archive

The urban grid of modernity

From New Geography, it's an interesting puzzle: The “cool cities”, the ones that are supposedly doing the best, the ones with the hottest downtowns, the biggest buzz, leading-edge new companies, smart shops, swank restaurants and hip hotels are often among those with the highest levels of net domestic outmigration; and from Mahwah to Rahway: New Jersey embodies the American Dream. In New Orleans, a new kind of house is rising from the ruins of Katrina; cheap, green, and radically hip, it may change architecture for a generation. From Triple Canopy, a special issue on urbanisms, in Salt Lake City’s suburbs, the newest great dead American economy lies in wake atop the rumblings of the last one; and from Thomas Aquinas and John the Baptist to cellular automata and intelligent design: How God taught us planning, and where we went wrong. Five ways to change the world: Here's a guide, idiosyncratic and partial, on how architecture can contribute to social reform. The architect as totalitarian: Theodore Dalrymple on Le Corbusier’s baleful influence. From Mute, as the urban grid of modernity gives way to the web, and architecture cedes to the virtual dynamics of tethered electronics, Daniel Miller cracks open the password protected "post-city". A review of Green Metropolis: Why Living Smaller, Living Closer, and Driving Less are the Keys to Sustainability by David Owen (and more and more and more). Green giants: How urban planners are turning industrial eyesores into popular public spaces. A review of Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World by Jeb Brugmann.