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.
Amsterdam Cycle Chic - Amsterdam through Hungarian Eyes
This is my hope for London - a liveable, accessible, inclusive, healthy, safe city!
Potterstraat, Utrecht - A lesson for many cities!
A really inspiring video by Mark Wagenbuur illustrating how the city of Utrecht has repaired some of the damage done in the 50s/60s when the city attempted to accommodate the ever increasing levels of car traffic. It has embarked on a programme of works to restore its street quality, narrowing roads to achieve a better modal split, improve the living environment and making a return the original humanscale city.
Mark also writes the excellent BicycleDutch blog which is always a good read!
Interesting read and comments. I am by no means anti-change or development but Londoners really need to wake up and start engaging with the city they live in. So much of London is losing its soul! Many of the city’s great spaces are being sanitised and commercialised and becoming “this could be anywhere” type places. The proliferation of chains like cafe rouge, starbucks, tesco, all saints with their “cookie cutter” approach is killing what once made the city stand out from the crowd.
Soho is London’s bohemian heart. Britain’s pop industry was born there, the film industry was run from it, and Foyles led the bookshops filling Charing Cross Road. Prostitutes lined the streets until the 1990s, when it became London’s gay thoroughfare. Late-night drinking dens and cafés served them all in a sometimes sleazy but potent atmosphere. But now, in a pattern repeated in similarly cherished neighbourhoods across Britain, the independent businesses which dominate its warren of streets are suffering. Blander public taste, corporate encroachment and pre-Olympics paranoia have put Soho under siege.
NY Mag: Countdown to a New Times Square
This is sad news in my opinion…a DIY approach that created a vibrant, sense assaulting space that was also personalisable (if that is a word) with its moveable chairs, will be replaced with a sanitised, unimaginative, dull space with concrete slab paving, some steel detailing and massive black granite benches….
Starting next fall, workers with jackhammers will tear apart the bow tie, temporarily making it an even less congenial place to hang out. But one major goal of the $45 million construction project is to persuade New Yorkers to love Times Square—to convince them that it’s not just a backdrop for a million daily snapshots but Manhattan’s most central, and most convivial, gathering spot. Architects and visionaries have often addressed that old ambition with high-energy concepts that gave us the current high-tech razzmatazz. Even in this round of ideas, the city has fended off proposals for colored LEDs embedded in the pavement, for ramps, staircases, pavilions, digital information kiosks, heat lamps, trees, lawns, canopies, and, of course, more video screens.
Instead, the city hired the architectural firm Snøhetta to produce a quiet, even minimal design that doesn’t try vainly to compete with the glowing canyons. Its beauty lies in dark, heavy sobriety and a desire to be a lasting pedestal to the frenzied dazzle above. In the most straightforward sense, the new plan enshrines a transformation that has already taken place. Ever since vehicles were banned from Broadway between 42nd and 47th Streets, in 2009, Times Square has felt like a temporary art installation. Pedestrians have been able to step off the curb and into the weirdly motor-free street. Rickety red café tables, which replaced plastic beach chairs, dot a blue river painted on the asphalt. Streetlights, lampposts, mailboxes, hydrants, and pay phones remain clustered along the Broadway sidewalk, staying clear of nonexistent traffic.
The new construction will eliminate that feeling of making do. Curbs will vanish. Pedestrian areas will be leveled and clad in tweedy concrete tiles that run lengthwise down Broadway and the Seventh Avenue sidewalks, meeting in an angled confluence of patterns. Nickel-size steel discs set into the pavement will catch the light and toss it back into the brilliant air. Instead of perching on metal chairs, loiterers will be able to sit, lean, sprawl, jump, and stand on ten massive black granite benches up to 50 feet long and five feet wide. Electrical and fiber-optic-cable outlets will be packed into the benches so that, for outdoor performances, special-event crews will no longer need to haul in noisy, diesel-burning generators or drape the square in cables and duct tape. Even on ordinary days, the square will be de-cluttered of the traffic signs, bollards, cones, and boxes that cause foot traffic to seize up. With any luck, crowds will gather and mingle only in the center plain between the benches, leaving free-flowing channels on either side for the rest of us, who have somewhere to be, people!
Progress!
Jeremy Clarkson, the Top Gear presenter and one of Britain’s most outspoken motorists, has come out in praise of cycling, hailing Copenhagen’s cycling culture as “fan-bleeding-tastic” and comparing it to the streets of London where a state of “undeclared war” exists between cars and bicycles…
…“In Copenhagen, [cycling] is just a pleasant way to get about. Nobody wears a helmet. Nobody wears high-visibility clothing. You just wear what you need to be wearing at your destination.”
He adds: “The upshot is a city that works. It’s pleasing to look at. It’s astonishingly quiet. It’s safe. And no one wastes half their life looking for a parking space. I’d live there in a heartbeat.”
Conversely, Clarkson describes cycling in Britain as a “political statement”, where cyclists need to wear cameras on their helmets to document the motorists who “carve them up”.
In Copenhagen, he explains, most journeys are made by bicycle:
“Now I know that sounds like the ninth circle of hell, but that’s because you live in Britain, where cars and bikes share the road space. This cannot and does not work. It’s like putting a dog and a cat in a cage and expecting them to get along. They won’t, and as a result London is currently hosting an undeclared war. I am constantly irritated by cyclists and I’m sure they’re constantly irritated by me.
“City fathers have to choose. Cars or bicycles. And in Copenhagen they’ve gone for the bike.”
A great short video by ITDP-Mexico that attempts to highlight the hidden costs of car use on society and their effect on our cities.
Great picture of a new, stylish, bike parking facility outside a school in Amsterdam courtesy of Randomitus!
What a great project! Interesting to see how children interpret the city!
A documentary film made in collaboration with the Human Cities Festival 2012. Part of a project developed by http://www.turtlewings.be/
The film was made from a workshop where we gave children digital cameras and spycams and walk down 5 streets in downtown Brussels. The goal was just to document everything the children noticed. You can also follow on the ChildEyeView website here http://childeyeview.tumblr.com/ or the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/pages/Childeyeview/280423245320757
Springwise: Bordeaux citizens design bike for city-wide rental scheme
The City asked residents to submit their ideas for a new bike design through the official City of Bordeaux je participe micro-site, with more than 300 respondents taking part. Designer Philippe Starck was then brought in to translate the numerous suggestions into a single concept. The final design, unveiled at the second Cyclab event in Bordeaux in February, is a silver and yellow bike-scooter, with a foot panel placed in front of the pedals to enable users to safely push start the machine. Peugeot has now been contracted to put the bikes into production before they become part of a city-wide rental scheme.
The aim of the project was to give citizens an input into a service they will be using themselves, with the final bike reflecting their concerns over ease-of-use and safety. Government departments elsewhere: could crowdsourcing ideas from local residents improve your services?
Looks topical! The film examines the conflicts between politicians, developers and communities when it comes to issues such as property development, economic growth, jobs, regeneration, gentrification and community!
We are proud to present a sneak peek at The Domino Effect. Coming Soon
The Domino Effect is a documentary film that explores the process of real estate development in New York City. The film digs deep to uncover the complex networks of banks, developers, politicians, and non-profit organizations that shape our cities. During the last decade, the North Brooklyn communities of Williamsburg & Greenpoint, have experienced the negative impacts of excessive luxury development and gentrification, more than any other neighborhood in NYC. Told through the voices of longtime residents, this film conveys the personal impact of real estate development in their community while shedding light on issues encountered by residents of cities across the country. Will your neighborhood be the next to fall? Full release Summer 2012.
