Best of the Urblogosphere: 2007 Round-Up

I went back through all of the Weekend Reading posts from the past year and pulled what I thought were the very best of the best. I've divided things up into two categories: General Urbanism and Place-Specific posts. Descriptions of the selections are followed by their date on which they originally appeared in WR.

GENERAL URBANISM
ITEM ONE: BLDGBLOG on "terrestrial reorganization" during WWII. (April 20)

ITEM TWO: Celsias on why designing cities around cars is such a terrible idea. (May 18)

ITEM THREE: Harvey Feldspar's city-hopping geoblog of the future, from Wired's examination of the future of our mobile society. (June 29)

ITEM FOUR: London architecture criticHugh Pearman on the Tate's megacities exhibit -- a stunning critique of contemporary starchitecture. (July 14)

ITEM FIVE: This Airoots post explores a fascinating artist's village in Mumbai. Organic urbanism at its best. (August 24)

ITEM SIX: NY Mag sets the record straight on Jane Jacobs' legacy. (September 28)

ITEM SEVEN: The Next American City features an article about how violent foreign policy creates more violence at home. (October 12)

ITEM EIGHT: City of Sound reexamines cities as destructive systems. (November 2)

ITEM NINE: Fabulous imagery of re-imagined slums via Subtopia. (December 7)

ITEM TEN: Spacing Wire features this beautiful and concise argument for humanism in the environmental movement. (December 14)


PLACE-SPECIFIC
ITEM ONE: A New York Times feature on the evolution of Curitiba into a poster child for good urbanism. (May 25)

ITEM TWO: Built Environment Blog takes a bike ride through ever-fascinating Brooklyn. (June 1)

ITEM THREE: The Economist goes back to Beijing. (August 24)

ITEM FOUR: Fabulous article from Frieze on the Brazilian megacity of São Paulo. (August 31)

ITEM FIVE: The Lincoln Institute explores post-apartheid Johannesburg. (October 5)

ITEM SIX: BLDGBLOG's rather infamous paean to the wonders of Los Angeles. (October 19)

ITEM SEVEN: More great stuff from Spacing: an Angelino's take on Toronto's messy urbanism. (October 19)

ITEM EIGHT: And finally, an Airoots post on the architectural wonderland of Tokyo's retail scene. (December 7)


If there are any of these that you missed the first time around, I urge you to take a look...they're great reading, start to finish. Have a wonderful, safe, and happy new year! See you in 2008.

(Photo from Non-Photography.com. The original full-color version can be viewed by clicking the photo.)

WEEKEND READING: May 19-25, 2007 (The Conscious Urbanism Edition)

It's been a hectic week for this blogger, hence the low post count. News in the Conscious Urbanism realm, however, has been pretty solidly frequent. So this weekend, take a gander at different projects going on around the world that are creating a more socially aware urban citizenship.

I've said before that I believe the places where you can find the most severe examples of a problem are the places with the highest potential for finding a solution. In that spirit, we'll start this post off with a story from Detroit, one of the hardest-hit cities in America's Rustbelt region. Apparently, residents on the troubled city's southwest side are taking matters into their own hands and redeveloping their neighborhood. "In southwest Detroit we don't wait for help from anyone," one resident says. "If we want something changed, we do it ourselves. It says a lot about who we are."

For our next item we travel...well, not that far, really. Just to Chicago, where Art Institute students have been surveying several neighborhoods a year to create intensely comprehensive maps of local pollution sources and green resources. These maps are great resources for residents looking to live sustainably or activists hoping to create change at the local level. (Today's photo is of the Uptown map.)

Up north a ways, in Toronto, Mayor David Miller's administration is taking advantage of new large-scale carbon footprint-measuring technology to calculate the footprint of the 50,000 city employees. The project, dubbed Zerofootprint Toronto is described on its website as "the first ever community-wide initiative aimed at engaging all citizens to fight climate change on a massive scale."

We hop the pond and head south a ways to Cape Town, where the city government has just announced that they will be providing basic services (water, sanitation, lighting) to the thousands of residents living in the South African metropolis' 222 informal settlements as part of an effort to crack down on "land invasions."

Back on the other side of the Southern Hemisphere, the NY Times Magazine this week has a fantastic article about the Brazilian city of Curitiba's evolution into one of the ecological and progressive planning capitals of the world. Curitiba, probably most famous for its groundbreaking Bus Rapid Transit system, has been ahead of the curve for a long time...I was shocked to see how early they put some policies into place.

Finally, PerfectCity has new poll up asking readers to help define what makes up "Social Structure," which came out as the top factor in their earlier poll about what is most important for creating livable cities. Place 'yer bets.

Enjoy the weekend. See you bright and early on Monday. Well, probably more like late Monday night.

WEEKEND READING: May 5-11, 2007

Where is back! And it's Friday! That's enough good stuff for two consecutive exclamation points!!

First off, there have been a lot of big plans being made for cities across the US (New York, Los Angeles, Seattle) over the past few weeks. WorldChanging has a great article on NY2030 that has really made me reconsider my anti-congestion pricing stance. This week also saw the announcement of a comprehensive plan for Boston.

Cultural/ethnic diversity is something that is discussed often in urbanism, but biodiversity doesn't get nearly as much air time. The UN Convention on Biological Diversity, held in Curitiba, Brazil, is looking to change that, and suggests that cities are the solution to significantly reducing global warming-caused biodiversity loss.

Youngstown, Ohio, has been popping up in recent discussions about shrinking cities. Here is an article from the Wall Street Journal that discusses the city's plan for "smart shrinkage" -- a plan that includes actually removing underutilized neighborhoods and buildings and returning them to their natural state. This seems like a pretty important idea in the US, where a city's success is based entirely on growth.

There are two pieces of Conscious Urbanism-related stuff that I've been meaning to get around to for weeks and have finally decided to just stick into Weekend Reading. Don't let my laziness fool you, though -- these are great reads on turning streets into shared space and innovative chilrdens' programming in the inner city.

Not to name drop LA twice in one post, but I remember reading fantastic urbanism mag The Next American City's first issue when it came out several years ago...back then, only a handful of articles were available online, but one of them was a piece on the movement to restore the Los Angeles River (pictured above in its current state.) I was excited to learn that the City Council just gave this project unanimous approval.

That about wraps it up for this week. Where will be back full-time (which henceforth shall mean "five times a week") on Monday (5/14). This week I'll be looking at the Community 2.0 movement and how it's changing the world around us. Sounds fun, right? See ya soon

(Photo from Flickr user dmperkins.)

WEEKEND READING: April 7-13, 2007

I read a lot of stuff, okay? And until I started Where, I never understood why so many of the blogs that I read every day put up those weekly link pages. I always thought it was lazy. Now I know better.

There is just too much going on in the wide world of placemaking, so I'm going to start putting up links to what I don't get around to discussing during the week. Hopefully you'll find these lists, which will appear on Friday or Saturday, useful for those lazy weekend afternoons when you have nothing to do but sit around and read articles on the internet. You know those afternoons. Sure you do.

Springwise, Trendwatching.com's blog, had an article on a new service in San Francisco that's easily adaptable for any city--a green version of those coupon books every city's tourism department puts out. This fantastic resource for San Franciscans (The Green Zebra Guide) has the dual purpose of making life easier (and a little cheaper) for people who've already made the decision to "go green," as well as encouraging the decision in other people by making the transition less daunting. Check out the guide at www.thegreenzebra.org.

Much noise has been made about the Creative Class since Richard Florida hit the scene a few years ago with his theories about the modern boho crowd. Now, while he draws up pretty (and mildly offensive, in a weird way) charts that show how gay people affect real estate values, some people are actually trying to figure out how to use the internet to turn creativity into a real asset instead of a tool for gentrification. CEOs for Cities announced a new study with Charles Leadbeater on Tuesday, which you can read about here.

Speaking of creativity, the New York Post brings us a story about some art students who turned an MTA train car into a cozy living room, complete with welcome mats. As is often true about places, it's most interesting to read peoples' reactions, which include this comment "This is criminal...It may be beautiful, but that's not the issue. They are obstructing the subway." Iiiiinteresting...

BLDGBLOG brings us this blurb about plant life on other planets. It's nothing I'll ramble about...it's just really freakin cool.

As you may remember, I'm not such an optimist about congestion pricing. The other four transit concepts presented in this article on decongestion over at Good Magazine are pretty interesting, though. I love seeing Curitiba continue to gain more attention for it's brilliant and innovative BRT system (which I think would work particularly well in American cities, which have ample road infrastructure.) The Naked Streets concept is new to me...it seems pretty innovative, too. (The image above came from this article, for the record.)

To bring this list full-circle, "going green" seems to have really, truly gone mainstream in the States. Over the past few weeks I must have read that slogan a hundred times, in publications as diverse as an independent Atlanta weekly (can't recall the name) and Vanity Fair. Interchange has a post about smart growth and urban placemaking very quietly hitting the mainstream as well. It's short and sweet, and while I think that there's still a ways to go in getting the average American to give up their sacred fear of urbanity, it does seem like we're hitting a sort of critical mass.

There are also a few new links up on the Otros Blogos side bar, including Pruned, Inhabitat, and things magazine (all of which I discovered while reading Geoff Manaugh's profile at BLDGBLOG for the first time.) I'm eventually going to get around to creating a list of websites as well, so if there are any kickass suggestions drop me an email or comment on this post.