SMART

Author: Jake Tobin Garrett

They didn’t really look like much. The four Google Earth images projected up onto the screen showed low-density, sprawling suburbanism in all its horizontal glory. But they also represented four locations out of 51 that Metrolinx has designated to become “mobility hubs” in The Big Move, the agency’s ambitious transit plan for the GTA.

Richard Sommer, dean of the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design, was showing the images to introduce Huburbs, a symposium on mobility hubs put on by the school and sponsored by Metrolinx this past weekend. “The challenge,” he said, motioning to the screen, “is to take these strange Petri dishes and turn them into a live organism.” (For those of you who haven’t heard Richard Sommer speak before, the experience is like having a vial of masculinity poured directly into your ear. His voice is deep and rich, the kind of voice that makes you want to grow a beard and then maybe build something. But alas, he was not at the forefront of this symposium and merely there to frame the day’s discussion.)

For the next eight hours, we were going to hear international and Canadian speakers discuss the economics, politics, and design involved in creating efficient, sustainable mobility hubs, while also creating vibrant places of community.

But we can already here you asking: what is a mobility hub and, more importantly, what is a huburb?

Read the full article at http://torontoist.com/2011/04/the_hubbub_around_huburbs.php

Author: Wendell Cox

The continuing dispersion of international metropolitan areas is illustrated by recently released 2011 Census of India preliminary data for the Mumbai “larger” metropolitan area. The historical core, the “island” district of Mumbai (Inner Mumbai) lost population between 2001 and 2011, while all growth was in suburban areas outside the historic core. Indeed, since 1981, Inner Mumbai lost 140,000 residents, while suburban areas gained 13.2 million.

The larger metropolitan area is defined by district boundaries, the census division level below that of the state. The Mumbai Metropolitan Region Development Authority has a more “tight” definition, composed of smaller administrative units (municipalities), however that data is not yet available on the internet (Note). The larger metropolitan area includes four districts, two of which compose the city of Mumbai, Inner Mumbai (the historic core), and Outer Mumbai. The larger metropolitan area also includes the district of Thane, which is to the east and north of Mumbai and the district of Raigarh, which is to the south of Mumbai. The overwhelming majority of growth outside the city of Mumbai has been in Thane, which is accessible by land and bridge to Mumbai. Raigarh is less accessible from Mumbai and requires travel through Thane to reach.

Read the full article at http://www.newgeography.com/content/002172-the-evolving-urban-form-mumbai

Author: Larry Copeland

Some cities in the USA are better positioned to deal with rising gas prices than others because of their design and transit systems, according to a national non-profit group that works to build stronger cities.

The key factor: whether residents have to drive everywhere, or have other options.

That’s according to CEOs for Cities, a Chicago-based network of civic, business, academic and philanthropic leaders seeking to build and sustain stronger cities for the future. Researchers analyzed federal government data on vehicle miles traveled in 51 metropolitan areas that have at least 1 million residents.

It’s a timely analysis: Gas prices have eased a bit in the past few days — to a national average of $3.60 for a gallon of regular unleaded Monday — but they are still 28% higher than a year ago.

Read the full article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-03-22-citygas22_ST_N.htm

A great city is a great walking city. So which is the greatest of them all? Travel book publisher Lonely Planet just surveyed its readers and asked them to pick the best walking cities in the world from a list of 186. Take a stroll through the top 10, counting down to the city that readers rated No. 1, and see if your favorite made the cut.

View the results at http://www.grist.org/urbanism/2011-03-16-the-worlds-top-10-walking-cities-slideshow/PALL

Author: Leon Neyfakh

A little over two months ago, some two dozen influential architects, urban planners, and academics from around the country gathered at a New Orleans cottage to spend a long weekend discussing strategy. The house belonged to 61-year-old Andres Duany, a leader in the movement known as New Urbanism, which originated in the late 1970s and has enjoyed decades as the dominant force in American city planning, urging Americans to reject suburban subdivisions in favor of denser, more diverse neighborhoods.

The purpose of the summit was to talk about an enemy. A rival faction of urban theorists had begun to publicly challenge them, and declare their approach to city-making obsolete. Calling themselves landscape urbanists, these upstarts were promoting themselves as environmentally conscious, ecologically sophisticated, and uniquely suited to bring sustainability to America’s suburbs. Instead of talking about buildings, street grids, and parks, they spoke seductively about “living processes,” “flows,” and the importance of respecting “ecological infrastructure.” Their ideas were being embraced in the architecture world as radical and new. Most disconcertingly, they were rising to power at one of the most influential architecture academies in the country: the Graduate School of Design at Harvard University.

At one point during the huddle in New Orleans, Duany projected a video onto the dining room wall of a lecture delivered by Charles Waldheim, the intensely confident, spiky-haired leader of the landscape urbanism movement. Waldheim, 47 years old, had recently been appointed chair of Harvard’s landscape architecture department and was now filling it with his allies. The video, in which Waldheim, dressed in all black, spoke to students at the University of North Carolina, played for just over an hour.

“We criticized it and called out all the contradictions, and we laughed and we made fun of him,” Duany recalled by phone recently. “And then when we were done, I said, ‘OK, but is there one kid in that room who isn’t leaving a convert?’ ”

Read the full article at http://www.boston.com/yourtown/cambridge/articles/2011/01/30/green_building/

Author: Haya El Nasser

When the economy was roaring and housing booming, reining in suburban sprawl dominated the development debate under the name of “smart growth.”

Now that the economy and housing have tanked, prompting more people to stay put, growth is taking a back seat. But smarts still matter. The new buzzwords: “intelligent cities.”

“There’s a 15- to 20-year cycle on urban planning terms,” says Robert Lang, urban sociologist at the University of Nevada-Las Vegas. “Remember ‘urban renewal’? Smart growth is near the end of its shelf life.”

That’s not to say the principles of smart growth are dead. On the contrary, he says, they’re very much alive and so widely accepted that they’ve become old hat. New Urbanism, the design movement frequently at the heart of smart growth, encourages a mix of homes and businesses in a pedestrian-friendly environment and is common practice now in cities big and small.

Read the full article at http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2011-01-28-cities28_ST_N.htm