Book review of The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World.
Small Town Apocalyptic Values
In World Made by Hand, James Howard Kunstler, infamous land-use curmudgeon and caustic hero of the New Urbanist set, presages this new era with a new subgenre: he has written perhaps the world’s first work of apocalyptic utopianism.
An Underground Movement Forms in L.A.
After over a decade of dormancy and a litany of mishaps, civic leaders are trying to get Los Angeles’ famously chaotic public transportation scheme in order, and a focal point of these efforts is the extension of the subway to the Westside, a project whose prospects have, over the past 35 years, wavered between inevitable and unthinkable.
An Underground Movement Forms in L.A.
Supporters See a Window of Opportunity for Subway Extension
Big Thoughts for a New Era
Review of The Endless City
A Local Revival: Authenticity and Artistry Reign at California Tile and Pottery Works
As the latest incarnation of California tile, CPTW creates everything from replacement tiles for tiny Craftsman bathrooms to vast schemes for clients such as the MGM Grand Hotel, the House of Blues, and the Camarillo Library, to unique murals and other details for high-end Spanish Revival estates.
Black-Tie Optional: ‘Stepsister’ Cities Flourish in the Shadows
Stepsister cities are too small to be center cities but–unlike office-oriented edge cities or hypertrophic bedroom communities such as Mesa, Ariz., or Aurora, Colo.–they still lay claim to distinct local economies, urban character, and even urban sub-regions of their own.
Building Cities in the Virtual World
And although planning’s ultimate goals will always reside in the real world, planners are harnessing this new virtual world in a variety of innovative ways.
Island Fever
Americans thrive in Puerto Rico’s men’s pro volleyball league.
Softening the Edge
A coalition of developers, public officials, and planners has now converged on the barren sidewalks of Century City to see if contemporary planning principles can commingle with modernism.
Transportation Planning Warms Up to Climate Change
America’s 200 million drivers and their 10 trillion annual vehicle miles traveled pose possibly the greatest collective action problem in human history. Transportation thus may be the great untapped resource—the Saudi Arabia of climate change mitigation.
The City as Factory
Perhaps the only urban planner ever to conduct fieldwork in stilettos, Currid slips past velvet ropes to argue in The Warhol Economy that New York City’s bounty resides not in the office tower but rather in the street, where art and creativity propel the city’s economy and distinguish it from the overgrown office parks that pass for American cities in the postindustrial age.
Building Better: Art or Eco?
Some architects worry that the flood of announcements of buildings earning acclaim from the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) program can detract from a building’s aesthetic merits and even devolve into a symbol of easy self-congratulation.
Women’s volleyball sweeps Ivies in ‘magical’ year
When the Tigers beat Brown Nov. 9 to improve their league record to 12–0, they rendered moot the league’s remaining six matches. The win clinched Princeton’s first outright league title since 2000 and earned the Tigers a berth in the NCAA tournament.
Light Rail Pits Planning Against Parenthood
The latest country heard from to oppose or otherwise gum up the Expo Line are the concerned parents and educators of L.A.’s Dorsey High School, past which the line would run.
Modernism In Fragments
Nathan Glazer’s From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture’s Encounter with the American City reveals how this influential social movement’s good intentions shaped the look of the 20th century. Anyone born in the second half of …
Reading, Writing, And Planning: Urbanism In High School
If American cities are to heal themselves, and if the planning profession wants to attract the brightest students from the widest possible talent pool, urban planning must find its way into the high school curriculum.