With the return to prominence of physical planning and increasing use of GIS, planning students are becoming interested in developing portfolios of their work. This blog entry provides tips for this process exploring why portfolios are useful, who they are aimed at, and how to design the portfolio. It provides many of the resources needed to design your own!
Design
A Biological Approach to City Building
Architecture and biomimicry are joining forces. A new city being planned in a flood-prone region of India is using the concept of mimicking nature to build a city that better responds to its environmental conditions.
Harvard Magazine
Community Design With A Side of Pie
At PieLab in Greensboro, Alabama, locals mingle with designers attempting to do use design to do good, with a slice of pie on the side.
Fast Company
Street Food of the World
In an exhibition called Global Street Food at the Vitra Design Museum, portable kitchens from all over the world are presented.
Metropolis Magazine
Frank Gehry's Design is Out
According to government officials and real estate executives, Frank Gehry is out as the architect for Barclays Center arena.
The New York Times
The Neuroscience of Architecture
Recent studies in neuroscience show that the design of the built environment affects the way you feel and your behavior. New brain scan technology is revealing emotional reactions to color choice, rounded corners, and ceiling height.
Fast Company
Dig After Design for Shovel-Ready Infrastructure
Before officials get too excited about using stimulus money to repair the nation's infrastructure, they should carefully consider design, according to this oped.
The Orlando Sentinel
New Heights for Seattle's Public Art
Going beyond traditional approaches to public art, Washington's transit authority has launched a program that provides the city with art that expresses Seattle's "core identity."
Seattle Post-Intelligencer
Images for Planning: Free Internet Resources
Thu, 07/31/2008 - 07:40
Visual communication is becoming more sophisticated in planning, however many online image sources are restricted and require payment for use. Others, such as flikr.com and Google Images are extremely useful but have uneven quality and information provided about the images can be difficult to assess. While flckr.com and Google Images will remain a key resource, a number of other online image databases provide more consistent metadata along with free access.
Best American Cities for Design
Business Week looks at a recent list of the best cities for design in America.
Business Week
Celebrating Buckminster Fuller
In expectation of a new exhibit opening at the Whitney Museum of Art, the New Yorker reflects on the curious life and career of Buckminster Fuller.
The New Yorker
Improving Design Can Improve Interaction
This piece from The Chronicle of Higher Education looks at the role design plays in encouraging interaction amongst academics and calls out for better planning.
The Chronicle of Higher Education
Design is Social Activism
Thu, 08/23/2007 - 07:14
“I have always thought that design can be a form of social activism,” says Don Meeker, environmental graphic designer and co-creator of “Clearview” typeface. This small but radical quotation was buried in an article from the 8.12.07 NY Times Sunday magazine (http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/12/magazine/12fonts-t.html) on the redesign of highway sign typeface. Meeker, James Montalbano, and a team of collaborators understood that it was the design of highway signage that was contributing to highway fatalities. They applied an understanding of human psychology and function to the solution of a “civic issue.”
Radical idea. It’s called Universal Design. Or social activism.
Radical idea. It’s called Universal Design. Or social activism.
Taking The “Short View” On Shrinking Cities
Sun, 07/01/2007 - 10:20
I’m not basing this quick observation on any specific historical research or book, so bear with me. Cities grow and shrink; in effect they change rapidly (although sometimes it doesn’t seem rapidly enough and at other times all too rapidly). Where we operate in that continuum I think shapes much of how we see our role as professionals. Planning to address either shrinking cities or growing ones can seem, at times, like totally different professions. A colleague of mine remarked that planning for shrinking cities is definitely a niche market. With so much discussion surrounding growth and how we grow, there is much less dialog that defines the opposite.
