News, January 4, 2010
London England For Sale Britain is becoming increasingly privatized as urban regeneration projects put entire neighborhoods in the hands of developers. One project spans 34 of Liverpool’s streets, putting public space in private control.
Bureaucratic Structures and the Collapse of Modern
Triple Canopy: You’ve argued that it’s no longer possible to rebuild existing infrastructures or, for that matter, to build better ones. And you’ve proposed ’social engineering’ and ‘human hacking’ as keys to changing how we think of and how we use infrastructure.
Stadiums Draining City Sweetheart deals using public monies to fund stadiums have backfired across the country, causing more drain than gain.
Investors see farms as way to grow Detroit
Acres of vacant land are eyed for urban agriculture under an ambitious plan that aims to turn the struggling Rust Belt city into a green mecca.
A Farm Future for Detroit?
Agricultural investors are buying up abandoned and empty land in Detroit — making a big wager on the future of the city as a farm town.
Take one Saskatchewan farm boy and move him to the big city. Add a Vancouver condo building’s unused rooftop garden and several vacant backyards.
The result is urban farmer Ward Teulon, also known as CityFarmBoy on his website, a 45-year-old former agrologist who has put his farming skills to work in the middle of some of Vancouver’s densest neighbourhoods.
He produces $30,000 worth of vegetables, herbs and fruit a year on 8,000 square feet of land in garden plots around the city.
Sub-Urban Planning …interview with Shu Yu, one of the world’s foremost underground urban planners. He talks about the potential of underground space for urban habitation.
Older drivers face choice between safety and mobility
The generation that gave birth to suburbia and the two-car garage is reaching the age at which driving, for many, no longer seems like such a swell option. As Americans grow older — one in five will be 65 or older by 2030 — many are finding that the world that lured them away from city life is losing some of its appeal.
“The concern is that when they no longer can drive, they will find themselves trapped in their homes in suburban neighborhoods where there are no sidewalks, or, if there are sidewalks, there’s no place to walk to,” said Stewart Schwartz, executive director of the Coalition for Smarter Growth.
Is it time for Toronto to finally get cable? Urban planner says cable cars, at street level or up in the air, can solve transportation woes
Living the Loft Lifestyle on Detroit Teresa Kalinka is used to people asking her questions about why she moved to Detroit. One look at her loft, and you’d understand. Huge windows. Stunning views. Open layout. Central location.
Cultural Competency: A Critical Skill Set For The 21st Century Planner
In the list of facts you keep in your head for work, please add this: $2.5 trillion. That’s at least how much buying power ethnic minorities in the United States had in 2008. That is 23% of the $10.7 trillion in total disposable income in the US last year. And minority buying power is expected to grow – even faster than White buying power.
Whether you do regional economic development or neighborhood planning, leveraging the growing wealth of non-white ethnic groups (and the political power that follows) can help your community be more successful. The most successful planners in these efforts will be those who are more culturally competent.
Cultural competency is a set of skills focused on working with diverse individuals and communities. It’s not about ‘being nice to minorities’; it is about engaging people who are different from you effectively. Cultural competency can help you whether you’re an African-American planner working in a White community; or a White planner on a team with White architects and engineers.
Creating Car-Reduced and Car-Free Pedestrian Habitats
It will take a long time for the US to embrace pedestrians, bicycling, and electric carts as substitutes for cars in our communities. And yet an inevitable change is coming that will significantly increase environmental quality, and restore real community and economic viability. Changing legislation, master planning, and the development of car-reduced and car-free communities will move us forward, writes Greg Ramsey.
Editor’s Pick: This is what I’ve feared for a long time, that we will give away our fresh water for jobs.
It’s quite common for US state and local officials to entice businesses to build factories by offering to defer or cut taxes, give free land for factories, make cash grants, build new roads, and so on. The latest incentive in the economic development toolbox:Great Lakes water offered to industry at discount rates.
In the fall of 2009, Milwaukee officials and community leaders began discussing the idea of offering businesses especially cheap water for a period if they committed to relocating to or building new facilities in the Milwaukee area. Read all about it in the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinal’s article: City may use water to lure businesses: Job-creating firms could get break on water bills. Although superficially, this may seem quite sensible, there is a high risk of unintended and unwanted consequences if a cheap water incentive were offered to all comers. The choice is one of seeking sustainable industry or returning to the Iron Age trade offs of environmental degradation and hidden impacts on taxpayers.
Could Trolley Canal Boats Make a Comeback?
Low-tech Magazine details the history of the trolley canal boat, a staple of the past for transporting goods down canals and waterways. Could something like this make a comeback?
The High Line of Cleveland?
The designers of New York’s popular High Line park have a radical new proposal for Cleveland’s Public Square that turns the one square into four new ones.
Cliff Kuang writes, “The economic rationale is that big, splashy public amenities are actually huge drivers of long-term real-estate values, attracting surrounding investment (just look at Central Park in New York, or, more recently, Millennium Park in Chicago). Though the plan has yet to secure any funding, the idea is that investing up front in the design might spark public interest and widespread support.”
Hume: Going green brings unexpected savings
The case for building green has rarely been made more clearly.
Hamilton: City’s infrastructure report card gets worse
Overall, Hamilton’s infrastructure earned a C, which is a slip from the C (plus) it received in its first report card issued in 2005. The document, prepared by an external consultant, says the city needs to spend $153 million more each year if it hopes to keep its infrastructure up to date.
Toronto passes sweeping new billboard rules
After days of debate, council passes bylaw that restricts distance between billboards, imposes per sign tax
EnCana seeks natural gas highway network
One of Canada’s biggest energy companies is asking the federalgovernment
for $1-billion to kick-start a transformation of the country’s highways.
Over the past few months, EnCana Corp. (ECA-T34.11-0.15-0.44%)has been in talks with government officials about a plan to build a network of hundreds of compressed and liquid natural gas
Hume: Good design sets a city up for success
It was one of those statements that said one thing but meant quite another. And in its own quiet way, it revealed much about why our cities aren’t better.
“Our practice is to hire an architect and get on with it,” said the speaker, “not to waste time and money on design competitions for what are essentially utilitarian buildings.”
Spoken by Ottawa councillor Gord Hunter, these words were addressed to an Ottawa Citizenreporter after all seven architects on that city’s downtown urban design review panel abruptly quit this month in frustration over a controversial plan to rebuild that city’s landmark Lansdowne Park.
The scheme has not been universally embraced. In a rare move, the Ottawa Regional Society of Architects said the proposal “does not impress.”
“The city,” it argued in a recent report, “as the capital of Canada, should have a higher standard given the local, national and international importance of the site.”
Many Ottawans see the proposal as yet another example of how willingly city politicians settle for mediocrity. Without getting into the Lansdowne Park details, the reasons go well beyond it and even the capital. As Hunter made unintentionally clear this week, they begin with the basic attitudes of those who would be the city’s friends.
Province kicks in $600M for Ottawa’s light rail project
The Ontario government on Friday gave the city’s ambitious transit project a massive boost with a $600-million investment that puts enormous pressure on the federal government to match the funds.
Regent Park gets millions for arts centre`People need to have a place to come together’
The $24 million centre, funded jointly by the provincial and federal governments, is part of a 10-year, $1.5 billion effort to turn Toronto’s oldest public housing project into a new community with new homes, parks, stores, social services – and now art.
The Return of the Two-Way Street
Over the past couple of decades, Vancouver, Washington, has spent millions of dollars trying to revitalize its downtown, and especially the area around Main Street that used to be the primary commercial center. Just how much the city has spent isn’t easy to determine. But it’s been an ambitious program. Vancouver has totally refurbished a downtown park, subsidized condos and apartment buildings overlooking it and built a new downtown Hilton hotel.
Some of these investments have been successful, but they did next to nothing for Main Street itself. Through most of this decade, the street remained about as dreary as ever. Then, a year ago, the city council tried a new strategy. Rather than wait for the $14 million more in state and federal money it was planning to spend on projects on and around Main Street, it opted for something much simpler. It painted yellow lines in the middle of the road, took down some signs and put up others, and installed some new traffic lights. In other words, it took a one-way street and opened it up to two-way traffic.
10 Industries That Will Lose The Most Jobs In Next Decade
Climate change blamed for Great Lakes decline
The water levels of Lake Huron and Lake Michigan have been falling steadily compared with those on Lake Erie, and no one knew why.
But a major report financed by the U.S. and Canadian governments suggests an answer: The fingerprints of climate change are starting to be found in the Great Lakes, the world’s largest body of fresh water, causing a discernible drop in their levels.
The Detroit Project A plan for solving America’s greatest urban disaster.
Regionalism is Alive in Pittsburgh
Author John Denny offers five ways the Pittsburgh area is already acting like a region.
“Sometimes bigger really is better and that’s exactly the case when Pine Twp., Marshall, Bradford Woods, and more recently Richland Twp., merged their independent police departments into one new force called the Northern Regional Police Department of Allegheny County. On their own, each department was too small and too costly for their individual municipalities. Today, with a force of 30 full time officers, led by Chief Bob Amann who was one of the key drivers, 35,000 residents are receiving improved and less costly protection as a whole. In addition to better coordinated protection, the creation of the Northern Regional Police Department allowed for the addition of a detective school resource officer, accident reconstruction, and combined pension money that made the overall plan much stronger and more affordable to each of the individual municipalities.”
Also:
Hume: Welcome to the age of region
How to Make Vacant Properties Disappear
THE URBANOPHILE PLAN FOR DETROIT today’s essay
New Geography and the Brookings Institute look at Detroit and compare their thoughts.
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