No, but I do wish they would. Over the holidays, my ten-year-old and I started playing SimCity. As the many other city planners who’ve played the game have observed, it’s a great way to explore basic city building concepts with people who don’t think about it too often. Now as I gripe about some of the things that a form-based code would fix, my kid commiserates, and suggests an open letter to SimCity.
January 27, 2015 | 11:31 am
SimCity Adopts a Form-Based Code?
January 19, 2015 | 9:13 am
Small to Go Big in 2015?
Maybe. Finally. Here’s why.
Those of us who’ve been tangling with status quo protectors in housing design and policymaking got a charge out of Justin Shubow’s Forbes blog post earlier this month. Shubow backhanded modernist starchitects for persisting in their personal artistic vision without regard to the human use of real places:
“Modernism might appear outwardly impregnable: it dominates the practitioners, the critics, the media, and the schools. But as the example of the Soviet Union shows, even the strongest-appearing edifice can suddenly come crashing down when it turns out it no longer has internal support.”
January 12, 2015 | 6:29 am
Talkin’ Right, Leanin’ Left: The ‘New Consurbanism’?
Here’s a quiz for you: What’s the “it” in these two quotes? And who’s talking?
It “is a radical, government-led re-engineering of society, one that artificially inverted millennia of accumulated wisdom . .”
It “offers conservatism a new venue, one where we can couple our desire for traditional culture and morals with a physical environment that supports both.”
January 5, 2015 | 12:01 am
The Wørd: Placemaking Edition
For some reason — perhaps because the weather was poor, I have a 15 year old daughter, and watching movies makes for a good way to cope with both — one of the themes of the Doyon Family holiday break ended up being future dystopias. Not something necessarily aligned with the hopeful messages more commonly associated with the season but instructive nonetheless.
December 29, 2014 | 5:55 pm
Happy New Year: Celebrating Venetian biophilia
This reflective time of year is ideal for thinking back on the people, places, and experiences that brought solace in 2014, and offering thanks. I was particularly struck by the power of community in challenging moments, and how support from friends, family, and colleagues makes a real difference. And by the power of place for solitary and convivial comforts alike.
December 22, 2014 | 12:01 am
Planning and Design: North Pole Edition
In the realm of supply chains and distribution logistics, Santa’s the guy. Even FedEx and UPS, the recognized leaders in the field, fail to measure up against the benchmarks he maintains, year after year, without fail.
So you’d presumably be safe in assuming that the planning and design of his village at the North Pole would reflect a similar insistence on best practices. That it would be a model worthy of emulation — not just in terms of efficiency and productivity, but in terms of the emotional, economic and spiritual fulfillment necessary to maintain a happy and motivated workforce.
December 15, 2014 | 12:01 am
This Just In: No one is everyone, no place is every place
Now that the recent economic unpleasantness is behind us, we can resume the suburbanization of everywhere.
The Economist apparently thinks so, given its recent special section headlined “The World Is Becoming Ever More Suburban, and the Better for It.”
December 8, 2014 | 12:01 am
Ta-may-toe, Ta-mah-toe: Lessons in complexity from a fruit
Want to know where we go wrong solving single-mindedly for parking, affordability, sustainability, accessibility and all the other stuff on urban planning’s high-priority list?
Consider the tomato. More specifically the winter tomato, as designed and manufactured in Florida.
In Tomatoland: How Modern Industrial Agriculture Destroyed Our Most Alluring Fruit, food writer Barry Estabrook shows how things go haywire when you’re determined to dumb down complexity. As Estabrook describes it, Florida tomato growers have one big advantage, a winter growing season, and one big marketing concept: A tomato defined by factory-perfect roundness and redness.
December 1, 2014 | 12:01 am
Black Friday: Get your gorilla on
We’re happy when we go for a run. We’re even more happy when we go for a run in a gorilla suit — at least according to Roko Belic, director of the award-winning documentary, HAPPY. That’s because some change is gonna do ya good. Which is one of the many reasons that we placemakers advocate for immersive urban environments, and not the monoculture of suburbia. And why we go as far as to argue that these sorts of diverse, character-rich neighbourhoods actually make us happier.
November 24, 2014 | 12:01 am
Disappointment, Pessimism, Rage: Is this America at middle age?
Still wondering about why it’s so hard to have a civil conversation about planning for the future in so many places? Or why everyone seems so pissed about everything all the time?
Could it have something to do with the telltale bulge in the waistline of American demography?
