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YouTube Channels To Learn About Urbanism, Transit, Climate, Etc.

December 13, 2021 Featured, Site Info Comments Off on YouTube Channels To Learn About Urbanism, Transit, Climate, Etc.
Screenshot of my first upload to YouTube, June 26, 2006

These days urbanists wanting to communicate with the masses are more likely to use video, compared to written text and static images. Video is a great medium. Of course today YouTube is the video streaming service that pops into your head first.

YouTube is an American online video sharing and social media platform owned by Google. It was launched on February 14, 2005 by Steve Chen, Chad Hurley, and Jawed Karim. It is the second most visited website, right after Google itself. YouTube has more than one billion monthly users who collectively watch more than one billion hours of videos each day. As of May 2019, videos were being uploaded at a rate of more than 500 hours of content per minute. (Wikipedia)

When I began blogging on 10/31/2004 YouTube didn’t exist. Seriously. YouTube first began three and a half months after I started this blog.

My first video posted to YouTube was June 20, 2006 — five months before Google bought YouTube. If not for my February 2008 stroke I might have shifted to video as my primary medium. Can’t go back and change history, it is what it is.

Thankfully there are lots of channels of interest to this urbanist.

Today’s post is a list of YouTube channels I watch regularly, with two sample videos from each. These are in random order, not ranked. The style of each YouTuber is unique, some contain a few words that might offend.

Not Just Bikes:

Alan Fisher — The ArmChair Urbanist:

CityNerd:

City Beautiful:

Climate Town:

RM Transit:

Practical Engineering:

It’s History:

TED: (varied topics, not just urban-related)

UrbanReviewSTLdotcom: My first YouTube video, below, was posted on June 20,2006 — before Google announced it was buying the platform!

As I find more great channels I might add them to this post, if you know of any include in a comment under the post on Facebook, Instagram, or Twitter.

— Steve Patterson

 

Reading: Touching the City: Thoughts on Urban Scale by Timothy Makower

March 25, 2016 Books, Featured, Planning & Design Comments Off on Reading: Touching the City: Thoughts on Urban Scale by Timothy Makower

One of the things that attracted me to St. Louis, when passing through in 1990, was the urban scale. Scale is a great differentiator from suburbia. Touching the City: Thoughts on Urban Scale by Timothy Makower takes an in-depth look into the subject — the “experience of size”, the “spaces between buildings”.

The publisher’s description:

Scale in cities is relative and absolute. It has the ability to make us feel at home in the world or alien from it; connected or disconnected. Both large and small scale in cities can be beautiful; both are right, neither is wrong. Whilst accepting that prescription is no answer, ‘getting the scale right’ – at an intuitive and sensual level – is a fundamental part of the magic of architecture and urban design. Touching the City explores how scale is manifested in cities, exploring scale in buildings, in the space between them and in their details. It asks how scale makes a difference. Travelling from Detroit to Chandigarh, via New York, London, Paris, Rome and Doha, Tim Makower explores cities with the analytical eye of a designer and with the experiential eye of the urban dweller. Looking at historic cities, he asks what is good about them: what can we learn from the old to inform the new? The book zooms in from the macro scale of surfing Google Earth to micro moments such as finding fossils in a weathered wall. It examines the dynamics and movement patterns of cities, the making of streets and skylines, the formation of thresholds and facades, and it also touches on the process of design and the importance of drawing. As the book’s title, Touching the City, suggests, it also emphasises the tactile – that the city is indeed something physical, something we can touch and be touched by, alive and ever changing.

Here’s the Table of Contents:

  • AcknowledgementsForeword: Scaling the XXL – Kees Christiaanse
  • Introduction
  • Chapter 1: On Scale and Size
  • Chapter 2: On Scale and Movement
  • Chapter 3: On Scale and Edges
  • Chapter 4: On Scale and Grain
  • Chapter 5: On Scale and Form
  • Chapter 6: On Scale, Skeletons and Surface
  • Chapter 7: On Scale and Detail
  • Conclusion: From Nature

As you can see, there are many aspects when examining scale.

— Steve Patterson

 

Eight Great New Books on Urban Planning

Book publishers have been busy this year, here are eight books I received that expand and illustrate the latest efforts of planners to design cities & suburbs for people, not just their cars.

charter_book_cover

Charter of the New Urbanism, 2nd Edition, edited by Emily Talen

Thoroughly updated to cover the latest environmental, economic, and social implications of urban design, Charter of the New Urbanism, Second Edition features insightful writing from 62 authors on each of the Charter’s principles. Featuring new photos and illustrations, it is an invaluable resource for design professionals, developers, planners, elected officials, and citizen activists. Real-world case studies, plans, and examples are included throughout.

My take: An important update to the 1999 original. A must-read for advocates & critics of New Urbanism.

City-Rules-cover

City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form by Emily Talen

Many planners look down on zoning and think of it more as limiting rather than enabling. While the initial intentions behind zoning were noble and egalitarian, zoning became a huge disappointment in many cities, failing to either protect the public good, promote public health, or keep nuisances away from people. These discrepancies between zoning intentions and its outcomes have become subjects of heated debate among planners and policymakers. For example, how does top-down zoning stack up against the virtues of self-regulating voluntary cities? Does Houston’s model of land development, regulation based solely on the inner workings of the private market, exemplify a more efficient, democratic, and egalitarian planning mechanism compared to the growth boundaries and zoning laws of Portland, Oregon? How has zoning affected residents’ quality of life? And, can we conclude that zoning regulations have become instruments for snobbism and exclusion? Against the backdrop of these questions and debates, City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form critically examines zoning and explores why it has sometimes harmed more than helped cities.

My take: This book has long been needed to show the unintended consequences of use-based “Euclidean” zoning, how we need to change our regulations to achieve a more desirable outcome.

designing-suburban-futures-cover

Designing Suburban Futures: New Models From Build A Better Burb by June Williamson

Suburbs deserve a better, more resilient future. June Williamson shows that suburbs aren’t destined to remain filled with strip malls and excess parking lots; they can be reinvigorated through inventive design. Drawing on award-winning design ideas for revitalizing Long Island, she offers valuable models not only for U.S. suburbs, but also those emerging elsewhere with global urbanization.

Williamson argues that suburbia has historically been a site of great experimentation and is currently primed for exciting changes. Today, dead malls, aging office parks, and blighted apartment complexes are being retrofitted into walkable, sustainable communities. Williamson shows how to expand this trend, highlighting promising design strategies and tactics.

My take: Excellent color color illustrations show how to design better suburbs, without trying to make them into Manhattan.  A great design resource!

goodcities-betterlives-cover

Good Cities, Better Lives: How Europe Discovered the Lost Art of Urbanism by Peter Hall

The book is in three parts. Part 1 analyses the main issues for urban planning and development – in economic development and job generation, sustainable development, housing policy, transport and development mechanisms – and probes how practice in the UK has fallen short.

Part Two embarks on a tour of best-practice cities in Europe, starting in Germany with the country’s boosting of its cities’ economies, moving to the spectacularly successful new housing developments in the Netherlands, from there to France’s integrated city transport, then to Scandinavia’s pursuit of sustainability for its cities, and finally back to Germany, to Freiburg – the city that ‘did it all’.

Part Three sums up the lessons of Part Two and sets out the key steps needed to launch a new wave of urban development and regeneration on a radically different basis.

My take: Hall takes a complex problem and breaks it down into manageable lessons.

green-cities-europe-cover

Green Cities of Europe: Global Lessons on Green Urbanism, edited by Timothy Beatley

Timothy Beatley has brought together leading experts from Paris, Freiburg, Copenhagen, Helsinki, Heidelberg, Venice, Vitoria-Gasteiz, and London to illustrate groundbreaking practices in sustainable urban planning and design. These cities are developing strong urban cores, building pedestrian and bicycle infrastructure, and improving public transit. They are incorporating ecological design and planning concepts, from solar energy to natural drainage and community gardens. And they are changing the way government works, instituting municipal “green audits” and reforming economic incentives to encourage sustainability.

My take: Contributors look at 7 European cities, then Beatley draws conclusions. I’ve not yet visited Europe so I don’t have personal experience to draw from, but now I want to go more than ever.

nature-urban-design-cover

The Nature of Urban Design: A New York Perspective On Resilience by Alexander Washburn

In this visually rich book, Alexandros Washburn, Chief Urban Designer of the New York Department of City Planning, redefines urban design. His book empowers urbanites and lays the foundations for a new approach to design that will help cities to prosper in an uncertain future. He asks his readers to consider how cities shape communities, for it is the strength of our communities, he argues, that will determine how we respond to crises like Hurricane Sandy, whose floodwaters he watched from his home in Red Hook, Brooklyn.

My take: Washburn helps the reader look at the city differently, and care about its future. His approach works regardless of your city.

principals-urban-retail-cover

Principles of Urban Retail: Planning and Development by Robert J. Gibbs

The retail environment has evolved rapidly in the past few decades, with the retailing industry and its placement and design of “brick-and-mortar” locations changing with evolving demographics, shopping behavior, transportation options and a desire in recent years for more unique shopping environments.

Written by a leading expert, this is a guide to planning for retail development for urban planners, urban designers and architects. It includes an overview of history of retail design, a look at retail and merchandising trends, and principles for current retail developments.

My take: St. Louis planners, aldermen, retail developers, and urban naysayers need to study this book cover to cover!

urban-planning-handbook-cover

The Urban Masterplanning Handbook by Eric Firley & Katharina Groen

A highly illustrated reference tool, this handbook provides comparative visual analysis of major urban extensions and masterplans around the world. It places an important new emphasis on the processes and structures that influence urban form, highlighting the significant impact that public or private landownership, management and funding might have on shaping a particular project. Each of the book’s 20 subjects is rigorously analysed through original diagrams, scale drawings and descriptive texts, which are complemented by key statistics and colour photography. The case studies are presented in order of size rather than date or geographical location. This offers design professionals, developers and city planners, as well as students of architecture and urban design informed organisational and formal comparisons, leading to intriguing insights.

My take: Wow, so much useful information is packed into this book, presented in a way to make it easily accessible.

— Steve Patterson

 

 

 

 

 

 

Fragmentation May Stall Urbanization of the St. Louis Region

December 5, 2008 Downtown 26 Comments

‘Urbanization’ means different things to different people. In the broader sense it means the development of formerly undeveloped land – Going from rural/agriculture to suburban/urban. In another way it can mean going from what Christopher B. Leinberger calls “drivable suburbanism” to “walkable urbanism.” In the coming decades I think we will see less of the former and more of the latter.

For those of you in the St. Louis region, don’t think of it as county vs. city. Our situation of having the boundaries of the City of St. Louis held in place by the Missouri Constitution since 1876 is highly unique. Think of it more as drivable vs. walkable. That totally ignores municipal & county boundary lines.

The coming 50-60 years will be very different than the past 50-60 years. As population in metropolitan areas increases this population will increasingly locate not in new edge sprawl in “greenfield” development but in areas that are already “urbanized.” Think about it – regions like St Louis cannot continue consuming land at the periphery as has happened over the last half century. We have reached the point where any further out is just too far.

I love the countryside and rural America and I want it to stay that way.

After my “End of Suburbia” post in June and my “The St. Louis Region Over the Next 50 Years” post in July I lost a potential advertiser that didn’t want to be seen supporting my site if I was making such proclamations about impending doom on the fringe. His clients, mostly builders on the edge, don’t want to hear about the “end of suburbia” because that is all they know.

‘Urbanization’ will shift from being the consumption of farm land to the conversion of non-walkable areas into denser walkable areas. I hope I make it to 2050 because I want to see the change. But it is up to us today to guide and direct the change.

St Louis City may always be separate from St Louis County. Changing the Missouri Constitution to put the city back inside the county seems a tall order. It may not even be the best route to take. St Louis County has “91 municipalities and 9 unincorporated census-designated places” for a total of 99. St. Louis City would make 100! Greater St Louis has quickly grown in size, but not population, to encompass 17 counties – 8 in Illinois and 9 in Missouri. One of those 17 joining another is no longer a relevant discussion.

The total units of government for the region is in the hundreds. Hundreds! Counties, municipalities, school districts, fire protection districts, sewer & water districts, etc. Bi-State/Metro is another without the ability to tax. If we create a transit district in Missouri with the ability to tax that is just one more. The city being part of St Louis County is trivial at this point – the problem is so much bigger than it was in 1950.

The harsh reality is that we need to significantly reduce the number of units of government in order to better guide growth and change in the region over the next 30-40-50-60 years. That means many municipalities go away, becoming parts of a larger city.

Our governmental fragmentation will be the roadblock to future urbanization and population/job growth.

 

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