Landscape+Urbanism

Category: planning

  • New York City’s Amphibious Heritage

    Via the always interesting Strange Maps, a utopian proposal from the early 20th Century for New York City with current parallels of either the practical Dutch examples of land reclamation or the ridiculous Dubai examples of artificial islands.  Immediately making me think of Robert Grosvenor proposal for ‘Floating Manhattan’ – This 1911 proposal by Dr. T. Kennard Thompson entitled ‘A…

  • Landscape Performance Series

    Interesting link to the Landscape Architecture Foundation‘s new resource – the Landscape Performance Series – which is sort of an adjust to the Sustainable Sites Initiative which is “…designed to fill a critical gap in the marketplace and make the concept of “Landscape Performance” and its contribution to sustainability as well known as “Building Performance” is…

  • Know Thy Annotations…

    I’m really pleased to be able to present a snapshot of the bibliographical evidence related to the existing literature.  While not a complete and total view, this gives hints into some of the theoretical unpinnings of the theory of Landscape Urbanism, which could aid many of the discussions and dispel (or reinforce) some of the…

  • The Landscape Urbanism Wars

    A number of recent posts/discussions outline what is now shaping up as a ‘war’ between the proponents of Landscape Urbanism and those of the New Urbanism. I find it constantly amusing, in this time of blatant political attack ads on television every night (the rift could be DNC v. RNC), to see the polarization that…

  • Mapping Racial Diversity

    Serendipitously continuing on the topic of mapping, some interesting ones (spotted on Seattle’s Publicola) offers many color-coded maps of racial diversity from major US cities. The work is from a familiar name, Eric Fischer (an earlier post showing some of his work is here), and he has developed another comprehensive set of urban maps highlighting…

  • Reading List: The Exposed City – Mapping the Urban Invisibles

    If you love maps, not as just as visual artifacts but as part of design and planning methodology, Nadia Amoroso’s recently published ‘The Exposed City: Mapping the Urban Invisibles‘ (Routledge, 2010) will validate, comfort, and quite possibly amaze you. That’s the effect it had on me – after quickly devouring this visually rich resource –…

  • Calthorpe on Portland…

    “…a global model of Transit-Oriented Development.”

  • Animurbanism

    I thought this was pretty funny (and ridiculous) when first heard on NPR, then seen in multiple locations. The story centers on the layouts of these planned Sudanese cities, shaped like indigenous animals and even fruit from the region. This has been all over the place lately in media snippets, with a reaction of surprise,…

  • Sodding Bridges

    Although I did get stuck waiting for one of the many bridges today, my title for this post is more tongue in cheek than brit-inspired rage. Bridges are part of the fabric of Portland, and give our city much of it’s identity while also serving as vital infrastructure connecting east to west (and north to…

  • Restoring the Garden of Eden

    A great feature from Spiegel Online covers the work of Azzam Alwash, a US/Iraqi hydraulic engineer aiming to restore what were once vibrant wetlands flourishing in the cradle of civilization through an organization called Nature Iraq. While most news coming from the region focuses on bricks and mortar rebuilding, it’s important to note the power…