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Rahm Emanuel and Stephanie Rawlings Blake may have not much in common, but they would clearly agree on one thing: Being the mayor of a large American City is one of the hardest jobs in America. Their paths crossed at the US Conference of Mayors in DC when a protester of the Chicago police killing held a placard in front of Rawlings Blake while she was welcoming the 250 mayors who assembled in DC.  Both are intelligent and progressive, yet they both failed when it came to leading a big city because the deck is stacked against them as much as it stacked against minorities and the urban poor.   Rawlings Blake and Emmanuel at the US Conference of Mayors winter '16 There is a significant surge in interest in cities in general and a surge of people who want to live in central cities followed by businesses who relocate to urban areas, both, in the US and worldwide. But urban policies have not kept up. Most not only were shaped far in the century before last, when cities had become cesspoo

Ever thought that the sounds surrounding you are an "ear-sore"? The New York Times architecture critic Kimmelman agrees with you. He recently published a neat little piece titled " Dear Architects: Sound Matters ". A great reminder! In it he postulates: "During the Middle Ages, smell was the unspoken plague of cities,  today it is sound."  writes  New York Times  architecture critic  Michael Kimmelman . " Embedded in the online version of his article are intimate sound tracks of New York spaces, tracking the critic's experience of sound in various enclosed environments such as the Grand Central and Penn train stations, the office and a public library. Kimmelman describes sound as an essential component of experiencing space. As such sound adds another dimension to form and light (both visual),  a dimension of architectural design which is usually overlooked. Airplanes rarely fly so low above cities, but in some places like San Diego they still do

(This is the third in a series of articles addressing urban housing in America) The list of US cities that lost size and luster due to de-industrialization is long and includes once shining US powerhouses like Detroit, St. Louis, Cleveland, Baltimore and Buffalo. The list of ideas how to fix the problems arising from the decline is even longer than the list of shrinking cities.   Occupied and vacant houses near Greenmount cemetery , Baltimore (photo ArchPlan) The main problem is the significant surplus of houses, the direct result of a shrinking population, which itself was the result of the loss of jobs. Many houses stand vacant and have fallen in disrepair. Baltimore alone is said to have somewhere between 16,000 or over 30,000 of them, depending who does the counting. Some of those are close to ready for move in, many others have open roofs and collapsed floors and walls and are seemingly beyond repair. Last week we tried to figure out why even cities with a large housing surplus st

All US cities have a shortage of affordable housing units and long waiting lists for them. Some estimate that only under a quarter of eligible households actually receive housing assistance in any form, public housing, housing vouchers or private but federally assisted housing. The under-supply occurs in thriving and prosperous parts of the country as well as in poor and struggling regions. A public housing development dating to the 1930s in Fort Worth, TX, slated to be demolished as part of RAD (photo: ArchPlan) For every 100 extremely low-income (ELI) renter households in the country, there are only 29 affordable and available rental units.  Extremely low-income households —a definition used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)—earn 30 percent of area median income or less. [...]  Nationwide, only 28 affordable, adequate, and available units exist for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. (Baltimore: 43) Perception of Public Housing in the US. (ph