Category Archives: New Urbanism

Happy Earth Day — The 21st Century Is The New Sixties?

EARTH DAY reminded me of my old friend Konrad Oberhuber, an art historian at Harvard when I met him, who later became the Curator of the Albertina in Vienna. In 1983 I went on a Fogg Museum trip to Prague with Konrad … Continue reading

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The Problem Is Not The Starchitecture. The Problem Is What Gets Left Out Of The Discussion.

ALMOST AS SOON AS THE ACE HOTEL OPENED in New York City, the word spread among the cool tech kids and the young beautiful people that the Ace lobby was the place to meet and work. Blogs like This Is Going To Be BIG wrote … Continue reading

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What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Now!

Funny that this is the first image that came up when I Googled “What do we want? Change! When do we want it? Now!” “Funny,” because I’m writing about the AIA’s response to the common-sense proposal by Steve Bingler and … Continue reading

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Ferguson, Missouri and the Cost of Sprawl

ENGINEER CHARLES MAROHN makes his usual insightful and interesting points in a post about Ferguson, Missouri on the Strong Towns blog (below). I happened to read the post just before reading an article in the Guardian that had many long quotes from … Continue reading

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The 21st Century Will Be Different Than The 20th

We’re starting to see that people in the 21st century are rejecting many of the trends of the late 20th century. Just as architecture and urbanism in the second half of the 20th century were very different than they had been … Continue reading

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An Oldie But Goodie—sung to the tune of “I Am the Very Model of a Modern Major General”

COLUMBIA ARCHITECTURE PROFESSOR and architectural historian Ken Frampton was once asked about “the cult of New Urbanism.” It’s “ersatz kitsch colonialism for the modern middle class”, he said. Faced with a statement like that, what can one do except write … Continue reading

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