Feeds:
Posts
Comments

Posts Tagged ‘CITIES’

DESIGNS FOR APARTNESS

Posted in CITIES, ENVIRONMENT, PRACTICE, RESEARCH, STREETS, THE BACK, tagged , , , , , , on August 6, 2020| 2 Comments »

BY HANIYA RAE

A new guide interprets the spatial implications of virology studies.

FROM THE AUGUST 2020 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

 

At the outset of the pandemic, it didn’t take long for anyone to realize that it would have a major impact on cities. Given the breadth of scientific studies published since March, Paul Lewis, a principal of LTL Architects, and Guy Nordenson, a structural engineer and partner at Guy Nordenson and Associates, both in Manhattan, sought to translate the peculiarities of COVID-19 contagion into visual concepts. “We were getting a lot of different news articles and we wanted more clarity,” Lewis says. “Cities can’t have collective gathering. What does that mean? We wanted to envision immediate responses that could also lead to longer-term benefits for the city.” (more…)

Read Full Post »

RIGHTS OF WAY

Posted in CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, PLANTS, RESEARCH, STREETS, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on March 12, 2019| Leave a Comment »

REVIEWED BY SARAH COWLES

FROM THE MARCH 2019 ISSUE OF LANDSCAPE ARCHITECTURE MAGAZINE.

Street trees occupy a shifting and contested dimension of cities. Whereas trees in parks and private gardens in cities are afforded a measure of stability and protection, street trees are literally on the front lines of urbanism, absorbing the impacts of changes in policy on errant cars. Street trees are surrounded: hemmed in by architecture, tree grates, cages, with leaking gas conduits at their roots and power lines teasing their crowns, soaked by deicing salt on one side and dog urine on the other.

Although there are field guides to street trees and technical manuals for planting and soil specifications, there is no comprehensive look at the culture and politics of the urban forest. Seeing Trees by Sonja Dümpelmann fills this void and unearths a detailed and complex vein of urban history that (more…)

Read Full Post »

LAMCAST: VACANT TO VIBRANT

Posted in CITIES, ECOLOGY, ENVIRONMENT, GARDENS, HEALING GARDENS, HEALTHY COMMUNITIES, ONLINE ONLY, PLANTS, POLLUTION, REGION, RESIDENTIAL, RESILIENCE, WATER, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on August 23, 2018| 2 Comments »

Sandra Albro’s Vacant to Vibrant initiative (detailed in “Lots of Opportunity”) converts vacant lots in struggling Great Lakes cities into rain gardens and bioswales. At an average cost of $18,000 each, they’re a fine-grained and tactical solution for reversing blight and helping beleaguered combined sewer systems from polluting the Great Lakes. As Albro, of Holden Forests & Gardens, observes, these neighborhoods were gradually disinvested from and abandoned, and have limited access to comprehensive public infrastructure improvements. As such, an equally piecemeal and gradual approach allows them to stabilize properties with desirable urban green spaces that can be wrapped into broader redevelopment efforts. An alternative to massive, centralized sewer upgrades that cost billions, this dispersed model of stormwater filtration turns an economic drain into an ecological engine.

Read Full Post »

THE STORY BENEATH OUR FEET

Posted in CITIES, HISTORIC LANDSCAPES, HISTORY, ONLINE ONLY, PRESERVATION, STREETS, TRANSPORTATION, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on July 31, 2018| Leave a Comment »

BY ZACH MORTICE

Vitrified brick in Cincinnati. Image courtesy Robin Williams.

Uncovering historic pavements reveals each city’s “urban fingerprint.”

In the past 200 years, cities have become larger, safer, and healthier places to live, but there’s one arena of urban infrastructure that has become incalculably more monotonous and denuded: the range and diversity of pavement types on city streets and sidewalks.

Before the dominance of concrete and asphalt, city streets were paved in a wild diversity of minerals and materials: glassy vitrified brick, wooden block, crushed oyster shells, rough-hewn granite blocks, and more.

Robin Williams, the chair of architectural history at the Savannah College of Art and Design, has traveled to 40 cities across North America to study their historic pavements and found a rich spectrum of street coverings that somehow persist with no preservation protections. (more…)

Read Full Post »