With surpassing brilliance Jane Jacobs advocated ‘the attrition of automobiles’ in cities ‘by making conditions less convenient for cars’. I write this as a London car driver (and cyclist).
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Posts on Urban Design (+ see introduction to urban design)
The attrition of vehicles by cities is good for cyclists and pedestrians
Posted in cycleways, urban design
Public Open Space parks, squares, landscape character assessment
PPS.org has identified 10 Principles for Successful Squares. Though sensible they remind me of 10 Qualities That Make Him A Perfect Husband or ten qualities to make a Good Wife ‘smart, wise, beautiful, compassionate, funny, hard-working, aesthetically inspired, spiritual, passionately desirous‘. The…
Posted in urban design, urban squares
Prof Richard Sennett attacks a basic principle of landscape architecture
‘Consult the Genius of the Place’, now expressed as ‘design with sensitivity to context’ is the Single Agreed Law of landscape design. It embodies the conviction that we should, as NT Newton put it in the title of a book on the history…
Assessment of public open space POS squares piazzas parks SUPOS
Public open space needs to be assessed as a routine aspect of its planning, design and management. But how should it be done? This was the question Dr Ying Li took for her PhD research at the University of Greenwich…
Air pollution in London – how to solve the problem
King’s College London Air website has made a great contribution to surveying and analysing London’s air pollution problems but hangs up its gloves when faced with the question: CAN ANYTHING BE DONE ABOUT THIS? King’s say ‘a long term problem that has…
Posted in urban design
For want of a landscape architect London’s Garden Bridge was lost
For the want of a nail the shoe was lost, For the want of a shoe the horse was lost, For the want of a horse the rider was lost, For the want of a rider the battle was lost,…
Posted in urban design
London. There is no better place in the world than this wondrous city
In writing about London for Der Spiegel Christoph Scheuermann starts with three problems to which the landcape architecture profession can make a contribution. The crap weather, the traffic, the noise, the obscene amounts of money, the horrific rents, the Central Line during rush hour,…
Posted in urban design
Westminster Bridge should be pedestrianised
We argued in 2015 that Westminster Bridge should be pedestrianised. Following this afternoon’s tragic attack on pedestrians we repeat the call.
Posted in urban design
Landscape, Townscape and Seascape Character Assessment
LI London held a meeting about Character Assessment on 28.11.2016. It was chaired by Robert Holden and the speakers were Christine Tudor (Natural England) Chris Drake (Kent County Council), Jon Rooney (AECOM) and Ben Croot (LDA Design). Having given the subject little…
Posted in landscape planning, urban design
Environmental impact design EID
I first came across the term Environmental Impact Assessment in 1974. Bill Gillespie had been part of a four-firm consortium which won a UNDP contract to produce a plan for the Suez Canal Zone. He sent me (with Paul Taylor)…
Posted in landscape planning, landscape urbanism, urban design Tagged with: environmental impact design
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