A Natural Fix for Ireland’s ‘Ghost Estates’.

For a fascinating glimpse into how the real estate collapse in Ireland redefined its countryside and what some people are trying to do about it.

Check this out!

A fascinating tour to the heart of the Internet by one of the most popular science journalists writing today.

ANDREW BLUM

Shipping in May 2012

From the Harper-Collins catalogue:

Everybody knows that the Internet is the most powerful information network ever conceived. It is a gateway to information, a messenger of love and a fountain of riches and distraction. We are all connected now, but connected to what? In Tubes, acclaimed young journalist Andrew Blum takes readers on a fascinating journey to find out.

As Blum writes, the Internet is tangible: it fills buildings, converges in some places in the world and avoids others, and it flows through tubes—along train lines and highways, and under oceans. You can map it, smell it and see it. As Tom Vanderbilt does in his bestselling Traffic, Blum goes behind the scenes of our everyday lives and combines first-rate reporting and en- gaging explanation into a fast-paced quest to explain the world in which we live. The room in Los Angeles where the Internet was born; the busy hub in downtown Toronto that links Canada with the world; a new undersea cable that connects West Africa and Europe; and the Great Pyramids of our time, the monumental data centres that Google and Facebook have built in the wilds of Oregon—Blum visits them all to chronicle the dramatic story of the Internet’s development and explain how it all works.

ANDREW BLUM, who studied human geography [with Laura] at the University of Toronto, is a correspondent at Wired magazine and a contributing editor at Metropolis. His work has also appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Globe and Mail, the National Post, Saturday Night, BusinessWeek, Slate and Popular Science, among many other publications. He lives in New York City.

Visit him online at www.andrewblum.net.

Warning of Urban Sprawl…in 1959.

For those of you interested in planning history, here’s a link to a PSA, which is a blast from the past. It reminds me of a combination of Rocky & Bullwinkle cartoons and my Planning 101 class.

It’s worth the watch!

Think carefully, though, about the promise of planning embedded in the presentation. Compare it to the promise of contemporary planning ideals: are our hopes for new/green/sustainable urbanism that much different in their naivete than in the postwar period?

Our 4th year political ecology classroom: tagged

Ben Huff, a fourth year political ecology student working on his Bachelor in Environmental Studies, considered the classroom from a political ecological perspective for his term paper.

He writes, “Regardless of what is taught inside mainstream universities, including alternatives to the current economic system such as ecological and environmental economics, it is the form of the educational system, bound within western neoliberalism, which produces the desired effect of capitalism and undermines content. The classroom emerges as a landscape that reproduces and maintains the ideologies necessary for global capitalism to continue.”

“Our classrooms, as landscapes, adhere to the processes of global capitalism by being place-less, non-descript and easily enter-changeable. Greenwood argues, “place-consciousness reveals how schooling itself, and assumptions about school success and failure, remain a function of the larger process of cultural and ecological colonization endemic to Western industrialized societies” (2009, 1). In sense, the classroom, devoid of a transparent history assists in masking our own participation in colonialism.”

Way to go, Ben!

If you’re interested in issues around post-war suburbs and Modernist architecture and heritage, you might be interested in a recent forum held by Heritage Toronto.

Along with several other speakers, I presented on the cultural landscapes of Modernist high-rises. The purpose of my presentation was to say that cultural landscape qualities should be considered as park of Modernist high rise heritage, not just the building architecture. Consideration of the landscape of the towers will be important if tower neighbourhood renewal proceeds.

Here’s the link: North York Modernist Heritage Forum

There’s a video of all of the presentations, in order. I’m at 1:00:45, if you’re interested.

Thursday November 3^rd 2011
North York Civic Centre 7-9pm
Theme: Suburbia: Heritage of the Everyday

Laura Taylor’s talk:
Cultural landscapes of North York’s Modernist high-rises

Landscape of the tower communities: Finch & Sentinel

If you’re interested in greenbelts, you should join the Global Greenbelts Network. It’s new and should be an interesting group. I just recently joined, after having attended the conference hosted by the Friends of the Greenbelt Foundation back in March.

Look for Amati and Taylor coming soon in the Town & Country Planning Review with a brilliant review of the conference.

For more info try http://www.globalgreenbeltsconference.ca/

Marco Amati visits the Greenbelt in Vaughan in March 2011

Planning for the future of avenues is not news in the City of Toronto, a city of long straight streets. With a main planning goal of reurbanization, city planners have been looking at the redevelopment potential of the giant grid of the city’s mainstreets since Barton Myers and George Baird worked on Dundas Sherbourne Infill Housing in the mid-1970s, published in Design Quarterly’s “Vacant Lottery” in 1980.

But how can intensification work for seniors? The grey tsunami is fast-approaching. Those planning Toronto’s avenues might do well to consider the needs of the elderly in their Avenue Study.

A recent graduate of the MES program considered just that in her Avenue Study. Drawing on current guidelines for designing for seniors, Kendra Fitzrandolph produced an excellent study on the potential for an area along Yonge Street to be redesigned with seniors in mind.

An Age Friendly Avenue Study

On April 8th, urban design students presented their ideas in support of Vaughan’s planned metropolitan centre, which is to be transformed from a large-scale big box landscape to a subway-oriented downtown.

The idea of a resort-style model organized around a multi-themed park at the subway entrance was particularly compelling. The group also underscored the need to tame Highway 7 through the creation of a multi-way boulevard and provided several precedents (see also http://www.futureofbothell.com/projects/185th-connector-and-park as perhaps the newest planned highway-taming in North America).

Transformation presentation: Vaughan Transformation

Public realm and multi-way proposal: VMCprecedentsApr3

March 22nd-24th, Radisson Hotel, Toronto, Ontario.

ENVS 6124 Urban-regional planning students created posters summarizing their analysis of the Greater Golden Horseshoe Greenbelt in Toronto. What can the Greenbelt teach us about governance and growth management?  How do Greenbelt goals resonate with ecological values? Who is the Greenbelt for and how is it represented in marketing?

The posters were displayed for the duration of the conference and provided delegates with a comprehensive picture of the issues facing contemporary greenbelt planning. See http://www.globalgreenbeltsconference.ca for a report on the conference.

Ecological Values Food Security Marketing Social Justice

Growth Management Governance Transportation