Articles

The best model IMCL has found for coping with homelessness is that enacted by Mayor Valérie Plante and the City of Montréal. Homelessness is escalating in many cities, and it is urgent that we all learn from the best models available.  

Not only does Montréal address the core issues of providing housing and services. They also understand the problem in a holistic way – the need to protect those at risk of losing their home, making services more accessible, addressing issues relating to the public realm, and constant collaboration between public and community partners. 

Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard, Ph.D.(Arch.)
Director

To achieve green, healthy cities, the urban environment must ensure the 3 principles of sustainability:

1.        Human sustainability:
That means good social and physical health for ALL – old and young, poor and well-to-do. In other words, health equity, and a special emphasis on the well-being of children

2.        Economical sustainability:
That means a city economy that grows at a pace that ensures a living wage for all, and that does not enrich the few at the expense of the majority.

3.        Ecological sustainability:
That means, an urban form that does not deplete the earth, that does not require vast energy resources to build and maintain, and does not cause massive pollution and climate change in the construction process.

By Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard, Ph.D.(Arch.), Director, IMCL

WHY WE NEED TREES IN THE CITY

We know intuitively that we need trees in our cities. They enhance the public realm, provide shade, cool the air in summer, frame our experience of the city, and make the city more beautiful.

But we CAN make them green, healthy and inclusive, emphasized world renowned experts and civic leaders at the 52^nd International Making Cities Livable Conference on Achieving Green, Healthy Cities. This conference was invited to Bristol, UK as one of the key events celebrating Bristol’s title as 2015 European Green Capital.

By Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard, Ph.D.(Arch.), Director, IMCL
& KJ Kresin

Across the United States thousands of once thriving working class neighborhoods are boarded up, but few are in such dire straits, or in such an extreme need for a reinvented Community Planning approach as Sandtown, Baltimore.

By Kai Bates – IMCL Urban Design Consultant

A couple years ago while visiting Europe, I was fortunate enough to make my way to Freiburg, Germany*. Since I arrived by high-speed train, I didn’t have a car or bicycle to get around. So, I relied heavily on the city’s outstanding streetcar system to explore the entire city, including visiting such urban design Meccas as Vauban and Rieselfeld, as well as the city’s phenomenal car-free historic downtown.

By Kai Bates – IMCL Urban Design Consultant

In April 1990, there was a global resurgence of environmentalism around the events of Earth Day 1990. There was a great deal of positive energy, youthful enthusiasm and passion about the environment at that time, which transformed many (including myself) into environmentalists. Many of us became strong advocates for recycling; water, energy, and natural conservation; and trying to figure out ways to reduce the harm that we as a species have been causing to the Earth.

By Kai Bates – IMCL Urban Design Consultant

As more and more cities throughout North America come to terms with growing threats such as obesity and climate change, many are looking for ways to address these problems. While the issues can be confronted in various ways, one of the quickest and cheapest approaches is to encourage bicycling.

By Kai Bates – IMCL Urban Design Consultant

A new trend in urban real estate development has been sweeping through the nation’s biggest cities in recent years. This trend, if left unchecked and not properly managed, could significantly hurt quality of life in our cities, potentially causing a disastrous return to the suburbs. The trend I’m referring to is micro-unit housing, also known as micro-housing, microapartments, microflats, micro dwelling units, single-room occupancy units, or even apodments.

The Monster-Builder is a new comedy by Amy Freed that is having its world premier in Portland, OR, January 28 – March 2, 2014, amid rave reviews, (here,  here, and here) interviews, and serious discussions about the impact of architects on our lives. The play begins as a farce, and happily transports the audience into the realm of hilarious fantasy. But as you leave, still laughing at the ludicrous lines and slapstick situations, you shudder at the truth that lies just below the comic surface.

By Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard, Ph.D.(Arch.), Director, IMCL

This book is exactly what we need at this time – a guide for how to design streets that are human scale, hospitable to people, and designed to enhance the public realm. It is sure to become an instant classic.

Streets and squares have always been the most important places in our cities. We have always wanted, nay, needed to come together, meet and socialize, buy and sell, gossip, celebrate and work together, and this all began in public places. Meeting and spending time with other people in a beautiful place is pleasure, it makes us more alive, and creates a sense of gaiety. And we have an innate desire to beautify places where we gather, particularly for special occasions, to increase the geniality of the event.

Unesco has a negative opinion of the proposed skyscrapers such as Triangle Tower in Paris, as the French capital is "one of the few horizontal cities that have been preserved," said the Deputy Director-General of Unesco for Culture, Francesco Bandarin. 

By Suzanne H. Crowhurst Lennard, Ph.D.(Arch.)

In 1993 The Prince laid the founding stones for the 400-acre Poundbury development at Dorchester. This new “urban village” eschews modernist planning principles and auto-dependent suburban housing in favor of a diverse, walkable mixed-use traditional model. Now half complete, it is possible to evaluate how well the original goals are being achieved.

Tim Smith is a Principal of Urban Design and Planning at Sera Architects in Portland, Oregon. For the past twenty years he has developed the framework of Civic Ecology and has been a proponent of sustainable cities everywhere.

Craig Boretz is Vice President of Development of Con-way, a sponsor of the recent 50th International Making Cities Livable Conference. The Con-way development in Portland, Oregon is currently being planned as an entirely new 17-acre section of the Northwest Neighborhood. GBD Architects and Con-way created a master plan development framework that was approved by the City of Portland in September 2012.

This article was originaly written by Wayne Senville, editor of PlannersWeb.

As you might recall from my last post, I first heard about Portland’s “20-minute neighborhoods” concept during the First Stop Portland walking tour. You can summarize the idea with three D’s:

By Katrina Johnston-Zimmerman

A documentary has been making the rounds recently in urban circles featuring perhaps the most influential architect you’ve (probably) never heard of: Jan Gehl. Aptly called The Human Scale, the documentary features numerous of Gehl Architects’ projects around the world, many of which are included in Gehl’s recent book, Cities for People. I recently had the opportunity to view said documentary and it did not disappoint (see trailer below).

By Eric C. Y. Fang

Several trends are conspiring to challenge America's ability to house and care for its senior citizens. Utilizing successful examples, architect and planner Eric C.Y. Fang examines how the suburbs can be adapted to support an aging population.

In recent years, poverty and homelessness have increased exponentially in the US. The homeless leave their possessions unattended in shopping carts or piled on the sidewalk while making necessary trips. This can be unsightly, bad for business, and definitely not good for tourism, but do those of us with homes have the right to seize and destroy their possessions?

By Scott Doyon

Roughly two hundred years ago, working in a little Bavarian workshop, Samuel Soemmering created a crude device that, refined by others, would revolutionize communications for the emerging industrial age: the telegraph.

A hundred years thereafter, post-Victorians began to ponder its evolution — wireless telegraphy — in which individuals would receive telegraph messages, printed out on ticker tape, via personal antenna.

And what was their take on such innovation? Did they savor the prospect of a new age of enlightenment, empowered by ever-improving access to information and to each other?

Nope. Instead, they lamented what such a device would do to interpersonal intimacy — with such accuracy that it will boggle your 21st century mind.

Not for nothing is Strasbourg called “The Crossroads of Europe”.[i] In the Middle Ages, trade routes met here; goods from the Baltic, Britain, the Mediterranean and the Far East were exchanged for local wines, grain and fabrics; and traders speaking a dozen different languages met and conducted business. The places where they met became the market places and squares that enliven the city today and provide settings for continued multilingual dialogue.

Until the nineteenth century, a square or plaza was a hard surfaced open space between buildings, a place for contact with our fellow human beings in exchange, dialogue, debate, play and democratic decision making. Parks belonged to the nobility and were for recreation and contact with nature. The confusion began in the 19^th century when market squares resounding to the hullaballoo of trade were transformed into genteel gardens where newly middle class ladies with parasols strolled and listened to brass bands. In North and South America, plazas founded by the Spanish were refashioned overnight from busy market places and parade grounds into geometric gardens with paths, benches, flowers and bandstands. In America, the words “square” and “plaza” no longer convey their original meaning. They have become associated with park-like features and recreational uses.

No wonder that today, when a square or a plaza is created in America, it turns out to be a squark!

Public art can play such an important role in our lives, raising our spirits, making us laugh, bringing out the best in us, reminding us of who we are and the values we share, and sometimes art has this effect on us even when we don’t know the entire story. Here are a few stories of artworks in Slovakia and Poland that attest to the indomitable human spirit and make us laugh.

I think that communities in old European city centers exemplify the idea of a viable community, and when we restore these old cities our first problem must be to maintain this existing community, and not to destroy it by over-planning. By our own actions as planners we can too easily destroy a community.

One of the greatest challenges for the 21st Century, as stated in the IMCL Mission Statement, is to replace sprawl with compact human scale urban fabric. The solutions must rebuild community, be ecologically and socially sustainable, and healthy for all, especially the most vulnerable among us, children, elders, and the poor. Planners and government entities are beginning to see the benefits of retrofitting existing suburban communities, increasing density, and accommodating healthier transportation modes.

During the Twentieth Century our cities suffered from the widespread use of Lecorbusierian theories on urbanism. From the Ville Radieuse to l’Unité d’Habitation, up to the Modulor, the whole world’s cities switched their scale from “human dimension” to “car dimension”. Click "read more" to read the full article by Ettore Maria Mazzola.

Did the world just witness the birth of democracy in Tahrir Square? The demonstrations inspired the world. They were a dramatic and moving outpouring of the people’s desire for an end to Mubarak’s oppressive regime, and the corruption, infringement of people’s rights, and brutality associated with the 40-year enforcement of the ‘state of emergency’. The desire for self-government was passionately voiced. Did Tahrir Square play the same role in supporting democratization that the Agora played? And will it continue to support democratic engagement in Egypt?

Neighborhoods, Towns, & Cities

Suzanne Lennard, Director of Making Cities Livable, was interviewed by Tan Hui Yee of the Straits Times on July 21, 2010 while she was in Singapore to speak at the World Cities Summit.

The festival of Corpus Domini, as celebrated in Cannara, Italy, with a continuous carpet of flowers all around the town, is one of Europe's most genuine community festivals.

Henry L. Lennard, social psychologist, medical sociologist and urban scholar died in Venice, Italy, Thursday June 23rd, shortly after being admitted to hospital. He was 81.