Cool! Loads of great events at this! Just booked a ticket for Wednesday!
thisbigcity:
3spaceorg:
From 1st - 3rd May, 3Space’s new hub in Blackfriars will be transformed into an interactive playground for Re:THINKing the ways that we use our cities and resources
We’ll be hosting exhibitions, interactive displays, workshops, talks and discussions, panels and parties, all of which are designed to get you and your organisation exploring, promoting and celebrating new ideas for the ways that we interact with our environment.
Check out the full schedule below, register for FREE tickets and keep an eye out for festival updates via #3SpaceRethink and on Facebook.
I am very excited to be hosting a FREE event at 3Space’s upcoming event on rethinking cities.
London followers - why not come along? The event is taking place in 3Space’s HQ just outside Blackfriars station on May 3rd at 18:00.
My interactive talk is called sustainable street design for beginners and I’ll be sharing good and bad examples of street design from London and beyond, and every participant will get the opportunity to design their ideal street.
Hope to see some of you there!
- Joe
Palmgracht, Jordaan, Amsterdam
Excellent shot of a liveable street! Narrow roads for slow speeds, clear corners for better vision, play spaces, trees…
photo: Thomas Schlijper
Cycle paths, trams and human scale density! A nice shot of Amsterdam’s great built environment!
Photo: Thomas Schlijper
The London High Street Possibilities Primer
Interesting read! Designed to “encourage, inform and inspire” local communities, it showcases some of the interesting projects that are rebooting local London high streets, helping them (and London) become more vibrant and liveable! The review was commissioned by Design for London and the Outer London Fund from 2011.
School Pick Up - Dutch Style
A great series of photos demonstrating the quality of life in a city that is people focused rather than car focused!
Photo: dutchpancake.blogspot.co.uk
GOOD: San Francisco Embraces the Pop-Up for Neighborhood Revitalization
Once a strategy for retailers to build brand awareness and coolness cred in a flashy spectacle (now you see us, now you don’t), the pop-up shop has transformed into a tool of urban revitilization. In San Francisco, the city government has partnered with a pop-up incubator called SQFT to help activate a downtrodden neighborhood’s potential with a jolt of temporary business inserted into retail deadspace. Today, SQFT celebrates its launch by bringing a slice of life to a string of blocks in San Francisco’s Mid-Market with a pop-up library, yoga studio, and cafe, among other temporary businesses.
Urban-rural relationships in metropolitan areas of influence - Best practice examples of metropolitan-rural cooperation
Many metropolitan areas and regions include vast rural areas. Within these functional regions, the urban and the rural areas cooperate very closely and can be regarded as cohesive systems.
In Metropolitan Regions, urban and rural relations of this kind are of major importance, nevertheless often very complex and challenging. Cooperation also offers new opportunities to work together, for example, in the fields of traffic and transport, new technologies and business, food and nutrition, climate change, energy supply or tourism. Therefore urban, and especially rural regions, must know where their strengths lie in order to be able to achieve best results and mutual benefit.
RUDI: Place Making 2012: Sharing innovation in urban life
Great read with some good examples!
In creating PLACEmaking, we aimed to put together a publication offering food for future thought: the creation of social cities, the use of Big Data for civic benefit, the articulation of economic and social value, and the development of tools and processes that enable everyone to participate in the design and shaping of place.
IM VIADUKT - Zurich (April 2012)
I thought this was a really nice reuse of space in a cross section of mainly residential streets in Zurich. It’s a great example of how hard infrastructure can be made permeable and integrated into the local neighbourhood, converting it from a dead, border vacuum type of space (of the type Jane Jacobs discussed) into a living part of the neighbourhood.
The only thing I felt was disappointing about the development was the tenant mix. Although for the most part it consisted of independents, the majority of them sold high end, high price products and the whole thing had an air of exclusiveness.
There is a good series of photos, plans etc on the architect’s website here, some great shots of the arches during the day and night on the IM VIADUKT website here and a brochure for the development here.
In large cities like London where land is expensive, the spaces created by viaducts provide an ideal place for the more awkward, less commercially attractive but vital businesses in the city - catering companies, bakeries, hardware shops, car, bike or motorbike shops, car parks, pop-up clubs, restaurants and bars. Their size and slightly off the beaten track location also makes them cheaper to rent. However in London there aren’t many that have a coherent strategy like IM VIADUKT that could make them more identifiable places that positively contribute to local neighbourhoods and streetscapes. There are informal examples like Maltby Street/ Druid Street/ Spa Terminus which are getting a foodie reputation, with many arches being occupied by traders leaving Borough Market and the arches in Brixton but there is still a lot more potential to strengthen this. In Vauxhall for example where there is no main high street or focal point, a more considered strategy for their occupation could have been useful… But perhaps it is better that there isn’t a strategy - it leaves space and opportunity for the enterprises mentioned above that need cheap space, large footprints and central locations? What do you think?
Cycling Embassy of Denmark - Collection of Cycle Concepts 2012
Bicycle traffic is healthy, environmentally friendly, and makes cities more livable. Cycling is a fast and efficient urban transport mode and requires less space than motor vehicle traffic.
The Collection of cycle concepts 2012 presents a number of ideas to help generate more bicycle traffic and reduce the accident rate among cyclists.
