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The Atlantic • Cities Aren’t Built for Kids
Edward Glaeser • Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier
This is more or less the argument of Roger Scruton in positioning environmentalism as a deservedly (politically) conservative cause. He writes in Green Philosophy, For the conservative, politics concerns the maintenance and repair of homeostatic systems — systems that correct themselves in response to destabilizing change. Markets are homeostatic s
... See moreSacha Meyers • Bitcoin Is Venice: Essays on the Past and Future of Capitalism
A Beijing courtyard home, in contrast, turns its face inward, hiding its most attractive features behind gates and walls.
Michael Meyer • The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed
Christopher Alexander and the history of design systems
designsystems.com
The preferred and ubiquitous mode of urban development is hostile to both walking and talking. In walking, people become part of their terrain; they meet others; they become custodians of their neighborhoods. In talking, people get to know one another; they find and create their common interests and realize the collective abilities essential to com
... See moreRay Oldenburg • The Great Good Place: Cafes, Coffee Shops, Bookstores, Bars, Hair Salons, and Other Hangouts at the Heart of a Community
This is remarkable. Compared to our colonial ancestors, we throw 25 percent more of our national and personal resources into transportation and we ultimately move no faster. But we do move farther, and Illich might as well have been speaking about contemporary Atlanta when he wrote that “everybody’s daily radius expands at the expense of being able
... See moreJeff Speck • Walkable City: How Downtown Can Save America, One Step at a Time
The success of Lübeck demonstrates important tools for creating thriving cities that apply to this day. Even in the Digital Age, businesspeople like to get together and gossip, trade, compete, and collaborate.
Jonathan F. P. Rose • The Well-Tempered City: What Modern Science, Ancient Civilizations, and Human Nature Teach Us About the Future of Urban Life
The OMA group studied desire lines and used them to plan the campus center, unified by a long single roof. The building wasn’t so much a new creation as an observation of extant use: it effectively enclosed the pathways and connections between activities on campus that were already established.