Better than AutoCAD?

Despite advances in Computer Aided Design (CAD), miniatures continue to remain a usefull tool for both architects and planners.  Here are some good examples of models of Manhatten, Shanghai, San Francisco Bay and Chicago.

It’s Time for Cities to Favor People, Not Cars

Here is a great article about urban planning and the work of traffic planners. It is particularily interesting to read because Wired (in my opinion) is a quite liberal publication, but the comments at the end are very diverse.  I suggest skimming through the article just to get to the reader comments.  They vary from “educated reflections” to “selfish banter”.

Young planners conference in Paris

For young urban planners in and around the Paris region this week, be sure to go to the “1ères assises de l’insertion professionnelle des jeunes urbanistes”, a half day conference about the profession and job market for young planning graduates.  It will be held this Thursday, December 11th from 1:30 until 5:30 at the following address: Université Paris Sorbonne,   108, boulevard Malesherbes (17ème), amphithéâtre N° 111.

Send an e-mail to jeunesurbanistes.sfu@gmail.com to register.

Here is a link to the summery of the day.

James Kunstler made me rofl

I love watching these TED Talks (“ideas worth spreading”) but I just recently came by this one by James Howard Kunstler that had me literally laughing out loud.  I’ve heard of his books (notably “The Geography of Nowhere” which I think I will be ordering.  I can see no better way to explain how funny this speech is then to spell out, with absolutly no context, some of the best moments.

0:27: The immersive ugliness of our everyday environments in America is entropy made visible.

4:20 : To create a place of character and quality, you have to be able to define space. If you stand at the Wal-Mart over here and try and look at the Target store over here, you can’t see it because of the curvature of the earth.

I don’t get it….

While completing my internship in Berlin, I learned quite a bit about the IBA (Internationale Bauausstellungen) (link in german), a German program of urban regeneration that took place in Berlin from 1979 until 1987. What I didn’t know at the time is that this particular venture in Berlin was neither the first nor the last of its kind in Germany. The first was in 1901 (!). One of the latest, and the subject of an exhibition at La Cité de l’Architecture et du Patrimoine, in Paris, was the IBA Emscher Park in the Ruhr area. Dating from 1999, the objective of this particular IBA was to reconvert a previously industrial dominated region into a mixed use residential area. Although the project seemed very interesting, and the difficulties affronted in its completion must have been numerous, I was very disappointed with the way in which it was displayed in this exhibit. I went down expecting to learn a little bit about the urbanism itself and ended up leaving after 15 minutes of flashing images and weird noises.

What Would Jesus Buy?

Again, I feel the need to post a short review of a movie I’ve recently seen, “What Would Jesus Buy?”, a documentary about consumerism in the States, especially around Christmas time. Since It’s not directly related to urban planning, (I could argue that today’s suburbs are simply the greatest example of our over-consumption, but I won’t for now) I’ll keep it brief. This film follows around Reverend Billy, the head of the Church of Stop Shopping, and his faithful followers on a nationwide tour right before the Christmas season. Well, just watch the trailer and see for your self.  The movie is very well made and the outlandish behavior of the rev just has to make you laugh.

Radiant City

I watched the Canadian mockumentary; Radiant City today. (It was a birthday present from my parents) The movie basically follows around a family that has recently moved into one of Calgary’s southernmost communities, trying to look at the ways life in the ‘burbs has affected each member of the family. Incidentally, you can see my house in one of the segments shot from a helicopter. Although the mother seems happy about the move, the children and husband seem much more reluctant to embrace their new home. The film is mixed in with some great interviews with authors, architects and urban planners (one of which is Andres Duany, whom I spoke of in an earlier post) that give a great insight into urban sprawl in North America. There are some equally interesting statistics that show how far we have gone in turning our once lively cities in gloomy race tracks, forcing us to drive for any and all of our transportation needs. Check out the this trailer, then check out the film.

I wrote a letter to the makers of this film, congradulating them on their great work. You can read my letter on the following page if you want:

Is Urban Planning Pro-Choice vs Pro-Life?

A recent CBC article on my yahoo account recently caught my interest, and I figured it would be interesting to discuss what I though about it. Titled B.C. ranks high in home (un)affordability survey, this article sums up the findings of a study done that states that three cities in British Columbia (Kelowna, Vancouver and Victoria) are severely unfordable. These findings are found by comparing average income and average home price to determine affordability. These statistics seemed interesting and I decided to do some research to determine who had done this study. After a quick googling, I wound up on the Demographia website. I knew right away that things would get interesting when I saw the small ad on the left column advertising a book written by the author of the website, Wendell Cox, entitled WAR ON THE DREAM: How Anti-Sprawl Policy Threatens the Quality of Life, a book that states among other things that Smart urban growth is a threat to quality of life. Just that statement alone is enough to make me question the accuracy of the study conducted by them. Secondly, after scrolling to the bottom of their website, I learn that “Demographia is “pro-choice” with respect to urban development. People should have the freedom to live and work where and how they like.” But I wonder, shouldn’t an organization whose founder is so concerned by quality of life, a seen by Mr. Cox’s book, be “pro-life”, not “pro-choice”. M. Cox is also the main contributor to the website http://www.rentalcartours.net, a website that encourages people to travel to other counties and live the way they do back home, in a car. Why have to deal with actual local people, when you can have the privacy of your own air conditioned car. This particular article actually encourages people to go to Europe, rent a car, and go shopping in Wal-Marts and K-Marts. In any case, now that we’ve got these discrepancies out of the way, let’s start dealing with this “report”. Here are some actual quotes from the report, and My responses to them:

What came first: the art or the city?

Is urban planning an art or a science? I’ve asked myself that question ever since I undertook studies in the field. I still don’t have an answer, but I seem to go back and forth, depending on the project I happen to be undertaking (or the book I’m reading, documentary I’m watching, person I’m talking to) I don’t think it can be considered completely scientific (in a rigid sense) because there are too many variables to account for every different environments in the world. You can’t apply the same planning techniques in two different cities, let alone in an urban and rural environment.

New Urbanism lecture on YouTube

I stumbled onto a great lecture on New Urbanism on YouTube today, given by Andres Duany, author of Suburban Nation: The Rise of Sprawl and the Decline of the American Dream. In this 9 part lecture, he addresses many of the facets of New Urbanism from retail, to housing, to social housing, to social mixity, to public spaces, etc. He compares the “New Urbanism” techniques to those of traditional suburban planning by using two side-by-side projectors and using very clear and straight forward examples of what each of these entail. Although I agree with most things he said, and learned a few things from these videos, I question his motivations in giving this seminar. Although his techniques seem to be well intended, they are very often hard to put into place in existing communities. After checking out his website, I found out that he is co-president of DPZ, a community planning company. So while his assumptions make perfect sense when applied to the plans of a new community, they are ill adapted for use in existing suburbs. Nevertheless, I’ll probably pick up “”Suburban Nation” down the road to see what else he has to say.