Human Scale Cities

DOING IT DIFFERENTLY It’s all about creativity and innovative entrepreneurship, pop ups, collaboration and the sometimes seemingly crazy. Doing it Differently looks at a range of creative and innovative solutions to the challenges of urban living. Creativity in all its forms is essential to the healthy evolution of urban environments, particularly when undergoing such rapid change.  Kylie Legge is a founding Director of Place Partners, a multidisciplinary place making consultancy based in Sydney Australia.   

DOING IT DIFFERENTLY


It’s all about creativity and innovative entrepreneurship, pop ups, collaboration and the sometimes seemingly crazy. Doing it Differently looks at a range of creative and innovative solutions to the challenges of urban living. Creativity in all its forms is essential to the healthy evolution of urban environments, particularly when undergoing such rapid change. 


Kylie Legge is a founding Director of Place Partners, a multidisciplinary place making consultancy based in Sydney Australia.   


irishboyinlondon: Artinfo: Pop-Up Populism: How the Temporary Architecture Craze is Changing Our Relationship to the Built Environment America is fast becoming a pop-up nation. From sea to shining sea, her cities have been swept up in the frenzy for temporary architecture: Brooklyn vendors sell their wares in artfully arranged shipping containers; Dallas’s Build a Better Block group champions DIY painted bicycle routes and pop-up small businesses; architects in San Francisco are repurposing metered parking spaces into miniature parks; residents in Oakland, California rallied to create an entire pop-up neighborhood. The phenomenon has even climbed its way from grassroots origins to the agendas of local authorities: D.C.’s office of planning sprouted a Temporary Urbanism Initiative, while New York’s transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is implementing what she calls “Jane Jacobs’s revenge on Robert Moses” with her fast-acting interventions favoring pedestrians and cyclists. The temporary, so it seems, is overtaking the permanent. But how permanent is our current fascination for the temporary?

irishboyinlondon:

Artinfo: Pop-Up Populism: How the Temporary Architecture Craze is Changing Our Relationship to the Built Environment

America is fast becoming a pop-up nation. From sea to shining sea, her cities have been swept up in the frenzy for temporary architecture: Brooklyn vendors sell their wares in artfully arranged shipping containers; Dallas’s Build a Better Block group champions DIY painted bicycle routes and pop-up small businesses; architects in San Francisco are repurposing metered parking spaces into miniature parks; residents in Oakland, California rallied to create an entire pop-up neighborhood. The phenomenon has even climbed its way from grassroots origins to the agendas of local authorities: D.C.’s office of planning sprouted a Temporary Urbanism Initiative, while New York’s transportation commissioner Janette Sadik-Khan is implementing what she calls “Jane Jacobs’s revenge on Robert Moses” with her fast-acting interventions favoring pedestrians and cyclists. The temporary, so it seems, is overtaking the permanent. But how permanent is our current fascination for the temporary?

The Spontaneous City This book presents the concept of the Spontaneous City as an alternative direction of design thinking and urban planning opposed to traditional rigid city planning. The era of large-scale urban planning is over. ISSUU

The Spontaneous City

This book presents the concept of the Spontaneous City as an alternative direction of design thinking and urban planning opposed to traditional rigid city planning. The era of large-scale urban planning is over.

ISSUU

Urban Pioneers: Berlin Experience with Temporary Urbanism

Urban Pioneers: Berlin Experience with Temporary Urbanism

For the people, by the people. A visual story of the DIY city For the People, By the People by Afaina de Jong is a visual story about how people influence change in the city. The collapse of faith in top-down planning has been followed by a renewed interest in the self-generating wisdom of bottom-up urban initiatives. What does it mean when people act as the urban change agents that direct the life and death of the world’s cities? Fusing her photography with a manifesto-like text, architect Afaina de Jong marks the people in the streets as the starting point of all urban trends and cultural innovation. And calls upon us all to become architects of our environment.

For the people, by the people. A visual story of the DIY city

For the People, By the People by Afaina de Jong is a visual story about how people influence change in the city. The collapse of faith in top-down planning has been followed by a renewed interest in the self-generating wisdom of bottom-up urban initiatives. What does it mean when people act as the urban change agents that direct the life and death of the world’s cities? Fusing her photography with a manifesto-like text, architect Afaina de Jong marks the people in the streets as the starting point of all urban trends and cultural innovation. And calls upon us all to become architects of our environment.

Demolition vs. New construction permits in Detroit (2006-2009)

Demolition vs. New construction permits in Detroit (2006-2009)

massurban: “Why Don’t Real Estate Developers Just Ask Us What We Want? Emily Badger. March 8, 2012 It’s not all that difficult to identify what kinds of new development a neighborhood needs. There’s no pharmacy, no grocer, no gas station for miles? These are pretty obvious missing pieces in a community. It’s much trickier, though, to identify what the people who live therewant. A bagel shop? A vintage store? A vegan farm-to-table karaoke bar? Real estate developers typically handle this question by not asking it at all. If you’ve got a hole in your neighborhood, a street frontage of a certain size on the vacant ground floor of a certain kind of building, you’re probably getting a Starbucks. That’s the safe bet that can shoulder the highest rent, regardless of whether or not it’s also the business that locals really want. And so the vegan farm-to-table karaoke bar never comes to pass, and the people who’ve been coveting one must continue daydreaming. Technology, though, could potentially bridge this disconnect between what communities want and what developers are willing to give them, returning neighborhoods to something similar to that earlier time when building owners stood in front of empty storefronts and asked people, “what do you want to see here?” Hardly anyone literally does this anymore. But the Internet can. “Real estate development a long time ago was done by a family, or a person who generally had some sense of being in the community,” says Dan Miller, a developer with WestMill Capital in Washington, D.C. “They built something that they wanted, that they cared about, that they tended to own for a long time. It wasn’t always corporate development.” He and WestMill unveiled a web tool in December aimed at helping neighborhoods that want local businesses instead of national replicas to communicate that to the people who might make such places possible. The site, Popularise, is currently asking what potential customers want to see inside a property WestMill owns, a 4,250-square foot building on Washington’s eclectic H Street Northeast, that had previously been an underutilized convenience store.” Via: The Atlantic Image: Popularise.com

massurban:

“Why Don’t Real Estate Developers Just Ask Us What We Want?

Emily Badger. March 8, 2012

It’s not all that difficult to identify what kinds of new development a neighborhood needs. There’s no pharmacy, no grocer, no gas station for miles? These are pretty obvious missing pieces in a community. It’s much trickier, though, to identify what the people who live therewant. A bagel shop? A vintage store? A vegan farm-to-table karaoke bar?

Real estate developers typically handle this question by not asking it at all. If you’ve got a hole in your neighborhood, a street frontage of a certain size on the vacant ground floor of a certain kind of building, you’re probably getting a Starbucks. That’s the safe bet that can shoulder the highest rent, regardless of whether or not it’s also the business that locals really want.

And so the vegan farm-to-table karaoke bar never comes to pass, and the people who’ve been coveting one must continue daydreaming. Technology, though, could potentially bridge this disconnect between what communities want and what developers are willing to give them, returning neighborhoods to something similar to that earlier time when building owners stood in front of empty storefronts and asked people, “what do you want to see here?”

Hardly anyone literally does this anymore. But the Internet can.

“Real estate development a long time ago was done by a family, or a person who generally had some sense of being in the community,” says Dan Miller, a developer with WestMill Capital in Washington, D.C. “They built something that they wanted, that they cared about, that they tended to own for a long time. It wasn’t always corporate development.”

He and WestMill unveiled a web tool in December aimed at helping neighborhoods that want local businesses instead of national replicas to communicate that to the people who might make such places possible. The site, Popularise, is currently asking what potential customers want to see inside a property WestMill owns, a 4,250-square foot building on Washington’s eclectic H Street Northeast, that had previously been an underutilized convenience store.”

Via: The Atlantic

Image: Popularise.com

princetonarchitecturalpress: Looking down over The High Line From Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District up to 30th Street, through the neighborhood of Chelsea, to the West Side Yards, near the Javitz Convention Center. From the soon-to-be-released book Up On The Roof: New York’s Hidden Skyline Spaces, available now for pre-order.

princetonarchitecturalpress:

Looking down over The High Line

From Gansevoort Street in the Meatpacking District up to 30th Street, through the neighborhood of Chelsea, to the West Side Yards, near the Javitz Convention Center.

From the soon-to-be-released book Up On The Roof: New York’s Hidden Skyline Spaces, available now for pre-order.

(via urbanation)

A video presentation of the book The Temporary City.

The video is aimed to raise an awareness of Temporary Urbanism as a phenomenon that has to be taken into account in future Urban planning.

Melbourne laneways. Every space matters

Melbourne is recognized as one of the most livable cities for its quality of life, specially for its vibrant cultural life and the high quality of its public spaces and streets. I was visiting this city a few weeks ago and one of the things I wanted to explore were the streets of the city centre. An article discovered a before the trip, Off the Grid, Exploring the Sydney Laneway , put me on the trail of how the model street life promotion in Melbourne was the inspiration for what is now making Sydney. And laneways appeared to be a core part of this strategy.

riannehoeve: Get to know the POPUPHOOD a new urban initiative and small business incubator for breathing new life into the city’s retail sector. It is revitalizing Oakland, block by block. This is a good initiative to make a neighborhood more pleasant and livable within a short time…..more

riannehoeve:

Get to know the POPUPHOOD a new urban initiative and small business incubator for breathing new life into the city’s retail sector. It is revitalizing Oakland, block by block. This is a good initiative to make a neighborhood more pleasant and livable within a short time…..more

(Source: dftstreets)

Trails of the City: Melbourne Laneways

I was visiting Melbourne some weeks ago and laneways were one of the things I wanted to explore. I think the way theses normally forgotten areas become vibrant spaces with small scale interventions. Smart!

Melbournes laneways have been transformed from narrow functional alleys to dynamic cultural spaces. This evolution is the result of a cultural awakening among the Melbournes creative entrepreneurs. Rather then working to block projects and control development, the city worked with private interests and artists to encourage the laneways progress. Trails of the City looks at the creation of the laneways from various perspectives; it illustrates how diverse groups aligned organically to generate these vibrant and eclectic spaces.

Resources:

CityLights & Until Never

Melbourne Laneway Festival

Lanes of Melbourne

City Laneways

Bricoleururbanism

Creative Spaces Melbourne

(Source: youtube.com)

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