lizzzyyy100

“An imbalance between rich and poor is the oldest and most fatal ailment of all republics.” PLUTARCH There is no better time than the holidays and the cold season to reflect on what counts as smart these days and to search for a merge of cold material economic arguments (Pottersville) and the much fuzzier ethical and moral arguments of social capital, community and equity (Bedford Falls). This article is not going to pursue whatever parallels there may be between these two visions of a city articulated in " Its a Wonderful Life " and current presidential policies, but is taking a look at what smart growth  could and should mean in 2018. Smart growth became a popular term in the 1990's as a desirable way of planned growth versus the implied "dumb growth" that happens from unplanned development. The emphasis then was on the environment and the massive land consumption that unfettered growth had brought to the United States. People would travel to Holland or Germ...

We have to really figure out how to build cities, not just buildings.(Martha Schwartz, landscape architect) Nothing has disfigured the modern city more than the automobile. Unfortunately, the 21st century of city of the future concepts are still fixated on the automobile, except that the debate is now wrapped into technology. There is little evidence that a city shaped by high tech mobility would be any more inviting than the one we already have. Downtown Denver urban renewal for the automobile ( Denverite ) What the auto fixated build-more-roads-politicians of old lacked in fantasy is compensated by the  futuristic ideas of techies like Elon Musk's who truly brings the auto to the mobile through autonomous electric cars and tractor trailers. The tech enthusiasts believe that they can do better than the old concrete and pavement guard because extra highway lanes would become superfluous with automated trucks and cars making existing roadways at least twice as efficient. But th...

The film Visages, Villages (Faces, Places) quite literally shows that buildings and structures are supposed to be about people, a realization of which some architects need to be reminded from time to time. The film's unique relationship of face, place and building is an intriguing instruction for those who deal with places and people. In a classic road movie, but set in France, an odd couple drives a box van through France to discover the type of usually invisible people who are constitute the silent majority. One by one, these people which normally blend in, begin to stand out, there faces become large and their stories remarkable. Visages,Villages, the miner's widow, larger than life Like a good architect the young photographer and Jean Luc Godard wannabe J.R. (always with sunglasses) and his nearly 90 year old companion photographer and filmmaker Agnes Varda, slowly going blind, (which is maybe why she hates those sunglasses) scout locations, landscapes and settings for an...

"There is no document of civilization that is not at the same time a document of barbarism". Walter Benjamin Police is beating up Catalans who vote for independence, America wants to build a wall, Putin sees Ukraine as part of Russia, Syria is mired in chaos, Kurds remain without a country, and the European Union is shaken by Brexit; these are all manifestations of how problematic the various definitions of nation states are and yet, there is so much renewed fixation on this brittle construct that some feel reminded of the festering crisis before WW I, over a century ago. In a world of instant communication, unprecedented awareness of global  issues such as climate change, and gigantic global migrations this state of affairs is shocking. walled city of Carcassonne, France Meanwhile cities absorb most of the population growth around the world, take on the global migrations and engage in worldwide exchange. “The Syrian crisis was a turning point in so many ways. Not just becau...

The mad dash of cities across the nation to please a rich corporate suitor is as educational as it is obscene. The latter because public agencies from the state level all the way down to city departments are shamelessly offering tax dollars to one of the top value corporations owned by the richest man on earth  and the company unashamedly asking for them. Almost any major US city imagines itself as ideal for HQ2 Educational because the spectacle shows how completely the powers have reversed. It used to be that economic development agencies wrote the specs for sites they wanted to offer for private development. Now it is the private corporation that writes the specs. It used to be that cities looked to private developers to pay part of the cost of new development through impact fees and adequate public facility ordinances. Now a powerful corporation not only expects top notch infrastructure transit but tax credits and benefits on top. It is educational to witness how ready our repr...

This week's steady trickle of news about the Nobel Prize winners is soothing the soul amidst the barrage of disasters which can debilitate the most resilient mind. This year's Nobel crop with its many American awardees is good for the wounded soul of the country as well.Tuesday the prize for physics was announced. The recipients, Dr. Weiss, 85, Dr. Thorne, 77, and Dr. Barish, 81, were the architects and leaders of LIGO, the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory, the instrument that detected the gravitational waves, and a sister organization the LIGO Scientific Collaboration of more than a thousand scientists who analyzed the data.  Expecting the Nobel Prize in physics to go to the detection of gravitational waves last year, I wrote "Once in a while one has to lift the gaze from the alleys and streets and set the eyes higher for a bigger view. Why not as big as the entire universe?".   But it took another year before the coveted Nobel in physics went to t...