— The Set Design of Sesame Street. A look at how Jane Jacobs, ideas from “The Death and Life of Great American Cities” were incorporated into Sesame Street’s set design in the 1960s and how the set change since (cleaner, brighter, gentrified).
Posts about Cities (RSS, JSON)
Wednesday, 30 July 2025
Friday, 22 December 2023
— ‘Heat Islands’ Make Australia’s Summer Deadlier. Only mentioned as a side note, but Australian building standards play a huge role in how people cope with extreme heat. A wood frame is thinly cladded, every wall is plaster board, no insulation. Double glazed windows are luxury items. Ask any Australian and they’ll tell you that their houses are built for hot climates but these houses heat up just as fast in summer as they loose heat in winter. It’s almost as if Australians lack understanding of basic physics.
Monday, 28 August 2023
Autonomous Cars Causing Chaos in Our Cities
— Linda Poon:
Just a day after Waymo and Cruise won approval to expand paid driverless taxi services in San Francisco, a fleet of robotaxis froze and snarled traffic in a busy neighborhood. Days later, another autonomous vehicle got stuck in wet cement on a construction site, and yet another crashed into a fire truck.
The digital services we rely on daily are mostly held together by spit and duct tape. You that if you make software for a living. Consequently, autonomous vehicles will cause disruptions and accidents that will in turn lead to casualties. We can’t let self-serving cars on our streets unless they are regulated like banks and air travel to minimise the risk.
On a related note: What we need is fewer cars in our cities, not more. Specifically, we don’t need are cars that are driving around without passengers because robotaxi companies don’t want to pay for parking.
Wednesday, 12 July 2023
— Homes in Britain are built 21 metres apart to protect the privacy of woman in Edwardian times: “a bizarre hangover from 1902, originally intended to protect the modesty of Edwardian women. The urban designers Raymond Unwin and Barry Parker walked apart in a field until they could no longer see each other’s nipples through their shirts. The two men measured the distance between them to be 70ft (21 metres), and this became the distance that is still used today, 120 years later, to dictate how far apart many British homes should be built.”
Tuesday, 11 April 2023
— The city grid is falling out of favour. It’s the most efficient city-planning form for walkability, motorised traffic, public-transport. But gridded street layouts also make boring cities. You rarely find a small park or nice cafe tucked away somewhere, or roads the are pleasant to walk on because they are mostly free from traffic.
Saturday, 18 March 2023
— I always thought this was true; you convert unused office space into housing and solve several problems at once:
There’s an appealing simplicity to the idea of converting office buildings into housing. The premise suggests cities could solve two problems — an office glut and a housing shortage — at once. In the process, they could limit the waste of demolition, create new homes with minimal opposition, and renew neighborhoods without radically changing how they look from the sidewalk.
As it turns out, it’s difficult. Pre-war office buildings are easier to convert than newer steel-and-glass boxes with massive floor plans enabled by air conditioning and bright lighting. Emily Badger and Larry Buchanan explore how office buildings from different eras are converted into apartments.
Monday, 27 February 2023
— Due to low rents, a mall in Portland has attracted independent shops, like a record store and a comic book shop. I’d love an indie shopping mall in Melbourne with bookshops where staff know books, record stores, and magazine shops, maybe even a decent bakery or butcher. It’s what many redevelopments of industrial complexes into shopping areas promise—some genuinely, most just for PR—but never quite pull off. What you get, at most, is shops selling overpriced label-less designer ware to the youth, feel-good shops selling trinkets and self-help books, and a burrito place that looks like it’s local, but in reality, it’s part of a nationwide chain.
Monday, 23 January 2023
Bland Contemporary Architecture
— In America, the Bland, Anne Kodé argues that American cities lose their identity because new buildings all look the same. You could say the same for Europe and Australia. Today’s new builds are designed in line with the current gusto for blocky shapes, big windows and bright colours.
But the new developments aren’t bland because of the way they look. As Kodé points out, with housing architecture, beauty seems to be a matter of historical perspective. No, these buildings feel bland because of what they offer, or not, aside from housing.
I grew up in a socialist apartment block. Some of these are fifty years old now, and you can’t sugarcoat their design even with that benefit of history. It’s beyond bland; it’s so functional that you can objectively call it ugly. Yet, it didn’t feel bland or ugly when we lived there. There was space for the kids to play football and for the parents to meet around a barbecue. It was lively; there was community.
In today’s new builds, what do you find on the first floor? Is it a mixed-use building? Are there shops on the street level? If so, what are these shops, what do they offer, and how do they look?
You likely find the same wherever you go in the western world. It’s coffee shops that look like Apple Stores or shops selling instagrammable gift ideas, self-help books, and postcards with fortune-cookie wisdom. It might be a bank branch or an estate agent’s office. They feel bland because they are not from the local community, not part of the local community. It’s investors setting up shop, and if it doesn’t generate enough revenue, they move on. They are generic, devoid of any character, completely interchangeable—bland.
What would this look like if there was a bookshop run by a person living in the area, who loves books, and their children go to the same school as yours? What if it was similar for a coffee shop, bakery and the grocery store? Or what if there was simply space for folks to gather? People would have a relationship with these places; you’d find them there, meeting, chatting, making it a place of community.
That wouldn’t feel bland, would it?
Thursday, 29 December 2022
In a lovely animated short film, five life-long friends recount life in Brooklyn in the 1970s. (via Waxy.org)
Wednesday, 14 December 2022
— In the 1960s, urban planners drew up plans to build an elevated ring road through inner London, potentially displacing a large population of poorer people. Luckily the plans were scrapped, and the road was never built. It’s hard to imagine today how the highway would have changed London.
Ring road or not, poorer residents were eventually priced out. The areas in the way of the road, including “Earl’s Court, Clapham Junction, Brixton, Blackheath, Hackney Wick, Dalston, Camden, and Kilburn,” are highly sought-after neighbourhoods to live in London today.