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Right on! Human scale - not human sized
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Jul 20 2006, 2:08 PM EDT by
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Thread started: Jul 20 2006, 2:08 PM EDT
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I brilliant blurb on the so often abused idea of human scale. It so true that when we are walking down the street we are not considering how tall the building above us but rather what an interesting bike or shirt that is in the window. Keep up the great work here!
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melanie |
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cars and the built environment
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Jul 19 2006, 6:35 AM EDT by
melanie |
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Thread started: Jul 17 2006, 10:53 PM EDT
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I look forward to your essay on the growth of suburbia which, while dependent on cars, could result from either an attempt to escape from a city destroyed by cars or an attempt to escape from (urban?) society for other reasons.
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RE: cars and the built environment
By: melanie,
Jul 19 2006, 6:35 AM EDT
"Oh, Melanie! You have too much confidence in me! Kidding aside, though, thanks for stopping in and leaving a comment. As for whether I'll ever write anything about suburbia, which gives me the hives, ...I don't know.
But maybe this, for now: I just listened to a couple of really interesting talks on TedBlog (see http://tedblog.typepad.com/tedblog/2006/06/sir_ken_robinso.html for example), including David Pogue (and Majora Carter, about whom I added a little entry under the "Greens promote 'denser' communities..." -- she's fantastic), and this leads me to the following snippy observation (inspired perhaps by Mr.Pogue): the city can be like a good Apple product (and I say this despite the fact that I'm mad at Apple because their product broke on me), but suburbia is definitely MS Windows all the way... Clunky, overburdened, over-tapped, badly designed. And, just like Windows, with 95% of the market share, grrr!" I'll download it at work. I'm still on dialup at home - not only due to my own incompetence. Suburbia has changed too I think - especially with the advent of standardized designs and smaller blocks of land. There's a great Australian movie called <i>The Castle</i> on the subject.
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Human Scale in Vancouver
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Jul 17 2006, 2:29 PM EDT by
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Thread started: Jul 17 2006, 2:14 AM EDT
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Skyscraper Page forumer KeyPlan passes along this essay from the Journal of Urban Design: Street-facing Dwelling Units and Livability: The Impacts of Emerging Building Types in Vancouver's High-Density Neighbourhoods (.pdf) http://www-iurd.ced.berkeley.edu/pub/RP-2005-02.pdf
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RE: Human Scale in Vancouver
By: ,
Jul 17 2006, 2:29 PM EDT
Yes, it's a very interesting analysis by Elizabeth MacDonald. I plan to add a bibliography page soon and include this as a link. I have a couple of annotations for it, too: it did strike me that it focusses on non-mixed use condominiums, which emphasise "front door" townhouses & residential at street level, and the impact this form has in terms of on "eyes on the street" and livability, as per Jane Jacobs. Here in Victoria, two things are different, perhaps: I don't think we'll have the kind of residential concentration Vancouver neighbourhoods analysed by MacDonald have for quite some time, and most of what's getting built here is infill in the downtown core. I.e., it usually includes some retail component at street level, it's often on a commercial street (unlike False Creek, Arbutus Heights, etc.). But there're definitely plenty of useful observations in MacDonald's paper, applicable (in a smaller scale) to here...
One thing that did strike me as hilarious: I have a friend who jokes (acidly) that Victoria has a "Ministry of Perpetual Gardening." It did occur to me that the townhouse residents described by MacDonald must all be official bureaucrats of said ministry... ;-)
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Great essay.
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Jul 16 2006, 2:27 AM EDT by
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Thread started: Jul 16 2006, 2:27 AM EDT
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"Density does not necessarily mean highrises" were Harris' words. A gust of wind was created by the flurry of furious head-nodding and delerious note taking amongst the audience. I dread knowing how this comment will be taken out of context and repeated ad nauseum at every future Council meeting involving a tower over six storeys. Ben Lee clarified for me later about the importance of clustering highrises.
I doubt any of those tiresome Parsiophiles have been more than three blocks away from the Champs-Elysees.
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