December 15th, 2010 
admin 
In my previous post I talked about how in the future we will be needing to retrofit our malls and redevelop our suburbs into mixed use communities that are human scale rather than reliant on the car. One great example of this is the redevelopment of the Cottonwood Mall in Utah. This mall is known for being the first mall in Utah and now is being known as the first mall to be turned into a neighborhood.
Posted in Adaptive Reuse, New Urbanism, Redevelopment 
Tags: Cottenwood Mall, mall, mixed use, neighborhood, new urbanism, retrofitting, Utah, walkable 
10 Comments » December 13th, 2010 admin 
In January Ellen Dunham- Jones talked at TED about the importance of transforming our existing suburbs into something tat is more sustainable and more inhabitable. “In the past 50 years we have been building the suburbs with a lot of unintended consequences” She says. She goes on to continue that she believed the next 50 years we will …
Posted in Adaptive Reuse, New Urbanism, Planning, Redevelopment Tags: mall, neighborhood, retrofitting, suburbs, TED, urban sprawl, urbanism 4 Comments » December 9th, 2010 admin 
Shanghai has gone through a tremendous development over the last 2 decades. There have been several other cities that have changed dramatically over the years, Berlin and Dubai being the ones that I can think of off the top of my head, but Shanghai is a little different. Berlin has changed dramatically to rebuild what was destroyed during World War II and Dubai has misused its wealth to create a city that will never live up to what it wants.
Posted in Planning, Redevelopment Tags: China, development, economy, growth, Shanghai, skyline 8 Comments » December 6th, 2010 admin 
Over the years Karvik has lost its bond with the sea that it borders. The waterfront, which was once what the city relied on, is now nothing more than a city limit. Kjellgren Kaminsky Architects came up with a design that brings back life to this harbor and makes it the heart of the city. The design uses sightlines and walkways to create connection rather than just introducing bridges.
Posted in Redevelopment Tags: connectivity, harbor, karvik, kjellgren kaminsky, walkable No Comments » December 4th, 2010 admin 
Pixar’s recent movie ‘Up’ is a story of an old man who refuses to give up his house to a monstrous development that is eating up all the homes in his neighborhood. It comes to a point that there is nothing left around him except for high-rise businesses. This notion is an exaggerated representation of how development companies find a way to buy up all the houses in a neighborhood.
December 1st, 2010 admin 
Walmart is talking about building stores in serveal major cities including New York, San Francisco, and Washington DC. The new stores will be significantly smaller than the super centers that exist in the suburbs. The stores will be closer to 20 thousand square feet as opposed to 150 thousand. This drastic change is size is just one of the hurdles that Walmart is facing when trying to relocate to our cities.
Posted in Redevelopment Tags: changing market, independently owned shops, redevelopment, relocate, urban walmart, Walmart 1 Comment » November 29th, 2010 admin 
When traveling, I realized that most of Berlin has little traces of the actual wall. The footprint of the wall remains throughout the city represented in a brick line, but other than that, buildings and roads have replaced any signs of the wall. I feel that this is partly because the residents of Berlin want to try to forget about the wall. They know it is part of their history, but they don’t want to show off a part of their past that they are not proud of. None-the-less the wall has made an impact on the urban layout of the city. Places where the wall was are now replaced by streets and sometimes even are covered up by buildings.
Posted in Planning, Redevelopment Tags: berlin, berlin wall, Germany, potzdamer platz, rebuild 10 Comments » October 29th, 2010 admin It took me a while to recognize what I was seeing. It was an ordinary campsite in Pembrokeshire: a square field with tents around the perimeter. But it had a curious effect on the children staying there. Young people who had seldom experienced daylight slowly emerged from their tents and were drawn towards the centre of the field. Bats and balls left on the grass mysteriously appeared in their hands. Children with no prior interest in sport started playing football, cricket and rounders. Little kids ran around with older ones. As children of all classes played together, their parents started talking to each other. It hit me with some force: we had reinvented the village green.
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