urban condition photos
Archive for March, 2010
-
New Urbanist Cul-de-sac: an ideal match
New Urbanist, Walkable Cul-de-sac This 650-foot cul-de-sac has all the characteristics of an ideal New Urbanist street: compact, harmonious, well proportioned, on a grid, fully connected and walkable. Built in the 50s, it features large, two storey, well-crafted homes with one or two-storey porches, a must-have feature of a NU street. The houses are set [...] -
Beloved and Abandoned: A Platting Named Portland
In the 4000-year history of the grid, American incarnations are relatively new, appearing first about 300 years ago, frequently as a simple, orthogonal and often square (such as Portland’s) ‘Hippodamian’ grid, named after the planner of Miletus around 473 BC (Fig 1). A session in the recent 2009 New Partners for Smart Growth conference focused [...] -
Unplanned Best Urbanism, Adaptive Mix of Uses
Postponed, adaptive mixed use and walkable neighbourhoods. At the perimeter of this early 20th century city stood proud, simple or embelished houses on a quiet street; no stores or traffic in sight. Most people walked to destinations as transport options were limited to foot, carriage (for the elite) and the tram, [...] -
Goodbee Square:The Quest for a Contemporary Urban Pattern
Goodbee Square, a recent project by Duany Plater-Zyberk and Company constitutes a fertile departure from previous DPZ plans, integrating novel elements of traffic flow, pedestrian movement, traffic safety, park allocation and distribution and storm water management into the regularity of a simple grid. As a change in direction, and because street patterns are the most [...] -
“Urbanesque”:Town square amidst asphalt
Urbanesque: An imperfect mix of 19th century urbanism with 20th century technology. Like the Promenade Shops in Saucon Valey ( see earlier post) this square, “La Grande Place” , is surrounded by a sea of parking. While this inner suburb for 9,000 people has a main access road, a boulevard, no commercial uses flank [...] -
A Good House Is Better in a Good Neighbourhood
Developers and builders generally display a handful of house models for prospective customers to choose from. They are flipped right and left, and adjusted slightly to evolve into a street of various building facades and shapes; variety with rules – like Jazz. Generally the house models are created by drawing upon a set of [...]
