streets that incorporate all of these elements are often called Complete Green Streets

Teotihuacan

A large central city in the Mesoamerican region. Located about 25 miles Northeast of present day Mexico City. Exhibited city planning and unprecedented size for its time. Reached its peak around the year 450.Teotihuacan started off around the time of Christ as one of several competing chiefdom centers in the Valley of Mexico. After lava from the eruption of Mt. Xitle destroyed its main competitor, Cuicuilco, Teotihuacan entered a period of rapid urbanization. Two huge pyramids were built (figure 4) and the city rapidly expanded to cover nearly 20 square kilometers. The builders of the city made several major innovations in urban layout to create a city unlike any that had come before or after in Mesoamerica. First, they laid the city out around a central avenue, the so-called "Street of the Dead," instead of using public plazas for structure. Second, they extended the planned district from the downtown to cover the entire city. The whole city shows an orthogonal layout (fig. 5). Third, a standardized form of multi-family residence was used, called the apartment compound. The degree of standardization in housing and the extent of orthogonal planning are without precedent in Mesoamerica. Some authors have suggested that these (and other) traits suggest a highly regimented society with strict controls on individual behavior. Although I am skeptical of some of these arguments, it is clear that the builders of Teotihuacan were very powerful and imprinted their power on the entire urban landscape. The city was burned and its government collapsed around AD 600.

Via Verde (the Bronx)

A new green building in NYC that integrates nature into many design elements, including a resident garden at the roof of the building and other energy efficiency and sustainable design elements. Co-developers Phipps Houses and Jonathan Rose Companies, in partnership with Dattner Architects and Grimshaw, have created a new approach to green and healthy urban living in the South Bronx with Via Verde / The Green Way, the winning response to the New Housing New York Legacy Competition. The 1.5 acre site in the South Bronx is located in the Melrose neighborhood with access to mass transit and other urban amenities. The mixed-use project serves a range of income levels by providing 151 rental apartments affordable to low-income households and 71 co-ops affordable to middle-income households. The diversity of unit layouts includes simplexes, innovative duplex units, and live-work units with a first floor 'work' space. Via Verde's stepped form is inspired by the integration of nature and city. At the heart of the project is a dynamic garden that serves as the organizing architectural element and spiritual identity for the community. The connected green rooftops of low-rise town homes, a mid-rise duplex building, and a 20-story tower are used to harvest rainwater, grow fruits and vegetables, and provide open space for residents. Other amenities that contribute to the project's theme of healthy living includes open air courtyards, a health education and wellness center operated by Montefiore Medical Center, health oriented retail space, a fitness center, and bicycle storage areas. Via Verde meets LEED Gold New Construction certification standards for environmentally responsible and energy-efficient design. The project utilizes low-tech strategies like cross ventilation, solar shading, and smart material choices, as well as planted green roofs, photovoltaic panels, high-efficiency mechanical systems, and energy-conserving appliances.

Visual Preference Survey (VPS)

A visual preference survey is a technique for obtaining public feedback on physical design alternatives. It is often used when designing zoning codes, planning redevelopment, and conducting urban planning research. The survey consists of a series of images that participants must score according to their preference. The images may be actual photographs or computer-simulated images depicting potential urban environments.[1] The participants' input is then used to make decisions about the future built environment. This technique was developed by urban planner Anton Tony Nelessen in the late 1970s,[2] and it grew in popularity during the 1990s. The method has been criticized on the basis that lighting, weather, and background activities might influence preferences. In part this is corrected by using simulated imagery,[3] but simulations themselves may be misleading when compared with actual photographs. Recent plans utilizing visual preference surveys include Denver,[4] Topeka,[5] New Castle,[6] and Orlando.[7]

Perth, Western Australia

Almost 50 years on, we've had a hand in many of WA's most recognisable developments, and in the process cemented a valued custodial relationship with our state. Our legacy is one of continuing development of community and place creation. It's the people who make a place, so we employ the most imaginative and pioneering experts in the industry. The places we shape together are truly exceptional. Our clients and project partners love us for our whole-project leadership approach and responsive solutions. We're not about flashy tactics or vague, breezy statements. Instead, we get people talking to people in an exciting, collaborative environment, solving problems and delivering outcomes which get successful projects over the line. Every project which comes to us is treated as a collective conversation, one in which we guide the people involved to achieve innovative, progressive outcomes which shape WA in a way future generations will be proud to become part of.

Baldwin Park, FL

By 1997, A Vision Plan had been created to better link the site with surrounding established neighborhoods by providing public access to lakes, the inclusion of connected open spaces and dispersing automobile traffic through a gridded street network. Planned to eventually host nearly 3,000 residential units and one million square feet of commercial/office space, primarily clustered in a centralized main street environment, Baldwin Park's first residents began moving into their homes in 2002. Due to its proximity to downtown Orlando, during its initial years of development, about 70 percent of those purchasing homes in the development were residents from nearby neighborhoods in Orlando and Winter Park.

Tenochtitlan

Capital of the Aztec Empire, located on an island in Lake Texcoco. Its population was about 150,000 on the eve of Spanish conquest. Mexico City was constructed on its ruins. Tenochtitlan, was not founded until 1325, during the Late Aztec period. At first Tenochtitlan was just another city-state like Coatetelco and many others. But as the Mexica people (inhabitants of Tenochtitlan) grew politically and economically powerful, they soon started to dominate their neighbors, and in 1428 the Aztec Empire was established, with Tenochtitlan as its capital. Its wealth and power grew dramatically, and soon the Mexica kings felt the need to differentiate their capital from the many small cities of the other Aztec peoples. First, they walled off the downtown; in place of the open public plaza, they created a walled sacred precinct. Then they turned to the ruins of Teotihuacan and Tula for inspiration. The entire island city was laid out with an orthogonal grid, probably in imitation of Teotihuacan (although I should note that the city expanded by filling in raised agricultural fields, which had an orthogonal layout to begin with). The Mexica built Teotihuacan-style shrines and used Toltec-style ritual objects in their state ceremonies. The king sent people to excavate at Tula to find the buried riches of the Toltecs. Then, in 1519, Hernan Cortés arrived to conquer the Aztecs, and Tenochtitlan was built over to become Mexico City (whose street pattern today originated in the Aztec urban plan).

Settlement Houses

Community centers located in the slums and near tenements that gave aid to the poor, especially immigrants. Settlement houses were important reform institutions in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, and Chicago's Hull House was the best-known settlement in the United States. Most were large buildings in crowded immigrant neighborhoods of industrial cities, where settlement workers provided services for neighbors and sought to remedy poverty. The prototype, Toynbee Hall, opened in 1884 in an East London slum, and was home to an Anglican clergyman, his wife, and several young men from Oxford and Cambridge Universities. Unrelated middle-class women and men lived cooperatively, as "settlers" or "residents" who hoped to share knowledge and culture with their low-paid, poorly educated neighbors. The settlement idea appealed to young Americans who wished to bridge the gulf of class, help the urban poor, implement "social Christianity," and understand the causes of poverty. Stanton Coit, who lived at Toynbee Hall for several months, opened the first American settlement in 1886, Neighborhood Guild on the Lower East Side of New York. In 1889, Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr launched Hull House in Chicago. As word of these experiments spread, other settlements appeared in New York, Boston, Philadelphia, and Chicago. Hull House inspired Charles Zueblin to organize Northwestern University Settlement in 1891. The following year, Graham Taylor started Chicago Commons and Mary McDowell took charge of University of Chicago Settlement near the stockyards. By 1900, there were more than 100 settlements in America; 15 were in Chicago. Eventually there were more than 400 settlements nationwide. The most active and influential ones were in the large cities of the Northeast and Midwest.

1956 Interstate Highway Act

Federal Aid Highway Act of 1956 Great Seal of the United States Other short titles Highway Construction Act National Interstate and Defense Highways Act Long title An act to amend and supplement the Federal Aid Road Act approved July 11, 1916, to authorize appropriations for continuing the construction of highways; to amend the Internal Revenue Code of 1954 to provide additional revenue from taxes on motor fuel, tires, and trucks and buses; and for other purposes. Acronyms (colloquial) FAHA Nicknames Highway Revenue Act of 1956 Enacted by the 84th United States Congress Effective June 29, 1956 Citations Public law 84-627 Statutes at Large 70 Stat. 374 Codification Titles amended 16 U.S.C.: Conservation 23 U.S.C.: Highways U.S.C. sections created 16 U.S.C. ch. 2, subch. I § 503 23 U.S.C. ch. 1 Legislative history Introduced in the House as H.R. 10660 by George Fallon (D-MD) on April 19, 1956 Passed the House on April 27, 1956 (388-19) Passed the Senate on May 29, 1956 (41-39) Reported by the joint conference committee on June 22, 1956; agreed to by the House on June 22, 1956 (adopted) and by the Senate on June 22, 1956 (89-1) Signed into law by President Dwight Eisenhower on June 29, 1956 The Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, popularly known as the National Interstate and Defense Highways Act (Public Law 84-627), was enacted on June 29, 1956, when President Dwight D. Eisenhower signed the bill into law. With an original authorization of $25 billion for the construction of 41,000 miles (66,000 km) of the Interstate Highway System supposedly over a 10-year period, it was the largest public works project in American history through that time.[1] The addition of the term "defense" in the act's title was for two reasons: First, some of the original cost was diverted from defense funds. Secondly, most U.S. Air Force bases have a direct link to the system. One of the stated purposes was to provide access in order to defend the United States during an attack[citation needed]. All of these links were in the original plans, although some, such as Wright Patterson were not connected up in the 1950s, but only somewhat later. The money for the Interstate Highway and Defense Highways was handled in a Highway Trust Fund that paid for 90 percent of highway construction costs with the states required to pay the remaining 10 percent. It was expected that the money would be generated through new taxes on fuel, automobiles, trucks, and tires. As a matter of practice, the federal portion of the cost of the Interstate Highway System has been paid for by taxes on gasoline and diesel fuel.[2]

James Oglethorpe

Founder and governor of the Georgia colony. He ran a tightly-disciplined, military-like colony. Slaves, alcohol, and Catholicism were forbidden in his colony. Many colonists felt that Oglethorpe was a dictator, and that (along with the colonist's dissatisfaction over not being allowed to own slaves) caused the colony to break down and Oglethorpe to lose his position as governor. Plan was an embodiment of all of the major themes of the Enlightenment, including science, humanism, and secular government. Georgia became the only American colony infused at its creation with Enlightenment ideals: the last of the Thirteen Colonies, it would become the first to embody the principles later embraced by the Founders. Remnants of the Oglethorpe Plan exist today in Savannah, showcasing a town plan that retains the vibrancy of ideas behind its conception. At the heart of Oglethorpe's comprehensive and multi-faceted plan there was a vision of social equity and civic virtue. The mechanisms supporting that vision, including yeoman governance, equitable land allocation, stable land tenure, prohibition of slavery, and secular administration, were among the ideas debated during the British Enlightenment. Many of those ideals have been carried forward, and are found today in Savannah's Tricentennial Plan and other policy documents. founded Savannah in 1733 and created a very unique city plan. Savannah's city planning is very distinctive and differs from all previous American towns. Early city planning in Savannah divided the town into wards. Each ward was planned around a central square, which was flanked at its eastern and western sides by four trust lots. The trust lots were allocated for the sites of public building. Each square was flanked at its northern and southern by four tythings of ten lots each, which were reserved for houses. When the town was laid out, the first ward of Savannah with its four tythings and forty homesites had been designed to accommodate the first forty families who came to Savannah, the oldest city in Georgia. The ward system was also conceived for a defense purpose. Oglethorpe was a great soldier and familiar with the classical principles of fortress construction and campsite planning. He created Savannah's city plan to face emergencies. Each ward of the town was run by a Constable to whom four tythingmen reported for the activities of the families of each tything. Ten men in each tything were ready to bear arms at all times. The squares served as assembly points and drilling spaces for those militiamen. In case of attack, farm animals and colonists could take refuge in the squares.

Home Gr/Own (Milwaukee program)

HOME GR/OWN Milwaukee is an initiative of Milwaukee Mayor Tom Barrett, led by the City's Environmental Collaboration Office (ECO). Transform targeted neighborhoods by concentrating City and partner resources, catalyzing new, healthy food access and greenspace developments to promote economic development in City neighborhoods and commercial corridors. Make it easier to grow and access local food and re-purpose city-owned vacant lots. We work within City government to streamline processes, permitting, and ordinances, making it easier to grow and distribute healthy food, start new food-based businesses and improve vacant lots into parks, orchards and healthy green spaces, increasing Milwaukee quality of life. Work within Milwaukee's community food system to link local growers to local markets, increase urban food infrastructure (water, access, compost), support new urban farms and increase the number of healthy food retailers and wholesalers.

Jane Addams and Hull House

Hull House, Chicago's first and the nation's most influential settlement house, was established by Jane Addams and Ellen Gates Starr on the Near West Side on September 18, 1889. By 1907, the converted 1856 mansion had expanded to a massive 13-building complex covering nearly a city block. The new structures included a gymnasium, theater, art gallery, music school, boys' club, auditorium, cafeteria, cooperative residence for working women, kindergarten, nursery, libraries, post office, meeting and club rooms, art studios, kitchen, and a dining room and apartments for the residential staff. Attracting thousands of people each week from the surrounding neighborhood, the expanded Hull House complex provided space for the settlement's extensive social, educational, and artistic programs. Under Addams's skillful leadership, Hull House achieved recognition as the best-known settlement house in the United States and became the flagship of a movement that included nearly five hundred settlements nationally by 1920. HULL HOUSE CLINIC, 1930S During its first two decades, Hull House attracted a remarkable group of residents, most of them women, who rose to prominence and influence as reformers on the local, state, and national levels. In the neighborhood, these residents established the city's first public playground and bathhouse, campaigned to reform ward politics, investigated housing, working, and sanitation issues, organized to improve garbage removal, and agitated for new public schools. On the municipal level, they helped establish the first juvenile court in the United States, fought for neighborhood parks and playgrounds, agitated for branch libraries, and initiated housing reform. At the state level, Hull-House residents initiated and lobbied for protective legislation for women and children, child labor laws, occupational safety and health provisions, compulsory education, protection of immigrants, and Illinois' pioneer mothers' pension law. On the federal level, Hull House residents joined with settlement house leaders and reformers nationwide to fight for national child labor laws, women's suffrage, the establishment of a Children's Bureau, unemployment compensation, workers' compensation, and the many other reforms that made up the Progressive agenda in the first two decades of the twentieth century. Addams remained head resident of Hull House until her death in 1935. Hull House continued to be active on Halsted Street until the 1960s, when it was displaced by the University of Illinois' new urban campus. Today it continues under the name of Jane Addams Hull House Association, an umbrella organization composed of several social service centers across the city.

Design With Nature

In 1969, he published Design with Nature, which was essentially a book of step-by-step instructions on how to break down a region into its appropriate uses.[4] McHarg also was interested in garden design and believed that homes should be planned and designed with good private garden space. He promoted an ecological view, in which the designer becomes very familiar with the area through analysis of soil, climate, hydrology, etc. Design With Nature was the first work of its kind "to define the problems of modern development and present a methodology or process prescribing compatible solutions".[5] The book also affected a variety of fields and ideas. Frederick R. Steiner tells us that "environmental impact assessment, new community development, coastal zone management, brownfields restoration, zoo design, river corridor planning, and ideas about sustainability and regenerative design all display the influence of Design with Nature".[2] Design with Nature had its roots in much earlier landscape architecture philosophies. It was sharply critical of the French Baroque style of garden design, which McHarg saw as a subjugation of nature, and full of praise for the English picturesque style of garden design. McHarg's focus, however, was only partially on the visual and sensual qualities which had dominated the English picturesque movement. Instead, he saw the earlier tradition as a precursor of his philosophy, which was rooted less in aristocratic estate design or even garden design and more broadly in an ecological sensibility that accepted the interwoven worlds of the human and the natural, and sought to more fully and intelligently design human environments in concert with the conditions of setting, climate and environment. Always a polemicist, McHarg set his thinking in radical opposition to what he argued was the arrogant and destructive heritage of urban-industrial modernity, a style he described as "Dominate and Destroy." Following the publication of Design with Nature, Wallace McHarg Roberts & Todd (WMRT) worked in major American cities - Minneapolis, Denver, Miami, New Orleans, and Washington (DC) - and created environmentally-based master plans for Amelia Island Plantation and Sanibel Islands in Florida.

Linear Metabolism / Circular Metabolism

In nature, living organisms manage its resources based on a circular metabolism, where sunlight, water, nutrients, etc. (i.e. inputs) are transformed into heat, energy and biomass, and no waste as such is generated. Instead, materials which are not needed anymore (i.e. outputs) will return into the loop and play another function within the ecosystem. On the contrary, cities are nowadays based on linear metabolisms, extracting raw materials, manufacturing products for consumption and disposing them afterwards, contributing to different impacts such as depletion of natural resources and a high dependency on the non-renewable ones. Furthermore, most of the pollution originates from cities or from agriculture (that eventually feeds the cities) in the form of emissions and discharges of waste into the local and global environment. How is the circular urban metabolism possible? Closing urban cycles embraces different ways of managing loops of resources throughout cities, recognizing outputs (organic and inorganic waste) as recycled inputs capable to return to the production system. How can this be applied in practice? Let us consider a clear example. Generally, the urban water cycle begins with purified water being transported and entering urban settlements. After consumption along different activities (i.e. industrial processes, domestic consumption, etc.) the water quality is degraded so that effluents are discharged as wastewater, leaving the urban system. The objective is to recognize outputs as recycled inputs Circular urban metabolism aims at closing the water cycle rather than leaving the resource escape from the system, considering wastewater as a resource instead of a nuisance. Since waste water represents a valuable source of nutrients (e.g. nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium) and water for irrigation, both highly appreciated in agriculture, recycling technologies should recover all these elements for further reuse in farming activities. This way, urban feeding farmlands would help closing the nutrients cycle while reaching the city again. As Girardet (2008) states, wastewater treatment systems could be turned into fertilizer factories, returning plant nutrients and reclaimed water back to the crops feeding cities

Richard Louv's Last Child in the Woods

In this influential work about the staggering divide between children and the outdoors, child advocacy expert Richard Louv directly links the lack of nature in the lives of today's wired generation—he calls it nature-deficit—to some of the most disturbing childhood trends, such as the rises in obesity, attention disorders, and depression. Last Child in the Woods is the first book to bring together a new and growing body of research indicating that direct exposure to nature is essential for healthy childhood development and for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. More than just raising an alarm, Louv offers practical solutions and simple ways to heal the broken bond—and many are right in our own backyard. This new edition reflects the enormous changes that have taken place since the book was originally published. It includes: 100 actions you can take to create change in your community, school, and family. 35 discussion points to inspire people of all ages to talk about the importance of nature in their lives. A new progress report by the author about the growing Leave No Child Inside movement. New and updated research confirming that direct exposure to nature is essential for the physical and emotional health of children and adults. Last Child in the Woods: Saving our Children from Nature Deficit Disorder has spurred a national dialogue among educators, health professionals, parents, developers and conservationists. This is a book that will change the way you think about your future and the future of your children.

Janette Sadik-Khan

Janette Sadik-Khan served as Commissioner of the New York City Department of Transportation (NYC DOT) from 2007-2013, where she implemented an ambitious program to improve safety, mobility and sustainability, and ensure a state of good repair on the city's roads, bridges and ferries. At Bloomberg Associates, she works with mayors around the world to reimagine and redesign their cities with innovative projects that can be developed quickly and inexpensively. At NYC DOT, Janette oversaw a $2.8 billion budget, delivering transformative projects including the pedestrianization of Times Square and redesigning 2.3 miles of Broadway from Columbus Circle to Union Square; the planning and launch of seven Select Bus Service routes; and the nation's largest bike share program. She added nearly 400 miles of bicycle lanes and installed 60 plazas across the city. She also developed and published New York City's first-ever Street Design Manual and Street Works Manual, defining new standards for creating more resilient and attractive streets. Before joining the Bloomberg Administration, she was a Senior Vice President at Parsons Brinckerhoff, an international engineering firm. Prior to that, she served as Deputy Administrator of the Federal Transit Administration. Sadik-Khan is the chair of the National Association of Transportation Officials (NACTO), an organization of transportation commissioners in over 40 US cities, and is a member of the board of directors of both the Institute for Transportation and Development Policy (ITDP) and the Regional Plan Association (RPA). She also sits on the Board of Trustees of Occidental College, from which she holds a B.A. in Political Science, in addition to a J.D. from Columbia University School of Law.

Pioneer Courthouse Square

Known locally as "Portland's Living Room," Pioneer Courthouse Square is a meeting place for the city's diverse cultures and a dramatic symbol of Portland's dedication to a vibrant downtown. It's a place of pride where locals take guests, socialize, and lounge; where you can feel like you are in someone's home and a member of the family. It wasn't always this way. The site was originally home from 1883 to 1953 of the Portland Hotel, which was demolished to make way for the Meier and Frank Department store parking lot. Plans to transform the block into a public space began after the city rejected a proposal to build a new 11-story parking garage. The square later became a central piece of the city's 1972 innovative Downtown Plan. The goal was to create a grand civic space at the heart of downtown that was also connected to the development of a light rail system and a transit mall, all part of the city's urban vision. An international design competition chose the architect Will Martin along with landscape architect Doug Macy. Their bold design is a 40,000-square-foot brick town square reminiscent of both an Italian piazza and a Greek agora. An upper terrace, belvedere, and the square's signature element -- a grand crescent combination amphitheater, stairs, and ramp -- frame the broad floor of the square. Enclosed by the Pioneer Courthouse, department stores, and hotels, it's a truly multipurpose space that enhances community sustainability. Thirty years after its dedication, Pioneer Courthouse Square is a much heralded place. The Project for Public Spaces designated it as one of the best squares and plazas in the world in 2004. In 2008, the square made the American Planning Association's list of "Great Public Spaces in America." The square hosts almost daily events and is visited by 10 million people a year.

The New Urbanism

New Urbanism is an urban design movement which promotes environmentally friendly habits by creating walkable neighborhoods containing a wide range of housing and job types.[1] It arose in the United States in the early 1980s, and has gradually influenced many aspects of real estate development, urban planning, and municipal land-use strategies. New Urbanism is strongly influenced by urban design practices that were prominent until the rise of the automobile prior to World War II; it encompasses ten basic principles such as traditional neighborhood design (TND) and transit-oriented development (TOD).[2] These ideas can all be circled back to two concepts: building a sense of community and the development of ecological practices.[3] Market Street, Celebration, Florida The organizing body for New Urbanism is the Congress for the New Urbanism, founded in 1993. Its foundational text is the Charter of the New Urbanism, which begins: We advocate the restructuring of public policy and development practices to support the following principles: neighborhoods should be diverse in use and population; communities should be designed for the pedestrian and transit as well as the car; cities and towns should be shaped by physically defined and universally accessible public spaces and community institutions; urban places should be framed by architecture and landscape design that celebrate local history, climate, ecology, and building practice.[4]

Car Sharing

Programs that allow residents to use cars when needed for a monthly fee. Carsharing or car sharing or car clubs is a model of car rental where people rent cars for short periods of time, often by the hour. They are attractive to customers who make only occasional use of a vehicle, as well as others who would like occasional access to a vehicle of a different type than they use day-to-day

Historic Preservation Tax Credits

Recognizing the cost associated with rehabilitating historic buildings, the Historic Tax Credit provides a 20% income tax credit to developers of income producing properties such as office buildings, retail establishments, rental apartments, and others.

Monacans

Scholars believe that thousands of years ago, in the Ohio River Valley, the Siouan-speaking people lived as a unified group, and that eventually the tribes moved both east and west, separating into the Eastern and Western Siouan speakers. Monacan Indians spoke a language related to other Eastern Siouan tribes, such as the Tutelo. The Monacan people are also related to the Occaneechi and Saponi peoples located in present-day North Carolina, and they were affiliated with the Mannahoac Indians, who occupied the northern Piedmont in what is now Virginia. Title: A Monacan Dwelling A Monacan Dwelling When the first English settlers founded Jamestown in 1607, the Monacan lived above the falls of the James River and were traditional enemies of the Algonquian-speaking Indians of Tsenacomoco. Powhatan, the paramount chief of Tsenacomoco, had discouraged the Englishmen from visiting the Monacan, but in September 1608, Christopher Newport and 120 men set out anyway, traveling forty to fifty miles beyond the falls. After kidnapping a Monacan political leader to act as a guide, Newport and his party visited the towns of Mowhemicho and Massanack, while mapping three others: Rassaweck, Monasukapanough, and Monahassanugh. According to English reports, Rassaweck, on the James River, was the principal Monacan town. The area in general, John Smith wrote, was a "faire, fertill, well watred countrie," but it did not boast the mineral wealth for which Newport was hoping, and the Englishmen soon retreated back to Tsenacomoco.

Levittown

Suburban communities with mass-produced tract houses built in the New York and Philadelphia metropolitan areas in the 1950s by William Levitt and Sons. Typically inhabited by white middle-class people who fled the cities in search of homes to buy for their growing families. The Community "Plan" included schools, places of worship, recreation areas and shopping facilities as well as houses. This comprehensive approach is analogous Levitt's house planning which, for example, included landscaping as well as providing a washer, stove and refrigerator in each house. Levitt's approach to community planning and design created a full-service community with "built-in" features—just like its houses. For example, elementary schools were centered inside each master block of sections so that, in Levitt's words, "no child will have to walk more than one half mile to school or cross any major road." The Community Plan and design included: 41 Sections with 17,311 single family houses 171 miles of roads 5 Olympic-sized community swimming pools Little League baseball fields Lots of green space and neighborhood parks Large, multi-purpose Community Hall Two large, centralized Shopping Centers Sites set aside & donated for churches & schools

Copenhagen

The Five Finger Plan, developed in 1947 through Urban Planning Labratory in collaboration with urban planners Steen Eiler Rasmussen and Christian Erhardt "Peter" Bredsdorff, is an urban development plan that focuses on both metropolitan train lines and the green spaces in between. As you can see from the graphic, the idea is that the train lines (s-tog) spread like fingers on a hand from the "palm" of central Copenhagen. At the time of it's inception, the Five Finger Plan did not go into Amager, which did not have the infrastructure to support its inclusion. Now, Amager is a much more developed area of Copenhagen and is considered to be the "extra finger.". benefits of a cycling city, but if you'd like to find out more, Copenhagenize is a good place to start. Check out their sidebar, with a running meter for how many kilometers Copenhageners have cycled on a given day. While cars, public transport and bicycles are all excellent choices for getting from point A to point B, sometimes you need to walk. Maybe you want to stretch your legs, take your dog out or push the pram. Maybe you don't have a "point B" and just want to enjoy the city itself. While there are a number of health advantages to walking, there are additional benefits to having a walkable city: economically, shopping areas that are pedestrian-accessible make sense because people can easily get from store to store. Infrastructure-wise, you don't need to worry about parking, traffic, and all the problems that must be addressed therein. Aesthetically, it's simply more beautiful. Did you know that latest developments in Urban Design suggest that all residences in a city should be no more than 300 meters from a green space? This has lead to an interest in creating small green spaces, rather than larger parks and open areas. While these are often less popular with politicians, the intimate nature of these spaces often means that they are used more frequently by more people than big green spaces. Copenhagen's urban design has taken on the idea of creating urban gathering spaces all over the city, including the now-world famous Superkilen by Bjarke Ingels Group. As you may already know, thanks to massive construction sites around the city, Copenhagen is expanding their public transportation system. Specifically, they're expanding the metro by 17 stops with a circular line (that's a big jump for a metro that currently only has 22 stops). This is exciting news for those of us living/working outside the center of the city. Nørrebro, Vesterbro and Østerbro in particular will see huge accessibility improvements. In the meantime, the construction sites are being used for art exhibitions and displays - a great way to utilize spaces that would otherwise be eyesores.

Nightingale Housing

The Nightingale model is a set of systems and processes for housing provision. The model exists to enables licensed architects to develop Nightingale buildings using the learnings and interrogations of architects who have previously developed Nightingale buildings. The six Nightingale Estate blocks were built in 1968 next to Hackney Downs. Seaton Point was distinguished with its chimney. During the 1990's the flats fell into disrepair and the Hackney Council decided it was time they were demolished. Farnell Point was the first tower block to be felled by controlled explosion in July 1998. During 1998-1999, Seaton Point, which had been saved from demolition, was refurbished and painted white. Despite this the council continued to demolish blocks on the estate. Embley and Southerland were demolished next in December 2000 with Christmas trees painted on the banners. The last of flats to be done away with were Rathbone and Rachel on November 30, 2003. The BBC television show Top Gear used this as a stunt for the 'indestructible' Toyota Hilux which was hoisted onto the roof of Rachel Point. The car still worked after the demolition and was placed on the wall of the Top Gear studios. Since 2003, low-rise buildings have been built where the old tower blocks once stood.

Pearl District (Portland)

The Pearl District is an area of Portland, Oregon, formerly occupied by warehouses, light industry and railroad classification yards and now noted for its art galleries, upscale businesses and residences. The area has been undergoing significant urban renewal since the mid-1980s when it was reclassified as mixed use from industrial,[3] including the arrival of artists, the removal of a viaduct and construction of the Portland Streetcar. It now mostly consists of high-rise condominiums and warehouse-to-loft conversions. The increase of high-rise condominiums and warehouse-to-loft conversions was made evident with the construction of the Cosmopolitan on the Park building, which opened in Summer 2016. The Cosmopolitan on the Park residential building is now the tallest building in the Pearl District and the 8th tallest building in Portland, contributing to the changing Portland skyline.[4] The area is located just northwest of downtown between West Burnside Street on the south, the Willamette River on the north, NW Broadway on the east and the Interstate 405 freeway on the west.[5] The area is home to several Portland icons, including Powell's City of Books. The former Weinhard Brewery, which operated continuously from 1864 to September 1999, was shut down by Stroh's upon the purchase of the Weinhard's brand by Miller Brewing and sold for redevelopment as the Brewery Blocks.[6] There are art galleries and institutions such as the Elizabeth Leach Gallery and Blue Sky Gallery (many who stage monthly receptions), boutiques, and restaurants abound, and also a number of small clubs and bars, a combination that has led to Pearl District being named one of the 15 coolest neighborhoods in the world in 2016.[7] The United States Post Office main processing facility for all of Oregon and southwestern Washington was built in the Pearl District in 1964, next to Union Station. This location was chosen in order for the post office to be able to better serve towns outside the Portland metro area.[citation needed] The district includes most of the historic[citation needed] North Park Blocks (1869), as well as three public plazas: Jamison Square (2002) is built around a fountain which simulates a tidal pool that is periodically filled by artificial waterfalls and then drained into grating. Tanner Springs Park (2005) is a re-created natural area featuring wetlands, a walking trail, and creek. The Fields Park (2013) is a Neighborhood and Dog Park in the Northern part of the Pearl.[8] The Park provides space for visual or performing arts, for community-building activities and has a large paved walking loop.

The Spiral Tower

The Spiral is a 1,005-foot-tall office tower to be sustainably constructed in the rapidly developing Hudson Yards district of Manhattan's Midtown West. A cascading series of landscaped terraces and hanging gardens will define the signature building with readily accessible outdoor space catering to a dynamic, mixed-use urban community. The tower will comprise 2.85 million square feet, incorporating 65 stories and 27,000 square feet of first-class retail. Designed by renowned architectural firm Bjarke Ingels Group, The Spiral's form takes inspiration from the classic Manhattan step-back as it tapers vertically with green spaces circling from base to top. The terraces will provide each floor with outdoor space and multi-floor atria for dynamic work space flow or unique meeting areas. Center-core open floor plans will allow for flexible configurations, while soaring ceiling heights and virtually column-free floor plates will provide spectacular, unobstructed city and river views. Located on Hudson Boulevard at the northern tip of the High Line elevated park, The Spiral will occupy an entire city block between 34th and 35th Streets at the heart of Hudson Yards, New York City's fastest-growing neighborhood. The tower's 30-foot-tall lobby will front Hudson Boulevard Park, further extending access to urban green space and offering generous ground-floor retail offering. Directly facing The Spiral's entrance is access to the newly extended 7 Train, providing an easy commute to Grand Central Terminal and the rest of Manhattan. The tower is in close proximity to the city's most convenient transportation hubs, including the Port Authority, Penn Station, the Lincoln Tunnel and the West Side Highway, allowing for easy access to all five boroughs and the tristate area. Rezoned in 2005, the Hudson Yards district is now experiencing an influx of development activity, attracting high-end retailers, restaurants, entertainment and cultural destinations, as well as industry-leading commercial tenants. The Spiral draws its sustainable and landscaped inspiration from the acres of newly developed green space adjacent to it, including the final phase of the High Line and the 550-acre Hudson River Park, with its miles of bike and jogging paths. With a similar focus on sustainability and green construction, The Spiral is targeting LEED certification.

Transbay (transit center)

The Transbay Transit Center Project is a visionary transportation and housing project that transforms downtown San Francisco and the San Francisco Bay Area's regional transportation system by creating a "Grand Central Station of the West" in the heart of a new transit-friendly neighborhood. The approximately $6 billion project will replace the former Transbay Terminal at First and Mission Streets in San Francisco with a modern regional transit hub connecting eight Bay Area counties and the State of California through 11 transit systems: AC Transit, BART, Caltrain, Golden Gate Transit, Greyhound, Muni, SamTrans, WestCAT Lynx, Amtrak, Paratransit and future High Speed Rail from San Francisco to Los Angeles/Anaheim. Read here about the Transbay Program's dramatic evolution from the opening of the Transbay Terminal in 1939 all the way to connecting the state through High Speed Rail in the coming years - DELIVERING ON THE VISION The project consists of three interconnected elements: Replacing the former Transbay Terminal at First and Mission streets Extending Caltrain and California High-Speed Rail underground from Caltrain's current terminus at 4th and King Streets into the new downtown Transit Center Creating a new neighborhood with homes, offices, parks, and shops surrounding the new Transit Center

Street permeability

The extent to which urban forms permit/restrict movement of people or vehicles in different directions- Charlottesville downtown mall with their area-wide traffic management vs positive attribute of an urban design, as it permits ease of movement and avoids severing neighbourhoods. Urban forms which lack permeability, e.g. those severed by arterial roads, or with many long culs-de-sac, are considered to discourage movement on foot and encourage longer journeys by car.

Incremental Building

The incremental build model is a method of software development where the product is designed, implemented and tested incrementally (a little more is added each time) until the product is finished. It involves both development and maintenance. The product is defined as finished when it satisfies all of its requirements. This model combines the elements of the waterfall model with the iterative philosophy of prototyping. The product is decomposed into a number of components, each of which is designed and built separately (termed as builds). Each component is delivered to the client when it is complete. This allows partial utilization of the product and avoids a long development time. It also avoids a large initial capital outlay and subsequent long waiting period. This model of development also helps ease the traumatic effect of introducing a completely new system all at once.

Parklets

The project that would form the blueprint for the Parklet movement was created in San Francisco in 2005 by Rebar - whose talented team of people have now joined Gehl - San Francisco - as an act of guerrilla art in public space. Taking advantage of a legal loophole in the city, where there are no restrictions on what you can do in a parking space as long as you pay, the designers from Rebar fed a parking meter with coins, unrolled grass turf, and set up a park bench and potted tree. Through a simple, 2-hour intervention, they transformed an ordinary parking space into a tiny public park. Reclaiming the Right of Way Taking the dead space usually occupied by an empty car and making it into a place for people made such simple and brilliant sense that the idea generated a massive international response, inspiring Rebar to publish an open source design manual for making these mini parks. The manual invited people to be part of a larger creative project, tapping into a global pool of talent with people all over the world modifying, changing and adapting the concept to their own contexts, needs and visions. It sparked a global movement called Park(ing) Day, with people around the world reclaiming the streets to meet and play. Using an on-street parking space as a site for spatial and social intervention, the typical design of a Parklet is a platform that extends the sidewalk and provides amenities like seats, tables, bike racks, and landscaping. Some are simple, whilst others are designed to perfection. Parklets increase the degree of personal expression in public space with an incredible diversity of interpretations. But whether they contain mosaic creations, small green havens, miniature playgrounds or a basic picnic table, all of them are public spaces for people, offering passersby a place to sit and relax while watching life on the street. Platforms for People Parklets are perfect examples of user-generated urbanism and temporary tactics for improving the public realm. They give people the opportunity to be part of building the city they live in and appropriate public space to meet their own needs and values.

Leiden, Netherladnds

Town that encourages biking, separate paths, bikes are dominant over cars. Has organic quality with many connections to water, recreation, car free centers, central market, distinct border where countryside begins and ends, community in which people help eachothe. In Holland - a city Beatley moved there, and lived there for a year - walkable, likable community - got physical exercise without having to go on runs Canals throughout city → third places = places that are not work, and are not home - courthouse, barber shop, pub, restaurants → street & sidewalk as shared place - closeness to nature - even though living more compactly, sense of history, soundscape, car has lower priority than pedestrians, pedestrian streets, very family friendly, good for old people who don't have to drive too, moderate impact of cars, make things that make cars slow down, mix new with the old, a lot of bicycles, very connected cities - run bike paths through buildings- never very far from the edge because it is so compact Integrated transportation system - bike to train station, train to airport - very easy to get anywhere - everything is integrated Mors Street: The street is car accessible but it is very friendly to pedestrians and bikes, apartments, laundry, textile, butcher, coffee, bicycle shop - huge diversity within tiny street - 50 different building facades. -Physical exercise is in everyday routine, bike to work, etc (vs. Americans have to make time) -lots of 3rd places (not home or work); nature and h20 important -interconnected and compact, can bike almost anywhere; at trainstation you see almost entirely bikes, very few cars -see handout -pedestrian, lots of places for kids to play; lots of spaces promoting social interaction Lessons: - Principle of Connectivity: interconnected neighborhoods and urban space - Permeability of streets and neighborhoods -Legibility of urban landscape -Accessibility: importance of proximity, mixed uses, activities, compact urban form -Third Places: (ray oldenburg's term), urban ecology; urban greening -Traffic calming: de-emphasizing the private automobile, pedestrian-friendly, walkable -Multi-generational urban landscape -Importance of the civic realm: Public and civic uses and spaces -Sense of place: sense of urban identity; building on unique history -Landmarks: visual and other -organic urban development, evolution, beauty and visual diversity -Human-scale: importance of intimate spaces security, safety -Recycling and reuse as key elements of city development -Low energy houses and built environment

Beacon Hill Village (Boston)

a local group for independent seniors to meet and support one other through the elder years. By pooling yearly membership fees, members of the village pay for a small staff that helps them find services like drivers, cleaners, and handymen. Beacon Hill Village members pay $675 per year ($975 for a couple) to access the seven staffers, who help them get services they need. About one in five area residents make below the median income, so from the start village cofounders have offered a discounted yearly membership ($125 solo or $175 per couple) to one-fifth of village members. "We don't provide any direct services," said Laura Connors, the village's executive director and its only full-time employee. "We help them figure out how we can make their lives easier. Do they need a ride back from the hospital? Someone to get groceries? Help with the computer, the TV? Help cleaning gutters?" Businesses often give the village discounts for access to a loyal customer base. But many of the benefits of life in a village are less tangible—members say, above all, villages forge a sense of community. On a recent September morning, 10 longtime village members gathered over scones and coffee at Beacon Hill Bistro, a cozy breakfast spot just off Boston Common. A weekly tradition since 2007, "Second Cup" finds as many as 20 villagers talking politics each Wednesday in a ritual so familiar to the waitstaff there that they've jotted the name on the group's bill."is a classic example of how to help people strengthen ties in their community," although he wondered if it can be replicated in lower-income areas. Nevertheless, he said, "I think it's to be celebrated."

Ciclovía (as in Bogotá)

also ciclovia or cyclovia, is a Spanish term that means "cycleway", either a permanent bike path or the closing of certain streets to automobiles for cyclists and pedestrians,[1] a practice sometimes called open streets.[2] Each Sunday and public holiday from 7 am until 2 pm certain main streets of Bogotá, Cali, Medellín, and other municipalities are blocked off to cars for runners, skaters, and bicyclists. At the same time, stages are set up in city parks. Aerobics instructors, yoga teachers and musicians lead people through various performances. Bogotá's weekly ciclovías are used by approximately 2 million people (about 30% of the population) on over 120 km of car-free streets.[3] Bogota's Ciclovia at Avenida Chile The inspiration for Ciclovías is credited to Bogotá, Colombia.[3] The events have taken place since December 1974 when they started through the efforts of organizer Jaime Ortiz Mariño and others cyclist aficionados. [4] However, it was until 1976 when Bogota's Mayor Luis Prieto Ocampo signed the 566 and 567 decrees that Ciclovia became an official program promoted by the City government and supported by the Transportation Department. [5] In Bogotá, permanently designated bikeways are also known as ciclorutas, while streets temporarily closed for that purpose are called ciclovías. In 2007, a Colombian congressman, José Fernando Castro Caycedo, proposed a law banning Ciclovia, charging that it caused traffic jams. Ciclovia users protested the change, and received support from ex-mayors Peñalosa and Samuel Moreno, as well as several members of the city council and other congressmembers. The proposal was defeated.[6]

New York Zoning Ordinance of 1916

first citywide zoning code in the US. The zoning resolution reflected both borough and local interests, and was proposed after the development of 120 Broadway (the Equitable Building) in lower Manhattan. It was a measure adopted primarily to stop massive buildings from preventing light and air from reaching the streets below, and established limits in building massing at certain heights, usually interpreted as a series of setbacks and, while not imposing height limits, restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size. The chief authors of this resolution were George McAneny and Edward M. Bassett.[1] impact on urban development in the US and internationally.[2] Architectural delineator Hugh Ferriss popularized these new regulations in 1922 through a series of massing studies, clearly depicting the possible forms and how to maximize building volumes. "By the end of the 1920s the setback skyscraper, originally built in response to a New York zoning code, became a style that caught on from Chicago to Shanghai," observe Eric Peter Nash and Norman McGrath,[3] discussing the Williamsburgh Savings Bank Building, which rose in isolation in Brooklyn, where no such zoning dictated form. The tiered Art Deco skyscrapers of the 1920s and 1930s are a direct result of this resolution.

Rotterdam's Water Plazas

flood preparedness, investing in flood defences and soakaways. Rotterdam is a city that knows it is more vulnerable than most - it is a coastal city that is below sea level in parts. It has developed a detailed water plan to protect itself from the double challenge of heavier rain and rising sea levels. It is planning to deliberately allow flooding in certain areas of the city, collecting water and discharging it at a slower rate. The plan includes roof gardens and green roofs that will absorb water, and even buildings that float. The particular innovation I wanted to mention today is the water plaza. plaza operates like any other public square. It's a place for people to meet and hang out. There are steps that people can sit on, making space for public performances, sports, or special events. When it rains, water from surrounding streets is directed into the square, which fills up. This pools the water, relieving pressure on surrounding drainage. The square then drains at a much slower rate through a central point. There are filters fitted on the drains feeding into the plaza, so that it won't fill up with dirty water. so that rainfall actually adds to the appeal of the square, opening up little ponds, rivers and water features. Only a really big storm would fill the whole thing and take it out of action entirely. The images here show the same plaza dry and full above, and partially full on the right.

1899 Building Height Law (Washington, DC)

in response to advancements in construction technology, specifically the use of iron and steel frames, along with thin veneer facades, which made it possible to build lighter, and consequently much taller buildings.[1] Residents of densely populated cities, including Washington D.C., felt that the new technology was untested and steel-framed structures may suffer "serious and fatal defects" due to corrosion from steam pipes and electrical wiring - another relatively recent advancement.[2] They believed that these new tall buildings would ultimately collapse. In an 1899 Senatorial Report, Senator Warren Curtis speculated that, "the life of these structures might not be more than seventy-five years."[2] Another concern was the difficulty of extinguishing fires in the upper floors of tall buildings. At the time, firefighting equipment had been designed to fight flames primarily in low-rise buildings. The growing popularity of skyscrapers presented a new fire hazard. In his report, Senator Curtis wrote that, "It would seem that the fire chiefs in the large cities who have had experience with high buildings are agreed that it is absolutely impossible for them to successfully fight flames over 85 feet (26 m) above the ground with the fire apparatus now manufactured, as the pressure is so great that no hose now made can stand the strain and the men are unable to handle the hoses

Jan Gehl

is a Danish architect and urban design consultant based in Copenhagen whose career has focused on improving the quality of urban life by re-orienting city design towards the pedestrian and cyclist. He is a founding partner of Gehl Architects. Gehl first published his influential Life Between Buildings in Danish in 1971, with the first English translation published in 1987. Gehl advocates a sensible, straightforward approach to improving urban form: systematically documenting urban spaces, making gradual incremental improvements, then documenting them again. Gehl's book Public Spaces, Public Life describes how such incremental improvements have transformed Copenhagen from a car-dominated city to a pedestrian-oriented city over 40 years. Copenhagen's Strøget carfree zone, one of the longest pedestrian shopping areas in Europe, is primarily the result of Gehl's work.[citation needed] Gehl participates in and advises many urban design and public projects around the world: In 2004 he carried out an important study in to the quality of the public realm in London, commissioned by Central London Partnership and Transport for London, and supported City of Wakefield and the town of Castleford in developing and delivering better public spaces, as part of an initiative known as "The Castleford Project". In 2007-08 he was hired by New York City's Department of Transportation to re-imagine New York City streets by introducing designs to improve life for pedestrians and cyclists. The DOT used Gehl's work to "directly inform" the implementation of their new urban planning and design policies and projects.[4] Gehl has been influential in Australia and New Zealand as well, where he prepared Public Life studies for the city centres of Melbourne (1994 and 2004),[5] Perth (1995 and 2009),[6] Adelaide (2002)[7] Sydney (2007),[8] Auckland (2008),[9] Wellington (2004),[10] Christchurch,[11] Launceston and Hobart (2010)[12] Gehl credits the "grandmother of humanistic planning" Jane Jacobs for drawing his attention to the importance of human scale. "Fifty years ago she said - go out there and see what works and what doesn't work, and learn from reality. Look out of your windows, spend time in the streets and squares and see how people actually use spaces, learn from that, and use it."[13]

Redlining

is the systematic denial of various services to residents of specific, often racially associated, neighborhoods or communities, either directly or through the selective raising of prices. While the best known examples of redlining have involved denial of financial services such as banking or insurance,[2] other services such as health care[3] or even supermarkets[4] have been denied to residents. In the case of retail businesses like supermarkets, purposely locating impractically far away from said residents results in a redlining effect.[5] Reverse redlining occurs when a lender or insurer targets particular neighborhoods that are predominantly nonwhite, not to deny residents loans or insurance, but rather to charge them more than in a non-redlined neighborhood where there is more competition.[6][7] In the 1960s, sociologist John McKnight coined the term "redlining" to describe the discriminatory practice of fencing off areas where banks would avoid investments based on community demographics.[8] During the heyday of redlining, the areas most frequently discriminated against were black inner city neighborhoods. For example, in Atlanta in the 1980s, a Pulitzer Prize-winning series of articles by investigative reporter Bill Dedman showed that banks would often lend to lower-income whites but not to middle-income or upper-income blacks.[9] The use of blacklists is a related mechanism also used by redliners to keep track of groups, areas, and people that the discriminating party feels should be denied business or aid or other transactions. In the academic literature, redlining falls under the broader category of credit rationing.

Form Based Codes

means of regulation development to achieve a specific urban form. They create a predictable public realm by controlling physical form primarily, with a lesser focus on land use, through municipal regulations. They are a new response to the modern challenges of urban sprawl, deterioration of historic neighborhoods, and neglect of pedestrian safety in new development. A form-based code is a land development regulation that fosters predictable built results and a high-quality public realm by using physical form (rather than separation of uses) as the organizing principle for the code. A form-based code is a regulation, not a mere guideline, adopted into city, town, or county law. A form-based code offers a powerful alternative to conventional zoning regulation. Form-based codes address the relationship between building facades and the public realm, the form and mass of buildings in relation to one another, and the scale and types of streets and blocks. The regulations and standards in form-based codes are presented in both words and clearly drawn diagrams and other visuals. They are keyed to a regulating plan that designates the appropriate form and scale (and therefore, character) of development, rather than only distinctions in land-use typ

Climate adaptation

now unanimous that global temperatures are likely to continue to rise with concomitant extreme weather patterns and events. There is a protean body of scientific literature available on global warming and climate change, which is affecting urban living in every respect from 'heat islands,' continuous light and sea level changes as well as severe droughts and floods paralysing urban areas. Urban planning implications are reflected in buildings, street and community design for more environmentally sustainable cities. The urban science related to climate change and its implications for human settlement is in its early stages. Nonetheless, climate change is already becoming a concern of insurance and actuarial industries as they begin to assess risk to human settlement, construction and other risks associated with atmospheric conditions. These cannot be anticipated and need to be examined with a new paradigm for urban problem solving which is outlined in this paper. Approaches to build adaptive capacity challenge traditional approaches to environmental and spatial planning, and the role of researchers in this process, raising questions over whether appropriate governance structures are in place to develop effective responses. The cross-cutting nature of the adaptation agenda exposes the silo based approaches that drive many organisations. The development of a collaborative, sociotechnical agenda is vital if we are to meet the climate change adaptation challenge in cities.

Complete Streets

streets designed and operated so that all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists, and transit riders of all ages and abilities, can safely move along and across the streets. Complete Streets are streets for everyone. They are designed and operated to enable safe access for all users, including pedestrians, bicyclists, motorists and transit riders of all ages and abilities. Complete Streets make it easy to cross the street, walk to shops, and bicycle to work.

Ecological Footprint

the impact of a person or community on the environment, expressed as the amount of land required to sustain their use of natural resources.

Shrinking Cities

• Dense cities that experienced notable population loss because of things such as emigration leads to maintenance/upkeep issues because harder to upkeep a large city meant to house many, with only a few citizens Causes Urban development model: Based on the Fordist model of industrialization, it suggests that urbanization is a cyclical process and that urban and regional decline will eventually allow for increased growth[3] One company town/monostructure model: Cities that focus too much on one branch of economic growth make themselves vulnerable to rapid declines, such as the case with the automobile industry in Flint.[3] Shock therapy model: Especially in Eastern Europe post-socialism, state-owned companies did not survive privatization, leading to plant closures and massive unemployment.[3] Smart decline: City planners have utilized this term and inadvertently encouraged decline by "planning for less—fewer people, fewer buildings, fewer land uses.".[6] It is a development method focused on improving the quality of life for current residents without taking those residents' needs into account, thus pushing more people out of the city core.[6] Effects - Economic -Social and Infrastructural -Political

Boulder, CO

• rankings in health, well being, quality of life, education, and art • Promotes an extensive bus route, controlled urban expansion with an emphasis on wildlife preservation The Boulder Valley Comprehensive Plan seeks to protect the natural environment of the Boulder Valley while fostering a livable, vibrant and sustainable community. The plan provides a general statement of the community's desires for future development and preservation of the Boulder Valley, and the city and county use it to guide long-range planning, the review of development proposals and other activities that shape the built and natural environments in the Boulder Valley. The plan was first approved in 1977. Since then, seven major updates have been completed: 1982, 1990, 1995, 2000, 2005, 2010 and 2017. The updates allow the community to change the plan to reflect and address current conditions, changed circumstances and community values and needs. Jump to What does the plan do? Jump to Key things to know Jump to Learn more WHAT DOES THE PLAN DO? The aim of the first plan approved in 1977 was to concentrate urban development in the city and preserve the rural character of lands outside the city service area. Since then, the comp plan has evolved to also do the following: • state the community's core values, commitments and long-term vision • guide decisions about growth, development, preservation, environmental protection, economic development, affordable housing, culture and arts, urban design, neighborhood character, and transportation • inform decisions about how services such as police, fire, water utilities and others are provided • define the desired land use pattern for the Boulder Valley by establishing the location, type and intensity of development and setting land use designations • offer a starting point as the community develops strategies and policies to confront emerging issues and challenges • serve as a foundation for master plans created by city and county departments • be consulted during site and development reviews for proposed new construction Map of the Boulder Valley and Areas I, II and III For more details, see the Boulder Planning 101 pdf guide. Please see the page for the full text of the most recent adopted plan, including