density

sprawl/shutterstock

The problem, as I see it, is the normative embrace of certain land use patterns. Sprawl is bad. Density is good. You are either with Kotkin or Florida. Choose a side, now.[read more]

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During my time on campus, placemaking became more than a fantasy. It was ingrained. Let’s think about how much we walked, shared things, and did all of our major business within a small set of buildings and blocks.[read more]

Hong Kong Panorama via Shutterstock

A paper, called Growing Cities Sustainably, was recently published in the Journal of the American Planning Association, which generated much debate on the benefits and disadvantages of the “compact” city model. The paper argues that for three studied regions in Britain, the current policy trend of promoting compact cities is actually economically and environmentally unsustainable.[read more]

As the world urbanises and our lifestyles evolve, cities are getting bigger. And I’m not just talking about population sizes. As This Big City kicks off a fortnight of themed posts on Megacities and Microcities, what better way to start than by taking a look at five of the world’s ‘biggest’ cities?Tokyo – the world’s largest metropolitan...[read more]

A city’s compactness is a compromise. On one side, a city can be spread-out — giving the advantages of cheap construction costs and plenty of green areas and roads, but also long commutes and dependence on cars. On the other hand, a compact city allows shorter commutes, better public transport, more services and nearby jobs, but suffers...[read more]

Photo by Daz Smith via Flickr

The Brookings Institution recently released a comprehensive report on metropolitan demographic changes over the past thirty years, which highlighted the increasing concentration of the U.S. population in major metropolitan areas.  Overall, metropolitan areas have grown consistently since 1980, and now over 80% of Americans live in...[read more]

After an hour and a half of driving, I was pretty thoroughly disgusted with the whole idea of suburbs. I became more and more unreasonable as I became more and more lost. What’s the difference between “96th Street” and “96th Street Terrace?” Why were there so many parking lots? If you cut out every flower bed containing a single bush I...[read more]

Density is not livability, and livability is more than shops and cafes. Livability is a complex issue. One man’s livability may be another man’s claustrophobia.[read more]

Yuri Artibise is an urbanist and a thought leader who lived in Phoenix for just over 4 years before moving back to Vancouver in May of 2011. While he was here, he made a tremendous impact on our city as a forward thinking writer, an outspoken advocate for a better city and a community organizer. He and his wife Linda are missed a great...[read more]

    When you look at the official US drought monitor map, you immediately see that many American cities may be in the wrong places for long-term water sustainability.  In particullar, note the presence of “long-term,” severe-to-extreme drought conditions across most of Georgia, Texas, Oklahoma, New Mexico, and...[read more]

By Alistair Mackay at Future Cape Town When you fly into Buenos Aires, the city stretches for as far as the eye can see – it’s an unimaginably big sprawl of high-rise apartment blocks, urban squares and neat, rigid avenues that eventually deteriorate into slums and suburbia. It is completely flat, and so European in the...[read more]

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]