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CROSSTALK
Jerusalem of Gold and Green
Jerusalem has been described as “golden” by many poets and writers, inspired not only by the golden domes of holy buildings in the city, but also by the special quality of illumination created when the evening sun is reflected from the famous Jerusalem stone which characterizes most buildings in the city, whether new or old. Jerusalem stone has indeed been...
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ESSAY
CROSSTALK
Participation in the Achievement of a Sustainable Ecology: The case of Irla nullah Re-invigoration Movement in Mumbai
As I am writing this piece, the entire state of Kerala in India stands devastated due to floods. It is estimated that more than 300 people have died, 10,000km of roads damaged and property worth millions of rupees lost (yet to be estimated). As per the Times of India report, an Indian daily, “If the National Disaster Management Agency’s (NDMA)...
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GLOBAL
ROUNDTABLE
As a landscape architect, how do you interpret the word “biodiversity”? How does this meaning find expression in your design?
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REVIEWS
REACTIONS
Discovering New Life in the Aging Form of Suburbia
A review of the book Suburban Remix: Creating the Next Generation of Urban Places, Edited by Jason Beske and David Dixon. 2018. 330 pages. ISBN: 9781610918626. Island Press. Buy the book. In the course of solving a design problem, landscape architects and designers will often encounter an unexpected issue that suddenly becomes the real problem to solve and driver of the...
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A Picture We Wished was Worth 1000 Words, But in Fact Only a Few
Sustainable cities can be viewed from multiple perspectives. Each perspective can highlight or mute certain aspects, leading us to take different positions on complex issues. Take for example the recent floods in Kerala, the southernmost state of India. Unprecedented rainfall led to intense floods across the state. Over 400 people lost their lives, and several millions were displaced from their...
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How Greening Strategies Are Displacing Minorities in Post-Harvey Houston
On 14 June 2018, Isabelle Anguelovski participated in the panel Designing, Planning and Paying for Resilience at Rice University Kinder Institute for Urban Research, where she and other leading experts discussed flood mitigation strategies such as low impact design, green infrastructure and urban-scale greenspace preservation, and how they interact with a community’s broader planning efforts. These are Isabelle’s insights from the panel. What kind of...
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Connect Urban Planners and Urban Ecologists to Create Sustainable Canadian Cities
The Challenge of Managing Urban Ecosystems Cities are increasingly understood as mosaics of grey, green, and blue infrastructure that interact in complex ways to affect the wellbeing of urban residents (Ahern 2007, Svendsen and Northridge 2012). In particular, green and blue infrastructure provides important benefits to urban residents (Lovell and Taylor 2013) such as flood protection by urban wetlands and...
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A City Designed by Trees
Awake a few hours earlier than necessary, we are on bicycles heading through urban infill, in a part of town that used to be Osaka Bay. Moving inland, we pass through a few old shopping arcades, and several dozen close-knit neighborhood blocks where century-old homes with wood frames and soil walls, mingle with newer concrete apartment towers. Ten minutes later,...
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RECENT ROUNDTABLES...
An urban planner and an urban ecologist walk into a bar. They chat about how (and maybe whether) “ecology” could play a bigger role in planning…
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SCIENCE &
TOOLS
A World without Cars, as Imagined by Eric Sanderson
A review of Terra Nova: The New World After Oil, Cars and Suburbs, by Eric W. Sanderson. 2013. ISBN 978-1-4197-0434-5. Abrams Books, New York. 351 pages. “…and thus we layered a continent with asphalt and linoleum.”—Eric Sanderson (Terra...
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PEOPLE &
COMMUNITITES
Linear Parks: Meeting People’s Everyday Needs for Secure Recreation, Commuting, and Access to Nature
In previous contributions to The Nature of Cities (for example, Das (2015); Tsur (2014)), some authors have reported successful experiences or projects of linear open spaces providing green access to more people across neighborhoods or adapting old infrastructure to modern needs. Linear parks are longitudinal areas, both green and grey, including greenways/corridors and urban edges; blue ways/waterfronts and transportation infrastructure...
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PLACE &
DESIGN
Full Function May Remain Out of Reach, But Urban Stream Restoration Can Empower Communities
A review of Restoring Neighborhood Streams: Planning, Design, and Construction. By Ann L. Riley. 2016. Island Press, Washington, D.C. ISBN: 9781610917391. 288 pages. Buy the book. The basic challenge of restoring urban streams that support diverse environmental, social, and ecological functions is that these functions are inextricably linked to the surrounding watershed. Development in urban watersheds changes vegetation cover, soils, flow paths, and...
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ART &
AWARENESS
A Barley Field Grows on Soviet Concrete
In the summer of 2016, the largest Soviet-era residential area of Estonia was living a new life. The district Lasnamäe, including Estonia’s capital city, Tallinn, was built in the late 70s, but it has fallen into stagnation. Little has changed since its inception, and those big plans are still unfinished. A vast traffic channel to the city center is waiting...
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