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.
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.
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.
November 18th, 2010 admin 
According to a recent column in the LA times, the Los Angeles residents and city officials are happy with the way things are and the majority are not open to change. The author Christopher Hawthorne talks about how he sees a growing number of people opposed to a more pedestrian friendly Los Angeles.
November 16th, 2010 admin 
China is currently developing a bus that is elevated above the road leaving it possible for cars to drive underneath it. This new bus is a great idea for China because it removes the necessity to widen the existing infrastructure (roads.) The Shenzhen Huashi Future Parking Equipment Company is calling this new bus the “3D Express Coach.”
November 14th, 2010 admin 
An unused subway stop located under New York City is starting to attract people. The photos below show the “City Hall” stop that was opened in 1904 however it has not been used for many years. The reason for this is that the “City Hall” stop had very curved tracks. When the train has redesigned, this created a gap that made it dangerous to enter and exit the train.
November 12th, 2010 admin 
New Urbanism is an urban design idea that encourages building walkable communities. The idea is that to be sustainable we must start with our way of life. Introducing green techniques and green building methods do their part in helping the environment but the real way to be sustainable is to live sustainable. By building walkable communities it encourages people to not own cars, live closer to the city, own smaller homes, etc. The hopes of many new urbanism designs are that people live in work in the same area.
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