CCJRNL

As cities age, the challenge is not always to rebuild them physically but to re-imagine how they might function and adapt. In Newcastle in many respects nothing has changed since 2008. The buildings are mostly the same. The hardware is unchanged. Nothing has been built. No government has fallen. No revolution has taken place. Yet, on another level much has changed – dead parts of the city are active and vibrant, 60 projects have started, hundreds of new events have been created, and whole new communities are directly engaged in creating whatever it is that the city will become. The software – the legal templates, the contracts and the thinking – that has enabled has changed Newcastle is becomng a kind of shareware – downloaded, hacked and implemented in cities and towns across Australia from Townsville to Adelaide.

Cities are software. Yet as hard as the software of the city is to conceptualise the consequences of changing it are very real. It is only the results that give it away. They are as evident and visible as the process that led to them is invisible. There are new stories and narratives, new people and new possibilities, and a glimmer of renaissance where there was previously only ruin.

The East Coast tech-scene is booming because we are going through a phase where experience design, clever new business models and distribution is becoming as important as the technology itself. The new East Coast growth companies are standing on the shoulders of the tech platforms that the West Coast has built over the past decade such as easy-to-use infrastructures like Amazon, discovery tools like Google and Facebook’s social graph. While companies like Esty, Groupon and Gilt Groupe are considered technology companies, they are really just smart, new innovative companies – built on top of technology. I imagine that New York’s access to talented designers, marketers and business developers will continue this trend.

Insightful quote from Henrik Werdelin, founder of Prehype, on the rush of innovation happening in consumer-focused web startups in New York.

Beyond the press about NYC partnerships with consumer internet companies like Foursquare and Tumblr, there is a lot of great information in here about increasing citizen access to technology, opening up government data, and supporting a thriving tech ecosystem.

Ariel Schlesigner presents a collection of photographs documenting what he calls 'minor urban disasters.' The photos were taken in different cities around the world, and show off what can happen when reality goes wrong for an instant.

By 2025, the emerging-market cities of this City 600 will be home to an estimated 235 million households earning more than $20,000 a year -- markedly morethan the just over 210 million such households expected in the cities of developed regions. In other words, there will be more higher middle income households in emerging-market cities than in developed-world ones.

Foreign Policy highlights a McKinsey Global Institute report on how the economic and population growth of mid-size cities will outperform that of megacities through 2025.

Time: 2020. Place: Mount Pleasant.

The business streets look mostly the same, but there’s a different atmosphere, literally, because the air is cleaner. The broad sidewalks accommodate tables spilling out from restaurants in the summer. A street car runs down Main. Bicyclists still prefer bikeways over the main roads, but there are more of them on the main roads because there is more room and less exhaust to breathe. Apparently, the less people drive, the less they want to drive, because people are increasingly choosing active and public transportation over getting in their cars. Nearly a quarter of the cars are electric and car share lots provide a convenient solution for trips with big loads. Ski and recreation buses make regular morning and evening trips so it's easy to get to and from the mountains.   

A scenario of Vancouver in 2020 with the Greenest City goals in place, by planners Lindsay Cole and Amanda Mitchell, and Vancouver Observer writer Carrie Saxifrage.

Fantastic to see Vancouver planners creating tangible future visions -- scenarios like this can be excellent communication tools in a way that lists of targets and goals cannot. I would love to see more future scenarios for the many slices of Vancouver beyond Mt. Pleasant-dwelling composting woodworkers. Keep them coming!

Big cities have a statistical advantage because the agglomeration of people, more intense social interactions, and better developed infrastructures invoke efficiencies and speed up the pace at which things happen. This is a worldwide, historic fact and does not much depend on what is particular or special in a given city, he says.

The researchers have shown, in fact, that with each doubling of city population, each inhabitant is, on average, 15 percent wealthier, 15 percent more productive, 15 percent more innovative, and 15 percent more likely to be victimized by violent crime regardless of the city’s geography or the decade in which you pull the data.

Remarkably, this 15 percent rule holds for a number of other statistics as well – so much so that if you tell Bettencourt and West the population of an anonymous city, they can tell you the average speed at which its inhabitants walk.

Scientists call this phenomenon “superlinear scaling.” Rather than metrics increasing proportionally with population – in a “linear,” or one-for-one fashion – measures that scale superlinearly increase consistently at a nonlinear rate greater than one for one.

A new way to quantifiably assess characteristics of cities and performance regarding different socioeconomic indicators (safety, innovation, productivity, walking speed, almost anything...). The cool thing is that its not just relative to other cities, but relative to what a city's performance *should be* given its size.

via kottke

Design principle 1

Walkable streets and human scale blocks. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 2

Pedestrian-oriented building configurations. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 3

Bike friendly networks. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 4

Transit-oriented streets and neighborhoods. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 5

Mixed-use blocks, neighborhoods, and districts. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 6

Integrate open space and public services. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Design principle 7

Energy efficient buildings and systems. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Chenggong illustrative plan

The illustrative plan for the central district of Chenggong, China shows the mryiad of uses in the new town. Courtesy of Calthorpe Associates.

Principles of urban design, from a city planning project Peter Calthorpe did for Chenggong, China.

Video from a book talk Stewart Brand did at UBC in October for his recent book Whole Earth Discipline. Wish I could have made this event...I used to work with Stewart in San Francisco at Global Business Network. However, I was otherwise occupied that day at BC Womens hospital with a newborn baby boy!

Float! Building on Water to Combat Urban Congestion and Climate Change proposes a new way of building: on water instead of on land. Although the concept may seem revolutionary, it is an obvious solution to overcrowded metropolises. Most world cities are situated on the water and have too little space where it's most needed: in the city center. Building on water allows inner-city areas to expand.

Floating buildings have many advantages. They are both flexible and mobile. A buoyant structure can be moved to make space for a new building, decreasing the need for the demolition of a development that still has a productive economic future. Floating buildings outwit changing water levels by rising and falling with the tide and, in so doing, promote a more responsible water management. They leave no scars on their sites, permitting planners to actively meet the demands of the moment.

Forget Burning Man -- the world needs a new festival: Floating Man. And this is our handbook.