October 2011
17 posts
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State of the world's cities 2010-2011: Bridging... →
The world’s urban population now exceeds the world’s rural population. What does this mean for the state of our cities, given the strain this global demographic shift is placing upon current urban infrastructure? Following on from previous State of the World’s Cities reports, this edition uses the framework of ‘The Urban Divide’ to analyze the complex social,...
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Emerald Cities : Urban Sustainability and Economic... →
The Leonard Lopate Show ft. this book.
In Emerald Cities, Joan Fitzgerald shows how in the absence of a comprehensive national policy, cities like Chicago, New York, Portland, San Francisco, and Seattle have taken the lead in addressing the interrelated environmental problems of global warming, pollution, energy dependence, and social justice. Cities are major sources of pollution but because...
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Watchmedeamalmo:
Urbanizing technology: When the City Talks Back.
Saskia Sassen at PICNIC Festival 2011, 15 September 2011.
From the presentation: “More and more technology are being ‘plopped down’ on our cities. If you read the engineers’ description, or the technologists’ description, of what that technology can do, you really expect a lot. Mostly, it doesn’t happen. The technology might indeed...
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Creative Mayors and the Infrastructure Puzzle →
While the Obama administration continues to advocate for a national infrastructure bank, Republicans are pushing back with a range of fiscal and political objections that, however legitimate, do nothing to put people and significant amounts of latent private capital to work. Yet in an expression of the notion that all politics (and it seems opportunity) are local, a Republican mayor and a...
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Design Like You Give a Damn: LIVE! 2011 →
Oooh if I lived in NYC I would be at this event in a heartbeat. When: October 21 5pm to October 22, 2011 6pm Where: Steelcase Showroom and Center for Architecture, New York City
Architecture for Humanity is gearing up for our fall humanitarian design conference in New York City. Don’t miss this year’s Design Like You Give a Damn: LIVE! - a practitioners’ forum of...
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Staving Off Change to the Grit of the Bowery
It is the original boulevard of broken dreams, a street where a flophouse or two still lingers from its days as Skid Row, and where every day hungry men jostle through the doors of a remaining Christian mission for a hot meal.
The area is being transformed by luxury hotels, art galleries and high-rises.
A Christian mission for the homeless remains on the Bowery, once known as Skid Row.
It is...
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Planning for a Range of Housing Options in Our... →
The prolonged economic downturn has had many impacts, including widespread layoffs, high unemployment, and mass foreclosures. The most jarring impact for many Americans is the realization that they are not as affluent as they had previously thought. The large homes that were once symbols of prosperity became a financial millstone once mortgage rates reset and the larger economy slowed down....
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Opinionator: Shifting the Suburban Paradigm →
Is there anything made in America that’s less innovative than the single-family home? While we obsess over the new in terms of what we keep in our houses — the ever-increasing speed and functionality of our Smartphones, entertainment options built into refrigerators, sophisticated devices that monitor, analyze and report on our sleep cycles, even the superior technology of the running shoes...
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100 Abandoned Houses →
The abandoned houses project began innocently enough roughly ten years ago. I actually began photographing abandonment in Detroit in the mid 90’s as a creative outlet, and as a way of satisfying my curiosity with the state of my home town. I had always found it to be amazing, depressing, and perplexing that a once great city could find itself in such great distress, all the while surrounded...
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Climate Adaptation: Forbes: Why Environmental... →
climateadaptation:
“Obama is right on both fronts. Clean policies not only offer necessary protections, they stimulate jobs.
From Scotland to Shanghai to Sao Paolo, the world is moving decisively toward a clean technology conversion and the jobs that come with it for urgent environmental, security and…
