Feb 01, 2011

Neither Landscape Urbanism nor New Urbanism....Planetary Urbanism?

from Alex Steffen

New Urbanism, more hardcore urbanists have long charged, can end up being just “sprawl in drag.” Landscape Urbanism, unless it addresses the physics of underlying systems (transportation, housing, manufacturing), threatens to be just “sprawl in a pretty green dress”.

I’d like to see a whole different approach, one which starts from the scope, scale and speed of the changes we know we need to make, and backcasts from that transformation as the basis of any sound urban thinking. Planetary urbanism. (emphasis added)

I am mystified by Alex' call for “Planetary Urbanism.”  I hope he can offer an example of what that means? Just a hint? 

Feb 1, 2011 8:59:00 PM

The comments to this entry are closed.

NEXT POST
The holy grail of planning: Transforming the auto-dominant strip-mall arterial Here are some comments from an on-line conversation about suburban retrofit over the last week or so. I mentioned it here . As such threads go, they are not entirely coherent: Person B answers A on one point and then C answers B on another point, and so forth. People wander. Email conversations often do not offer a clear thread. Yet I think the comments which others might find interesting. My personal conclusion from the conversation is that • there...
PREVIOUS POST
The War on Density — A misguided issue I get a chance to opine on density almost every day as almost every day people prefer to accentuate the wrong thing: density. I think it is because they prefer the fight. So here's my daily opportunity at Publicola.com: The War on Density And here's the same thing I have been saying for a while: DENSITY IS BESIDE THE POINT It's so unfortunate that the density issue came up. For people who like cities (as well as other places, too...

David Sucher

The Typepad Team

Search

Become a Fan

Recent Comments