Landscape Architecture
Around Los Angeles' Skid Row, vertical farms have been installed on walls. Its project leaders note that it not only promotes locally grown foods, but it also beautifies areas that "would otherwise just be concrete and steel."
Architectural Record
Blog post
One of Vancouver's most recent significant planning exercises is noteworthy not simply because of the merits of its process or its resulting planning and design vision, but perhaps more so because of the new model it may represent to North American mall owners.
But I'll come back to that.
Greg Beato looks at self-expression via the front lawn. In places that lack homeowners associations, he suggests, individualized lawns have great potential to strengthen the surrounding community.
Reason Online
Christopher Hume looks at the welcoming power of benches in seating-heavy Montreal, and argues that other cities need to take the simple step of planting more benches to make urban areas more lively and attractive.
The Toronto Star
The architecture studio that won The History Channel's City of the Future competition last year has gotten some help making its ideas possible.
Architectural Record
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
The University of Notre Dame at Indiana is projecting a savings of $100k in heating and cooling by putting its computer servers into their cactus conservatory, in a technique known as 'waste heat recovery.'
WorldChanging
Whether through community gardening or high-tech "vertical farms" interest is growing in urban agriculture.
AlterNet
Midtown New York is some of the densest property in the U.S., but in between the skyscrapers you can find a number of small, hidden oases from the busy streets.
The New York Times
Will Allen began Growing Power, an urban farming non-profit, in an ailing Milwaukee neighborhood in 1993. He has since spread the gospel of urban farming throughout the world, and earned a MacArthur Genius grant for his efforts.
New York Times
The Austin City Limits music festival, held at the city's major public park, has inspired other cities to invite festivals to their parks, despite the inherent challenges.
Austin American-Statesman
A landscape architect from M.I.T. is proposing to create a whole new ecosystem to address water pollution problems in Italy.
The New York Times
Feature
Some 'parkers' faced police harassment, but on the whole Park(ing) Day 2008 was sunny and positive, as Los Angelenos put their own stamp on the celebration. In this video slideshow, we take a tour of some of L.A.'s parking spot parks.
Blog post
Last Friday, I was in two different suburban environments in Atlanta. Both are sprawl by any normal definition of the term - car-oriented environments where residential streets are separated from commerce, sidewalks are rare, and densities are low. But the two places are as different as sprawl and new urbanism.
More and more lawns across the country are getting axed and replaced with gardens.
The Oregonian
Three teams of landscape architects were given 24 hrs. to develop a master plan for the growing Michigan town of New Buffalo.
Metropolis Magazine
Blog post
I occasionally get accused locally of being too much of a "booster" for Vancouver's success and reputation in city-building and urban design. Although I usually tend to mix in a healthy dose of "constructive candour" on how we need to improve, if there's truth to this accusation, I'd say I come by it honestly. First off, I've been an admirer and careful student of the Vancouver approach to urbanism, as imperfect as it might still be, long before I arrived in the City as Director.
Bill Thompson of the ASLA reports on a public space in Silver Spring, Maryland that upends everything landscape architects and planners think they know about what makes a successful public space.
ASLA's The Dirt blog
The Governor of New York recently signed off on tax abatements for developers who install green roofs
The New York Times
Viviana Franco became a planner so she could reform a park 100 ft. from her childhood home in Hawthorne, CA. But her quest has become mired in local politics as the site was sold in a local auction.
The Los Angeles Times
