Author: Jason King
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Ecology.Agency.Urbanism
I warn the reader that my take on the recent NOWurbanism lecture featuring Chris Reed, Randy Hester and Howard Frumkin may be skewed by a really bad cold and the influence of massive doses of cold medicine, along with spilling an entire water bottle inside my bag that literally muddied my notes into a semi-decipherable pulpy…
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Parsley On the Building
A great overview on Urban Omnibus features some of the recent site specific events in the 50th Anniversary of the GSD celebrating the half century of urban design (which at least in a modern perspective evolved from Harvard and mid-twentieth century theorists). While the author seems to incorrectly equate concepts ecological urbanism and landscape urbanism,…
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Environmental Urbanism
Excited to have a chance to head up to Seattle for tomorrow’s lecture as part of the NOW Urbanism series at University of Washington. Look for a report of the festivities in coming days. November 18: Environmental Urbanism: Ecological Design for Healthy Cities Kane Hall, Room 120 (University of Washington) What does it mean to…
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‘A Landscape Manifesto’
Always a big fan of manifestos – the recent release of Diana Balmori & Michael Conan’s ‘A Landscape Manifesto‘ aims to be an interesting read (I have a copy en route, so stay tuned for a more expansive review). :: image via Amazon Some info on the book, from the Manifesto Website. “A Landscape Manifesto’…
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Second-Rate Urbanism
Reading through some old articles, I just had to post this quote from Duany – published in the Atlantic – you know the one with the great title ‘The Man Who Reinvented the City’… 🙂 Asked about a May report from the Brookings Institution on The State of Metropolitan America (also check out the interactive map…
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More on the Urbanism Wars
GSD as Epicenter The escalation of voices in the (let’s call it debate for lack of a better term) about some of the urbanisms out there – most notably New Urbanism and Landscape Urbanism, has kicked up a notch even in the past few weeks since the initial salvos. There has been a fair amount…
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Bio-luminescent Trees: WTF?
Bad idea of the week? The Inhabitat story “Gold Nanoparticles Could Transform Trees Into Street Lights” mentions new research: “A group of scientists in Taiwan recently discovered that placing gold nanoparticles within the leaves of trees, causes them to give off a luminous reddish glow. The idea of using trees to replace street lights is an…
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Artificial Rivers
A post on Gardenvisit discusses the historical idea of creating artificial landscapes, in this case the Serpentine Lake in Hyde Park, to appear ‘natural’. :: image via Gardenvisit “In 1730 Queen Charlotte ordered the damming of the Westbourne River as part of a general redevelopment of Hyde Park and Kennsington Gardens by Charles Bridgeman. The…
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Alien Urbanism
De-Urbanization as Defense Against Alien Invasion The previews for the new Rogue movie ‘Skyline‘ made me think of a possible benefit from the general dispersion of urban populations. As shown in the film, the prototypical invasion is preceded by.the traditional ‘parking’ of ships above all of the ‘worlds cities’ that has been echoed in sci-fi…
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On Agrarian Urbanism
An opportunity for point-counterpoint on the topic of Agrarian Urbanism – one that, with the recent explosion of discussion and interest in urban agriculture – is vital to discussing the place of food in the city, and what impact this will have on the form and function of our urban agglomerations. The topic is poignant…