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Preservation

How Greenways Create Healthy Communities

January 31, 2012 by City Parks Blog
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This post explores using greenways as the connector to parks, neighborhoods, schools and mixed-use centers, allowing for urban and rural ideas to merge and produce a superior hybrid community form. [read more]

Will Rio’s Development Surge Bring Social Integration?

January 30, 2012 by This Big City
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“I’m going to Rio”, “I just got back from Rio”, “I want to go Rio”. It seems that everywhere I go I hear Rio this or Rio that. But even before Brazil’s second-largest city became the supra hit it has become after the announcements that it will host the 2014 World Cup and 2016 Olympic Games, it was known for its illustrative Carnival... [read more]

Can Ontario deliver the continent's best land-use plan?

January 26, 2012 by Kaid Benfield
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  I’m fond of saying that the best-conceived plan for managing growth and development in North America is the Places to Grow framework adopted by the province of Ontario, Canada.  Constructed pursuant to enabling legislation adopted by the province in 2005, Places to Grow addresses the future of a New Hampshire-sized region... [read more]

Why 'Protecting' Kids from New Orleans is a bad idea

January 20, 2012 by Next American City
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New Orleans’ Royal Street, where the under-16 crowd can no longer roam late at night. Credit: Flickr user kimncrisThis piece originally appeared on The Lens. When I lived in Europe, I used to josh my British friends with a plan for Britain’s economic future (which looked dim at the time). I suggested that they tear down every structure... [read more]

Is the Earth Squandering Its Future?

January 20, 2012 by Audrey Henderson
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The Lorax, Dr. Seuss' fictional account of unchecked urban development gone bad, is as relevant today as it was when it originally appeared in print and on television during the 1970s. This post illustrates several of the tragically unlearned lessons of that whimsically-told, yet nonetheless urgently serious cautionary tale. [read more]

Shrinking Cities: The Forgetting Machine

January 18, 2012 by Jason King
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One of our supplementary readings for the Shrinking Cities group is the recent essay by Jerry Herron on The Design Observer entitled 'The Forgetting Machine: Notes Toward a History of Detroit.'  The author is from Wayne State and has been a resident of Detroit since the early eighties, so it avoids some of the outsider rhetoric, but... [read more]

Café vs Castle: How Contemporary Buildings Impact Historic Urban Areas

January 13, 2012 by This Big City
with 179 views
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You only have to look at the queue for the latest iPhone to see that ‘new’ means a positive and desirable change for many people. However, where rich cultures are involved, new does not necessarily equal positive change. This is especially true regarding the arts, since perspectives differ depending on components such as family values,... [read more]

Contemplating ‘The Genius of a Place’

November 10, 2011 by Chuck Wolfe
with 377 views
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The genius of the old ways, near Cortona in the 1950's If universal questions about the dynamics of place need a stage to be answered, there is no better theater than Cortona, Italy, home to Frances Mayes’ Under the Tuscan Sun, and a symbol of the romantic ambience of a simpler life. There, American expatriate and film producer Sarah... [read more]

Learning from the Past: Balancing Preservation and Urbanization

October 22, 2011 by Waverly de Bruijn Klaw
with 221 views
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...Quit thinking abut decent land-use as solely an economic problem. Examine each question in terms of what is ethically and aesthetically right, as well as what is economically expedient. A thing is right when it tends to preserve the integrity, stability, and beauty of the biotic community. It is wrong when it tends otherwise... [read more]

Misinterpreting the Heritage Tree Ordinance

October 21, 2011 by Chris Bradford
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As I implied here, the Planning Commission should have conducted a cost-benefit analysis before denying a permit to remove the Bowie Street heritage tree. Under any reasonable cost-benefit analysis, the tree should go. Ignore the environmental benefits of denser development downtown, the spillover benefits to the neighbors in a rapidly emerging downtown neighborhood, the goal of promoting a more walkable downtown. Ignore the hit to the property owner, who must now find another buyer who almost certainly will pay him less money. [read more]

Visions for an Urban National Park

October 18, 2011 by Daniel Nairn
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I'll admit that I had no idea a reasonably large national park existed within the boundaries of New York City. Even after a short-lived but legitimate childhood obsession with national park trivia, and after having worked in a national park in Wyoming for a little while, this urban recreational area escaped me. That is until opening... [read more]

Using Twitter to Encourage Engagement in Urban History

September 1, 2011 by This Big City
with 284 views
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You’ve all seen them, the plaques with years on them displayed around your city. They commemorate people, places or events that are import to the history of the city. Maybe you even stop to read them. Most likely you take them for granted and walk right by. How do we get people to really engage with these signposts of the city’s history... [read more]