housing posts, articles, and infographics | Sustainable Cities Collective

Ditch Your Car Step 1: Move to a Mixed Use Neighborhood

January 11, 2012 by Kaid Benfield
with 382 views

New research from Southern California has found that residents of neighborhoods with a central core of shops and services – a pattern typically found in older, traditional communities – walk nearly three times more often than do residents of neighborhoods whose nearest shops and services lie along a major arterial roadway – a... [read more]

4 Principles for Re-Designing the Suburbs for the Future

December 22, 2011 by Rashiq Fataar
with 1,245 views

Suburbs will continue to exist. People will still want to live in them, and therefore we must re-design them. In America, our thinking has become rather binary when it comes to urban development; you either live in a Manhattan high-rise or a suburban house in Phoenix. The suburbs will have to densify in some way in order to be... [read more]

Death of Sprawl: Past and Future

November 30, 2011 by Warren Karlenzig
with 288 views

Seems like my chapter "The Death of Sprawl" from The Post Carbon Reader is taking on a life of its own. Friday, Christopher Leinberger had an Op-ed in the New York Times, titled "Death of the Fringe Suburb," which built upon concepts I had published (and sent Leinberger last year) namely, that the US mortgage crisis and Recession were set off by upsidedown economics of sprawl speculation in US exurbs or "Boomburbs" and we can't ever do that again. [read more]

Social Housing Needs to be a Training Ground, Not A Dumping Ground

November 22, 2011 by julian dobson
with 97 views

The Riddings is a long sloping crescent of nondescript semi-detached houses, branching off into cul-de-sacs and loops. The layout is typical of a sleepy English suburb. But this particular suburb in Huddersfield achieved notoriety in 1990 as the setting for a BBC documentary, The Estate.Local people still rankle at how they were... [read more]

Update on the Solar Decathlon

September 30, 2011 by polis blog
with 197 views

Empowerhouse, Parsons the New School for Design and Stevens Institute of Technology.Almost exactly two years ago, I went to visit the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C. This year’s Solar Decathlon had the same goal — to design and build the best energy-efficient house powered by the sun. Like the houses in 2009, and the houses designed... [read more]

New Report: Transport Determines Housing Affordability

August 4, 2011 by TheCityFix - produced by EMBARQ
with 509 views

A study that looks at the true cost of homes found that transport plays a major role in affordability. Photo by Travlr. The District of Columbia Office of Planning, in cooperation with the Chicago-based Center for Neighborhood Technology, released a study that found transportation costs range from $8,500 to $25,000 per... [read more]

The MoMA on the Role of Architecture in Society

July 22, 2011 by polis blog
with 302 views

"[MoMA] recognizes – indeed it insists – that architecture even more than the other arts is bound up with ethics, social justice, technology, politics, and finance, along with the lofty desire to improve the human condition.”Arthur Drexler in his introduction to the exhibit "Another Chance for Housing," 1973“They [featured architects]... [read more]

The Living Labs Global Award: Taipei

February 25, 2011 by Next American City
with 514 views

Credit: Flickr user tylerdurden1Editor’s Note: This entry is the second in a series of interviews conducted by Cluster in collaboration with Living Labs Global (LLG) in occasion of the second edition of the Living Labs Global Award, an international technology award for digital services that add high value to users in cities around the... [read more]

A garden block proposal

June 28, 2010 by Daniel Nairn
with 1,952 views

It looks like one of the main take-aways from the CNU 18 conference is something being labeled agrarian urbanism. Fast Company is calling it the "new new urbanism" and Treehugger has described the notion as the next phase in the evolution of this 30-year old movement. Andres Duany, in particular, has been pushing pretty hard in this... [read more]

Comparisons of Public Space

June 26, 2010 by polis blog
with 524 views

Photo: Peter Sigrist

Over the next two months my posts will be kind of rough, as I have very slow and infrequent internet access, and none at home. This has prevented me from reading blogs lately, and even much news, both of which I really miss. Maybe it's worthless to blog while I'm so disconnected, but since I'm scheduled to post, I'll write about the way... [read more]

The Just Metropolis: The Rule of Law?

May 9, 2010 by polis blog
with 337 views

When one thinks of justice, one of the first things that comes to mind is law. Laws are supposed to be an instrument for ensuring equal rights and institutionalizing fair processes. When it comes to property rights in developing countries, however, courts are usually defendants of the status quo – the often-marginal... [read more]

Localism: Meet the Gorgons

March 25, 2010 by julian dobson
with 339 views

Meet the Gorgons View more presentations from Julian Dobson. Meet the Gorgons. With snakes for hair and faces that would turn people to stone, you wouldn't want to stumble across them while casually going about your daily business. Today I've been asked to share some thoughts on the subject, 'can localism deliver?'. In just ten... [read more]