Urban Revolution
“..the revolutionary rhetoric of Modernism passed a death sentence on the street.”– Stephen Marshall, Streets and Patterns
I lobbed a few easy questions at the end of my last post:
“What has happened to Great North Road that makes is so low scoring in this analysis and so seemingly low value on the ground?”…
30 Comments Broadway Junction Development
Thanks to SolR in my post yesterday the possible closing of Sarawia St we have some more information what may happen with the area above the Newmarket railway junction. We saw a different design for it earlier this year but not much other information about the project.…
Return of the walking city
..The City is never complete, never at rest. Thousands of witting and unwitting acts every day alter its lines in ways that are perceptible only over a certain stretch of time. -Spiro Kostof
I was inspired by Patrick’s recent transit dividend post where he documented the laneways around the Pacific and Matt’s people buy stuff and wanted to look a little closer at the things happening on the street which to me are fascinating and representative of a highly dynamic urban ecosystem.…
Auckland’s Place Premium
In a recent post I graphically represented the land values throughout the Auckland city centre as a function of their “frontage value” which generated some surprising results. The exercise revealed a place premium associated with real estate located in the lower Queen Street valley.…
Give us our Waterfront
Most people who visit the Wynyard quarter love the development that has occurred there so far. It is very different to how we have developed things in the past and a lot more emphasis has been put on pedestrians and how it ties in to the water.…
What makes open spaces work
Thanks to John from my post the other day on shared spaces for providing the link for this video. It is just under 60 minutes long but well worth watching. It is described as:
Small fragment of William H. Whyte’s witty and original film about the open spaces of cities and why some of them work for people while others do not.…
Streets: A Platform for Creating Value
My last post discussed the inherent tension between through and to movement. I argued that where there is increased pedestrian angst there is a place dividend that naturally seeks to be realised. This post takes a related theoretical understanding of streets and urbanism and applies it to Auckland’s city centre.…
The difference that street width makes
I stumbled (via Price Tags) across a really fantastic site earlier today which really highlights the difference that street width makes to the feel of a place – taking a number of streets in Los Angeles and manipulating the image to reduce the street width.…
The NZ Police – Enabling crime through poor urban design
One of the most unfortunate consequences of bad urban design is that there is a loss of “eyes on the street” and a concomitant reduction in safety and security. Basically, if there are more people walking around, then the safer people will feel and the more willing they are to walk (holding other factors constant).…
Lower Hobson viaduct to go!
Out of all the exciting plans and strategies for Auckland’s future that we’ve heard about over the past few days, perhaps the one proposal that gets me most excited is the prospect that the horrific Lower Hobson Street viaduct might be demolished.…
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