Landscape+Urbanism

Category: history

  • To New Horizons

    Oh the sick and twisted future… a film from General Motors in 1940 entitled ‘To New Horizons’ talking about the world twenty years later.  Yes indeed, “Man continually strives to replace the old, with the new!”  Spotted on one of my favorite new sites – Copenhagenize.  Check it out.

  • Shrinking Cities – Readings

    A class this term at Portland State involves a reading and conference on ‘Shrinking Cities’. Led by professor Ellen Bassett, a group of a dozen students from PhD and Masters in Urban Studies and Urban and Regional Planning reading and discussing four diverse texts, along with a range of other writings on the subject.   …

  • Science of Pedestrian Movements

     An interesting article from the Economist on ‘The Wisdom of Crowds‘ echoes much of the seminal research of William Whyte (City), Edward T. Hall (The Hidden Dimension), and others that have closely studied the behavior of pedestrians and other users of public spaces. The interplay of cultural habits that tells us to step right or…

  • Siftings: 01.11.12

    ““All great art is born of the metropolis.” – Ezra Pound  :: image via NY Times A great little snapshot on urban serendipity from the NY Times that looks at the accidental ‘curation’ of spaces that the urban environment yields, such as the framed view from the subway to the Brooklyn Bridge.  Perhaps the uniformity…

  • Community Growth: Crisis and Challenge

    Via Atlantic Cities, an interesting film from 1959 exploring the implications for sprawl… from the National Association of Home Builders and the Urban Land Institute.  I particularly like the diagrams of the monocentric city towards polycentric city form in post WWII United States.  The solutions include planned unit developments, cluster developments, townhouses, culs-de-sac, separation of…

  • THINK.urban: Introducing Megapolitanism

    A recent article from John King at the San Francisco Chronicle mentioned the concept of using the Megalopolitan scale for planning purposes. The article references the new book by Arthur C. Nelson and Robert E. Lang entitled ‘Megapolitan America: A New Vision for Understanding America’s Metropolitan Geography‘ (APA, 2011). As an example, King mentions the…

  • Introducing THINK.urban

    I am happy to announce the formation of a new organization, THINK.urban in Portland, Oregon.  Along with colleagues Katrina Johnston and Allison Duncan, our group plans to promote, as our tagline mentions: “Better Design Through Applied Research.”   We bring a range of experience in urban design research, landscape architecture, urban ecology, public space, and…

  • L+U Travels – The Prelude

    England, Spain, Italy.  While a couple of weeks is not long enough to spend in any one of these countries (or cities for that matter), the agenda is set.  Thus I’m considering an upcoming trip to Europe and actual vacation (what the hell is that?) and a scouting trip for further visits.  The itinerary starts…

  • Source: Terrain Vague – de Sola Morales

    A formative source in thinking about indeterminant spaces is Terrain Vague, a 1995 essay by Spanish Architect Ignasi de Sola-Morales.  The essay starts with a discussion of the idea of photography, which is mentioned by the author as vital to our understanding, particularly through photomontage and their inventive juxtaposition of forms, aiding our ability to…

  • Source: Whatever Happened to Urbanism? – Koolhaas

    In 1995, Rem Koolhaas & Bruce Mau published ‘S,M,L,XL’, one in a line of oversized volumes so fondly disseminated by the Dutch.  Amazon mentions the work as “extraordinary, massive, and mind-boggling 1,300-page book combines essays, manifestos, diaries, fairy tales, travelogues, a cycle of meditations on the contemporary city–and complex illustrations…” giving shape to a mixed…