urban condition photos
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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 [...] -
Old Urbanism to Fused Grid – Montpellier
Network Transformation Montpellier in 2004 took a bold and unprecedented step to turn the entire 800-year old fortified city into a pedestrian realm. It adapted its inherited organic grid to the car and light rail by applying the Fused Grid model. A perimeter road (red) frames an area about 1000 m by 1200 m. Only [...] -
Main Street, Main Stage
Same day, time and Small Town. Two public realms centuries and realities appart. Main Street beautified and “fixed”, displaying history, small retail and street parking; it stands empty. All the attributes of good urbanism but no activity. Main Stage, at the end of the same street, is an enclosed 2-level shopping mall boasting affordable [...] -
Arrested Evolution – A living urban past
It didn’t happen and won’t happen. People walking these streets will not experience the clutter of evolution that accommodates the car, ever. Car-free means no clutter, no noise, no fumes; a peaceful walk that includes only faces and voices. These qualities can only be recreated in a Fused Grid neighbourhood (see Wikipedia) where portions of [...] -
Strasbourg – Old urbanism to FusedGrid
Strasbourg, France turned much of the old fortified city into a pedestrian priority realm. It adapted its inherited organic street network to the car and light rail by applying the Fused Grid model. A perimeter road (red) frames the central district, which is about 800 m wide by 900 m long, the dimensions of a [...] -
Frankfurt – Old urbanism to Fused Grid
Frankfurt, Germany turned much of the old fortified city into a pedestrian priority realm. It adapted its inherited organic street network to the car and rail by applying the Fused Grid model (see Wikipedia). A twinned perimeter road (red) frames the central district, which is about 900 m wide by 1500 m long, the dimensions [...] -
Urbanesque: Main Street, No Town
”Urbanesque” – the perfect urban mix: 19th century urbanism with 20th century technology and commerce. The Promenade Shops at Saucon Valley, 10 km south of Allentown (pop 100k) display the design features of the cherished Small American Town, an icon of urbanism. It has a Main Street, a town place and a town square in [...]
