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Really glad to see a lot of push-back in the comments against Matthew Yglesias's blanket rant against publicly- or city-owned parking garages. I think the argument is ignorant and completely ignores different realities, literally on the ground. I "liked" a number of the comments, including Jamie Rosenteel's, MacK's, Squalish's, and openid7&'s.
Some terrific ideas here:
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This summer the Institute for Urban Design asked New Yorkers to submit ideas for making the city's public spaces "smarter, more beautiful and livable." Some 500 responses later, the institute then asked designers from around the world to shape these raw ideas into concrete projects for the city. The results of this "collaborative re-imagining" of New York were revealed during Urban Design Week, which came to a close on Tuesday, with 10 entries declared collective "winners."
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The idea strikes me as bizarre, but also weirdly appealing...
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“Technology enables us to create an appealing green space in an underserved neighborhood,” says Ramsey. The key, he says, is the “remote skylight,” a system that channels sunlight along fiber-optic cables, filtering out harmful ultraviolet and infrared light but keeping the wavelengths used in photosynthesis. “We’re channeling sunlight the way they did in ancient Egyptian tombs, but in a supermodern way.” Ramsey envisions a stand of dozens of lamppostlike solar collectors on the Delancey Street median, feeding a system of fixtures down below.
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Weird, or just common sense (to create pocket parks, etc.)?
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“Urban acupuncture is a surgical and selective intervention into the urban environment,” said Los Angeles architect and professor John Southern in an interview, “instead of large scale projects that involve not only thousands of acres, but investment and infrastructure that municipalities can no longer provide.”
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Compare this to other reports on Tokyo's stalled development climate, where sites are turned into surface parking lots (awful, malignant) instead of parks.
Interesting review of Peter Harnik's book, Urban Green: Innovative Parks for Resurgent Cities (Island Press, 2010).
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...Peter teaches the reader what one should consider in order to construct and manage a successful city park system: that different kinds of parks serve different functions; that different kinds of populations look to parks for different services; that parks and neighborhoods need each other to be successful; that parks in the suburbs may be created through conservation of existing undeveloped land, but most parks in cities need to be developed (New York’s Central Park may look like it was conserved, but in fact it was carefully planned and created).
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Seattle's Privately Owned Public Open Spaces: A Walking Tour
8/26/2009: Councilmember Nick Licata defines POPOS: Privately Owned Public Open Space. Under Seattle city zoning laws, building developers can engage in zoning tradeoffs that may allow them to build bigger or higher, if they provide a specified amount of space for public use. Landscape architect Guy Michaelson, representing Seattle Architecture Foundation, leads a walking tour highlighting POPOS buildings, historic landmarks, public art and other public amenities. For more information on POPOS and monthly tours offered by SAE, visit:seattle.gov/council/issues/public_space.htm, seattlearchitecture.org
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Christopher Hume asks if Torontonians (living along the largest river in Egypt?) can learn to love it - winter, that is. What I find particularly useful are the suggestions for ...urban winter stations (for want of a better name). See highlighted bits.
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The design of the city itself affects the way we relate to the seasons.
"It sounds strange," says Toronto architect James Brown, "maybe even dangerous, but I think we should have regulated places, specific sites, where people can have bonfires. There are a number of places where you could do that safely, especially along the waterfront. We also need to create amenities, places where people can get a cup of coffee and a bun."
Brown also suggests that "five-ton stake trucks be parked every 1,000 metres in places such as Coronation Park and the Martin Goodman Trail. They would sell everything from cold beer to hot chocolate.
"Part of it's the winter," says landscape architect Janet Rosenberg, "part of it's a head space. You need winter programming as well as ways to try to make it comfortable for people."
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