1. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  2. ⁘  ⁘  ⁘
  3. Abo, Akinori 9
  4. aesthetics 19
  5. agile 30
  6. Albers, Josef 17
  7. Alexander, Christopher 135
  8. Alexander, Scott 5
  9. Allsopp, John 4
  10. Ammer, Ralph 6
  11. Anderson, Gretchen 7
  12. anxiety 9
  13. Appleton, Maggie 5
  14. Aptekar-Cassels, Wesley 5
  15. Arango, Jorge 4
  16. architecture 110
  17. art 86
  18. Asimov, Isaac 5
  19. attention 17
  20. Auping, Michael 6
  21. Aurelius, Marcus 14
  22. Bachelard, Gaston 12
  23. Baker, Nicholson 10
  24. beauty 58
  25. Behrensmeyer, Anna K. 7
  26. Bjarnason, Baldur 8
  27. Blake, William 5
  28. blogging 22
  29. body 11
  30. Boeing, Geoff 7
  31. boredom 9
  32. Botton, Alain de 38
  33. Brand, Stewart 4
  34. Bringhurst, Robert 16
  35. Brooks, Frederick P. 22
  36. Broskoski, Charles 6
  37. brutalism 7
  38. building 16
  39. bureaucracy 12
  40. Burnham, Bo 9
  41. business 15
  42. Byron, Lord 14
  43. Cagan, Marty 8
  44. Calvino, Italo 21
  45. Camus, Albert 13
  46. care 6
  47. Carruth, Shane 15
  48. Cegłowski, Maciej 6
  49. Cervantes, Miguel de 7
  50. chance 11
  51. change 16
  52. Chiang, Ted 4
  53. childhood 6
  54. Chimero, Frank 17
  55. choice 8
  56. cities 51
  57. Clark, Robin 3
  58. Cleary, Thomas 8
  59. Cleary, J.C. 8
  60. code 20
  61. collaboration 18
  62. collections 31
  63. color 23
  64. commonplace 11
  65. communication 31
  66. community 7
  67. complexity 11
  68. connection 24
  69. constraints 25
  70. construction 9
  71. content 9
  72. Corbusier, Le 13
  73. Coyier, Chris 4
  74. craft 66
  75. creativity 59
  76. crime 9
  77. Critchlow, Tom 5
  78. critique 10
  79. Cross, Nigel 12
  80. Cross, Anita Clayburn 10
  81. css 11
  82. culture 13
  83. curiosity 11
  84. cycles 7
  85. Danielewski, Mark Z. 4
  86. darkness 28
  87. Darwin, Will 10
  88. data 8
  89. death 38
  90. Debord, Guy 6
  91. decisions 10
  92. design 131
  93. details 31
  94. Dickinson, Emily 9
  95. Dieste, Eladio 4
  96. discovery 9
  97. doors 7
  98. Dorn, Brandon 11
  99. drawing 23
  100. Drucker, Peter F. 15
  101. Duany, Andres 18
  102. Eatock, Daniel 4
  103. economics 13
  104. efficiency 7
  105. Eisenman, Peter 8
  106. Eliot, T.S. 14
  107. emotion 8
  108. ending 14
  109. engineering 11
  110. Eno, Brian 4
  111. ethics 14
  112. euphony 38
  113. Evans, Benedict 4
  114. evolution 9
  115. experience 14
  116. farming 8
  117. fashion 11
  118. features 25
  119. feedback 6
  120. flaws 10
  121. Flexner, Abraham 8
  122. food 16
  123. form 19
  124. Fowler, Martin 4
  125. Franklin, Ursula M. 30
  126. friendship 6
  127. fun 7
  128. function 31
  129. games 13
  130. gardens 26
  131. Garfield, Emily 4
  132. Garfunkel, Art 6
  133. geography 8
  134. geometry 18
  135. goals 9
  136. Gombrich, E. H. 4
  137. goodness 12
  138. Graham, Paul 37
  139. graphics 13
  140. Greene, Erick 6
  141. Hamming, Richard 45
  142. happiness 17
  143. Harford, Tim 4
  144. Harper, Thomas J. 15
  145. Hayes, Brian 28
  146. heat 7
  147. Heinrich, Bernd 7
  148. Herbert, Frank 4
  149. Heschong, Lisa 27
  150. Hesse, Herman 6
  151. history 13
  152. Hoffman, Yoel 10
  153. Hofstadter, Douglas 6
  154. home 15
  155. Hoy, Amy 4
  156. Hoyt, Ben 5
  157. html 11
  158. Hudlow, Gandalf 4
  159. humanity 16
  160. humor 6
  161. Huxley, Aldous 7
  162. hypermedia 22
  163. i 18
  164. ideas 21
  165. identity 33
  166. images 10
  167. industry 9
  168. information 42
  169. infrastructure 17
  170. innovation 15
  171. interaction 10
  172. interest 10
  173. interfaces 37
  174. intuition 8
  175. invention 10
  176. Irwin, Robert 65
  177. Isaacson, Walter 28
  178. Ishikawa, Sara 33
  179. iteration 13
  180. Ive, Jonathan 6
  181. Jackson, Steven J. 14
  182. Jacobs, Jane 54
  183. Jacobs, Alan 5
  184. Jobs, Steve 20
  185. Jones, Nick 5
  186. Kahn, Louis 4
  187. Kakuzō, Okakura 23
  188. Kaufman, Kenn 4
  189. Keith, Jeremy 6
  190. Keller, Jenny 10
  191. Keqin, Yuanwu 8
  192. Ketheswaran, Pirijan 6
  193. Kingdon, Jonathan 5
  194. Kitching, Roger 7
  195. Klein, Laura 4
  196. Kleon, Austin 13
  197. Klinkenborg, Verlyn 24
  198. Klyn, Dan 20
  199. knowledge 29
  200. Kohlstedt, Kurt 12
  201. Kramer, Karen L. 10
  202. Krishna, Golden 10
  203. Kuma, Kengo 18
  204. language 20
  205. learning 30
  206. life 59
  207. light 31
  208. loneliness 12
  209. love 26
  210. Lovell, Sophie 16
  211. Lupton, Ellen 11
  212. Luu, Dan 8
  213. Lynch, Kevin 12
  214. MacIver, David R. 8
  215. MacWright, Tom 5
  216. Magnus, Margaret 12
  217. making 77
  218. management 14
  219. Manaugh, Geoff 27
  220. Markson, David 16
  221. Mars, Roman 13
  222. material 39
  223. math 16
  224. McCarter, Robert 21
  225. meaning 33
  226. media 16
  227. melancholy 52
  228. memory 29
  229. metaphor 10
  230. metrics 19
  231. microsites 49
  232. Miller, J. Abbott 10
  233. Mills, C. Wright 9
  234. minimalism 10
  235. Miyazaki, Hayao 30
  236. Mod, Craig 15
  237. modularity 6
  238. Mollison, Bill 31
  239. morality 8
  240. Murakami, Haruki 21
  241. music 16
  242. Müller, Boris 7
  243. Naka, Toshiharu 8
  244. names 11
  245. Naskrecki, Piotr 5
  246. nature 51
  247. networks 15
  248. Neustadter, Scott 3
  249. Noessel, Christopher 7
  250. notetaking 35
  251. novelty 11
  252. objects 16
  253. order 10
  254. ornament 9
  255. Orwell, George 7
  256. Ott, Matthias 4
  257. ownership 6
  258. Pallasmaa, Juhani 41
  259. Palmer, John 8
  260. patterns 11
  261. Patton, James L. 9
  262. Pawson, John 21
  263. perception 22
  264. perfection 7
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  266. Perrine, John D. 9
  267. Petroski, Henry 24
  268. philosophy 6
  269. photography 20
  270. physics 6
  271. Pinker, Steven 8
  272. place 14
  273. planning 15
  274. Plater-Zyberk, Elizabeth 18
  275. poetry 13
  276. politics 9
  277. Pollan, Michael 6
  278. practice 10
  279. problems 31
  280. process 22
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  282. productivity 12
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  284. programming 9
  285. progress 16
  286. Pye, David 42
  287. quality 26
  288. questions 8
  289. Radić, Smiljan 20
  290. Rams, Dieter 16
  291. Rao, Venkatesh 14
  292. reading 16
  293. reality 13
  294. Reichenstein, Oliver 5
  295. religion 11
  296. Rendle, Robin 12
  297. repair 28
  298. research 17
  299. Reveal, James L. 4
  300. Richards, Melanie 3
  301. Richie, Donald 10
  302. Rougeux, Nicholas 4
  303. Rowe, Peter G. 10
  304. Rupert, Dave 4
  305. Ruskin, John 5
  306. Satyal, Parimal 9
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  308. Sayers, Dorothy 32
  309. Schaller, George B. 7
  310. Schwulst, Laurel 5
  311. science 17
  312. seeing 36
  313. Sennett, Richard 45
  314. senses 11
  315. Seuss, Dr. 14
  316. Shakespeare, William 4
  317. Shorin, Toby 8
  318. silence 9
  319. Silverstein, Murray 33
  320. Simms, Matthew 19
  321. Simon, Paul 6
  322. simplicity 14
  323. Singer, Ryan 12
  324. skill 17
  325. Sloan, Robin 5
  326. Smith, Cyril Stanley 29
  327. Smith, Justin E. H. 6
  328. Smith, Rach 4
  329. socializing 7
  330. society 23
  331. software 68
  332. solitude 12
  333. Somers, James 8
  334. Sorkin, Michael 56
  335. sound 14
  336. space 20
  337. Speck, Jeff 18
  338. spirit 10
  339. streets 10
  340. structure 13
  341. Strunk, William 15
  342. Ström, Matthew 13
  343. style 30
  344. Sun, Chuánqí 15
  345. symbols 12
  346. systems 18
  347. Sōetsu, Yanagi 34
  348. Sōseki, Natsume 8
  349. Tanaka, Tomoyuki 9
  350. Tanizaki, Jun'ichirō 15
  351. taste 10
  352. Taylor, Dorian 16
  353. teaching 21
  354. teamwork 17
  355. technology 41
  356. texture 7
  357. thinking 31
  358. Thoreau, Henry David 8
  359. time 54
  360. Tolkien, J.R.R. 6
  361. tools 32
  362. touch 8
  363. transportation 16
  364. Trombley, Nick 44
  365. truth 15
  366. Tufte, Edward 31
  367. Turrell, James 6
  368. typography 25
  369. understanding 32
  370. urbanism 68
  371. ux 100
  372. Victor, Bret 9
  373. Viollet-le-Duc, Eugène 4
  374. vision 7
  375. visualization 34
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  378. walking 23
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  383. Watterson, Bill 4
  384. Webb, Matt 14
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  386. Weber, Michael H. 3
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Our Urban Environment

Close
  • 21. Four-Story Limit

    Problem

    There is abundant evidence to show that high buildings make people crazy.

    Solution

    In any urban area, no matter how dense, keep the majority of buildings four stories high or less. It is possible that certain buildings should exceed this limit, but they should never be buildings for human habitation.

    Christopher Alexander, Murray Silverstein & Sara Ishikawa, A Pattern Language
    1. ​​In every skyscraper​​
    2. ​​It begins with a trip down the stairs​​
    3. ​​Low wooden silhouettes​​
    4. ​​Skyscrapers are frowned upon​​
    • cities
    • urbanism
    • home
  • Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks

    The contents of the city's images which are referable to physical forms can conveniently be classified into five types of elements: paths, edges, districts, nodes, and landmarks.

    1. Paths are the channels along which the observer customarily, occasionally, or potentially moved.
    2. Edges are the linear elements not used or considered as paths by the observer. They are the boundaries.
    3. Districts are the medium-to-large sections of the city, conceived of as having two-dimensional extent.
    4. Nodes are points, the strategic spots in a city into which an observer can enter, and which are the intensive foci to and from which they are traveling.
    5. Landmarks are another type of point-reference, but in this case the observer does not enter within them, they are external. They are usually a rather simply defined physical object: building, sign, store, or mountain.
    Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
    1. ​​City districts​​
    2. ​​As a kind of gateway​​
    • cities
  • A collection of villages

    I became a 'border person', as defined by the sociologist and philosopher Max Weber, viewing Tokyo from an outsider's perspective. Observing the city while walking around its streets enabled me to discover a wide variety of location, cultures and people, and that Tokyo is a collection of small villages, rather than one big city.

    ...When I design a building in any city, I believe that the world is a collection of villages, instead of a group of nations.

    Kengo Kuma, My Life as an Architect in Tokyo
    • cities
  • Illa de la Discòrdia

    Screenshot of en.wikipedia.org on 2021-10-14 at 12.16.07 PM.png

    A city block on Passeig de Gràcia in the Eixample district of Barcelona, Catalonia, Spain. The block is noted for having buildings by four of Barcelona's most important Modernista architects, Lluís Domènech i Montaner, Antoni Gaudí, Josep Puig i Cadafalch and Enric Sagnier, in close proximity. As the four architects' styles were very different, the buildings clash with each other and the neighboring buildings.

    Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
    • style
    • architecture
    • cities
  • Urban form and grain

    Screen Shot 2020-10-09 at 10_41_09 AM.png

    One square mile of different cities' street networks, held at the same scale to compare the urban form and grain.

    Geoff Boeing, The Right Tools for the Job
    1. ​​Cityspace series​​
    • maps
    • cities
  • Names vs. The Nothing

    This is the first site along the tour. In here we have a void. I remember the building that used to stand here, it was painted blue. Passing through it, you can imagine how us, as ghosts – should the building be standing here – would have to actually be invisible to pass through these walls and now it’s the reverse. The building is the ghost and we’re passing through these walls.

    Graham Coreil-Allen & Roman Mars, 99% Invisible
    99percentinvisible.org
    1. ​​New Public Sites​​
    2. ​​Local Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design & The Nature of Cities​​
    • emptiness
    • names
    • cities
  • The linear city

    The linear city was an urban plan for an elongated urban formation. The city would consist of a series of functionally specialized parallel sectors.

    As the city expanded, additional sectors would be added to the end of each band, so that the city would become ever longer, without growing wider.

    Wikipedia
    en.wikipedia.org
    1. ​​Snowpiercer​​
    2. ​​109. Long Thin House​​
    3. ​​Ideas for linear cities​​
    • urbanism
    • cities
  • A dialogue between homogeneity and exception

    All cities can be described as a dialogue between homogeneity and exception, and each strikes a particular balance that is at the core of its character.

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    • cities
    • identity
  • Ground displaced upward

    Imagine that our rooftops were parkland, that the area of ground occupied by buildings was, in effect, simply displaced upward. Imagine that the city enacted legislation requiring that the equivalent of 100 percent of the surface area of New York were to be green. A 100 percent requirement would not simply oblige green roofs. It would also demand that compensatory greenery be added to make up for such ungreenable areas as roadways, runways, and other unplantable places. Perhaps the requirement would be satisfied with road narrowings, cantilevered gardens, or green floors in buildings (utilities on the order of the mechanical floors that occur in almost all tall buildings).

    Michael Sorkin, 20 Minutes in Manhattan
    • nature
    • cities
  • Same name in the same basket

    Does a concert hall ask to be next to an opera house? Can the two feed on one another? Will anybody ever visit them both, gluttonously, in a single evening, or even buy tickets from one after going to a performance in the other?

    In Vienna, London, Paris, each of the performing arts has found its own place, because all are not mixed randomly. The only reason that these functions have all been brought together in Lincoln Center is that the concept of performing art links them to one another. The organization is born of the mania every simple-minded person has for putting things with the same name into the same basket.

    Christopher Alexander, A City Is Not a Tree
    1. ​​Such plans were deemed efficient​​
    2. ​​The plan must anticipate all that is needed​​
    • order
    • cities
    • function
  • A city cannot be a work of art

    There is a basic esthetic limitation on what can be done with cities: A city cannot be a work of art.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    1. ​​The order of life​​
    • art
    • cities
  • The kind of problem a city is

    Dr. Weaver lists three stages of development in the history of scientific thought: (1) ability to deal with problems of simplicity; (2) ability to deal with problems of disorganized complexity; and (3) ability to deal with problems of organized complexity.

    The history of modern thought about cities is unfortunately very different from the history of modern thought about the life sciences. The theorists of conventional modern city planning have consistently mistaken cities as problems of simplicity and of disorganized complexity, and have tried to analyze and treat them thus.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    1. ​​Order Out of Chaos​​
    2. ​​Order Without Design​​
    • problems
    • cities
    • complexity
  • These loose notes

    These loose notes are one possible description of our city. A city that, as in Constantin Cavafy's poem The City, is and always will be the same, in the same city again.

    Smiljan Radić, A Guide to Abandonment
    • cities
    • identity
    • i
  • Strands of life

    For the human mind, the tree is the easiest vehicle for complex thoughts. But the city is not, cannot, and must not be a tree. The city is a receptacle for life. If the receptacle severs the overlap of the strands of life within it, because it is a tree, it will be like a bowl full of razor blades on edge, ready to cut up whatever is entrusted to it. In such a receptacle life will be cut to pieces. If we make cities which are trees, they will cut our life within to pieces.

    Christopher Alexander, A City Is Not a Tree
    • cities
  • Natural and artificial cities

    I want to call those cities which have arisen more or less spontaneously over many, many years natural cities. And I shall call those cities and parts of cities which have been spontaneously created by designers and planners artificial cities. Siena, Liverpool, Kyoto, and Manhattan are examples of natural cities. Levittown, Chandigarh, and the British New Towns are examples of artificial cities.

    It is more and more widely recognized today that there is some essential ingredient missing from artificial cities.

    Christopher Alexander, A City Is Not a Tree
    • cities
  • Tree, leaf, house, city

    "Tree is leaf and leaf is tree – house is city and city is house. A city is not a city unless it is also a huge house – a house is a house only if it is also a tiny city."

    — Aldo van Eyck

    Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa, Understanding Architecture
    • cities
    • home
  • To become completely lost

    To become completely lost is perhaps a rather rare experience for most people in the modern city. We are supported by the presence of others and by special way-finding devices: maps, street numbers, route signs, bus placards. But let the mishap of disorientation once occur, and the sense of anxiety and even terror that accompanies it reveals to us how closely it is linked to our sense of balance and well-being. The very word "lost" in our language means much more than simple geographical uncertainty; it carries overtones of utter disaster.

    Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
    1. ​​Disorientation​​
    • cities
    • place
    • geography
    • wayfinding
  • Junctions

    The junction, or place of a break in transportation, has compelling importance for the city observer. Because decisions must be made at junctions, people heighten their attention at such place and perceive elements with more than normal clarity. This tendency was confirmed so repeatedly that elements located at junctions may automatically be assumed to derive special prominence from their location.

    Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
    • cities
    • wayfinding
    • choice
  • A certain plasticity

    There are dangers in a highly specialized visible form; there is a need for a certain plasticity in the perceptual environment. If there is only one dominant path to a destination, a few sacred focal points, or an ironclad set of rigidly separated regions, then there is only one way to image the city without considerable strain. This one may suit neither the needs of all people, nor even the needs of one person as they vary from time to time. An unusual trip becomes awkward or dangerous; interpersonal relations may tend to compartmentalize themselves; the scene becomes monotonous or restrictive.

    Kevin Lynch, The Image of the City
    • cities
    • form
  • A metropolis for hydrocarbons

    IMG_3415.jpeg

    An oil refinery suggests the image of a metropolis for hydrocarbons, the pipe manifolds like expressways, the distillation towers like skyscrapers.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    • resources
    • machines
    • cities
  • Roads to nowhere

    IMG_3420.jpeg

    Among real-estate developers, straight lines and right angles went out of fashion sometime in the middle of the twentieth century. If you look at a town or a residential neighborhood laid out since then, you are more likely to find sinuous, serpentine roads—whether or not the topography offers any excuse for such curves. Many of these roads go nowhere: they are loops that bring you back to where you started, or they are cul-de-sacs. Making it easy to find your way through the network of streets is obviously not a high priority. This is an interesting development in urban geography: having redesigned the city to accommodate the automobile, we now search for ways to discourage people from driving on the streets.

    Brian Hayes, Infrastructure: A Guide to the Industrial Landscape
    • urbanism
    • transportation
    • geography
    • cities
  • Dead cities

    If you can understand a city, then that city is dead.

    Jane Jacobs, The Death and Life of Great American Cities
    • cities
    • urbanism
    • understanding
  • NYLA

    "See, what I've always liked about Los Angeles is that it's one of the least restrictive towns in the world. You can pretty much live any way you want to here. And part of that is because the place has no tradition and no history in that sense. It doesn't have any image of itself, which is exactly its loss and gain. That's why it's such a great place to do art and to build your ideas about culture. In New York, it's like an echo chamber: its overwhelming sense of itself, of its past and its present and its mission, becomes utterly restricting."

    Lawrence Wechler & Robert Irwin, Seeing Is Forgetting the Name of the Thing One Sees
    • cities
    • history
    • urbanism
  • Tokyo

    tomoyuki-tanaka - 8.jpeg
    Tomoyuki Tanaka, Anatomical Drawings of Staircase Spaces
    • transportation
    • cities
  • 20 Minutes in Manhattan

    A Book by Michael Sorkin
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​It begins with a trip down the stairs​​
    2. ​​Thoughts on stairs​​
    3. ​​They are something that has been buried​​
    4. ​​(an architectural stem cell that might transform itself into any organ for living)​​
    5. ​​The grid and its difficulties​​
    1. ​​The Mezzanine​​
    2. ​​Psychogeography​​
    3. ​​Tilted Arc​​
    • architecture
    • urbanism
    • cities
    • home
    • walking

    Easily one of the most important books I've come across on issues of our urban environment. Could have been titled A Brief History of the City for its density of ideas.

  • The Death and Life of Great American Cities

    A Book by Jane Jacobs
    www.amazon.com
    1. ​​Dead cities​​
    2. ​​The dishonest mask of pretended order​​
    3. ​​The plan must anticipate all that is needed​​
    4. ​​The city's most vital organs​​
    5. ​​Eyes on the street​​
    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    • urbanism
    • cities
  • A City Is Not a Tree

    An Essay by Christopher Alexander
    www.patternlanguage.com
    1. ​​Strands of life​​
    2. ​​Impending destruction​​
    3. ​​The right overlap​​
    4. ​​The difficulty of designing complexity​​
    5. ​​Political chains of influence​​
    1. ​​Trees and graphs​​
    2. ​​The dishonest mask of pretended order​​
    3. ​​The problem with trees​​
    4. ​​Both practical and aesthetic concerns​​
    • cities
    • urbanism
    • design
    • architecture
    • math
  • The Image of the City

    A Book by Kevin Lynch
    mitpress.mit.edu
    1. ​​To become completely lost​​
    2. ​​Apparency​​
    3. ​​On the edge of something else​​
    4. ​​Nothing there, after all​​
    5. ​​Paths, edges, districts, nodes, landmarks​​
    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    2. ​​Scenes of thoroughgoing sameness​​
    3. ​​Clues for software design in how we sketch maps of cities​​
    • urbanism
    • place
    • cities
  • Soft City

    A Book by David Sim
    islandpress.org
    1. ​​Soft city principles​​
    2. ​​Soft is something to do with...​​
    1. ​​125 Best Architecture Books​​
    2. ​​New-urbanist projects​​
    • urbanism
    • community
    • cities

    Building Density for Everyday Life

  • Design of Cities

    A Book by Edmund Bacon
    • urbanism
    • architecture
    • cities
  • A Burglar's Guide to the City

    A Book by Geoff Manaugh
    burglarsguide.com
    1. ​​To commune with the space​​
    2. ​​Every building is infinite​​
    3. ​​Putting the streets to use​​
    4. ​​Topology by other means​​
    5. ​​Burglary's White Whale​​
    1. ​​Picking locks with audio technology​​
    2. ​​The axis of movement​​
    3. ​​Learning to walk through walls​​
    • architecture
    • cities
    • urbanism
    • crime
    • theft
  • Suburban Nation

    A Book by Andres Duany, Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk & Jeff Speck
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​A system for living​​
    2. ​​The five components of sprawl​​
    3. ​​Subdivisions​​
    4. ​​An unmade omelet​​
    5. ​​Beauty and function​​
    1. ​​The quality of the day​​
    2. ​​Drawing pictures of cities​​
    • urbanism
    • cities
  • At Home: A Short History of Private Life

    A Book by Bill Bryson
    • cities
    • home
  • Understanding Architecture

    A Book by Robert McCarter & Juhani Pallasmaa
    www.phaidon.com
    1. ​​We have turned our faces towards the future​​
    2. ​​Fragments of time​​
    3. ​​A timeless space​​
    4. ​​Theatre Epidaurus, Greece, 330 BC​​
    5. ​​The secret life of sculpture​​
    1. ​​Fragments of time​​
    • architecture
    • history
    • cities
  • Why I Walk

    An Article by Chris Arnade
    walkingtheworld.substack.com

    On my first day I literally walk across the city, to the extent it can be done…The next day I do another cross town walk, but in a different direction, filling in the blanks from the prior day’s walk.

    Then, over the next week(s), I walk between 10 to 20 miles per day, picking and choosing from what I have seen before, highlighting what I like, what I want to know more about, refining the path, till by the end of my trip, I have a daily route that is roughly the same.

    While that is certainly not the most efficient way to see a city, it is the most pleasant, insightful, and human. I don’t think you can know a place unless you walk it, because it isn’t about distance, but about content.

    • walking
    • humanity
    • cities
  • Why buses represent democracy in action

    A Talk by Enrique Peñalosa
    www.youtube.com

    An advanced city is not one where even the poor use cars, but rather one where even the rich use public transport.

    • transportation
    • class
    • cities

    (Mis)attributed in Why Tokyo Works.

  • Tilted Arc

    An Artwork by Richard Serra
    www.artdex.com
    Screenshot of www.artdex.com on 2020-08-29 at 12.16.34 AM.png

    In the 1980s, Serra found himself in the center of a public controversy over his piece titled Tilted Arc. While it was the government that approached him to create the work for downtown Manhattan’s Federal Plaza, the unveiling of the piece in 1981 was met with sharp criticism. The monumental sculpture was said to disrupt rush hour and the pedestrians who had to cut through the plaza daily. To the dismay of art lovers, the 120-foot-long, 12-foot-tall Tilted Arc was ultimately disassembled in 1989.

    1. ​​Weathering Steel​​
    2. ​​Wrapped Reichstag​​
    3. ​​20 Minutes in Manhattan​​
    4. ​​Portal Park Slice​​
    • cities
  • Working with Brian Eno on design principles for streets

    An Article by Dan Hill & Brian Eno
    medium.com
    • Think like a gardener, not an architect: design beginnings, not endings
    • Unfinished = fertile
    • Artists are to cities what worms are to soil.
    • A city’s waste should be on public display.
    • Make places that are easy for people to change and adapt (wood and plaster, as opposed to steel and concrete.)
    • Places which accommodate the very young and the very old are loved by everybody else too.
    • Low rent = high life
    • Make places for people to look at each other, to show off to each other.
    • Shared public space is the crucible of community.
    • A really smart city is the one that harnesses the intelligence and creativity of its inhabitants.
    • collections
    • urbanism
    • streets
    • cities
    • waste
    • gardens
  • Towers in the Village

    An Essay by Alfred Twu
    alfredtwu.medium.com
    Image from alfredtwu.medium.com on 2021-07-24 at 1.46.22 PM.jpeg

    Since tall buildings have been around, there have been many ways they’ve fit into cities: towers in downtown, towers in the park, and most recently, towers on a whole-block development. Let’s look at a 4th way, the Tower in the Village.

    Unlike the others, the Tower in the Village does not aim to be the center of attention. Instead, the upper floors are hidden behind a low front that fits in with the rest of the block. It faces a village green instead of a busy road.

    Why highrise infill? Growing cities have two choices: 1) Redevelop a lot of sites to medium density, or 2) Redevelop a small number of sites to very high density. Highrise infill requires less demolition and can get more homes built faster.

    1. ​​Soft city principles​​
    2. ​​Drawing pictures of cities​​
    • urbanism
    • cities
  • Clues for software design in how we sketch maps of cities

    An Article by Matt Webb
    interconnected.org

    Given there’s an explosion in software to accrete and organise knowledge, is the page model really the best approach?

    Perhaps the building blocks shouldn’t be pages or blocks, but

    neighbourhoods
    roads
    rooms and doors
    landmarks.

    Or rather, as a knowledge base or wiki develops, it should - just like a real city - encourage its users to gravitate towards these different fundamental elements. A page that starts to function a little bit like a road should transform into a slick navigation element, available on all its linked pages. A page which is functioning like a landmark should start being visible from two hops away.

    1. ​​The Image of the City​​
    • urbanism
    • cities
    • software
    • understanding
  • The 99% Invisible City

    A Book by Roman Mars & Kurt Kohlstedt
    99percentinvisible.org
    • urbanism
    • cities
    • design
    • architecture
    • details
  • Proposal to renovate a housing complex

    A Photograph
    hiddenarchitecture.tumblr.com
    Image from hiddenarchitecture.tumblr.com on 2020-10-14 at 9.09.26 AM.png

    Simone and Lucien Kroll. Gennevilliers, France, 1990.

    • cities
  • Cities and Ambition

    An Essay by Paul Graham
    paulgraham.com
    1. ​​Boston says you should be smarter​​
    2. ​​Florence and Milan​​
    3. ​​A city speaks to you mostly by accident​​
    4. ​​City messages​​
    • cities
    • ambition
  • Cityspace series

    A Gallery by Emily Garfield
    www.emilygarfield.com
    Screenshot of www.emilygarfield.com on 2020-10-09 at 10.51.37 AM.png

    Primary series for imaginary map drawings, spanning 2008-present and using various materials and techniques.

    1. ​​Tiny roads that lead nowhere (Cityspace #163)​​
    2. ​​Aqua city (Cityspace #169)​​
    3. ​​Branching networks (Cityspace #178)​​
    1. ​​Urban form and grain​​
    2. ​​Isometry​​
    • maps
    • geometry
    • cities
  • Psychogeography

    A Definition by Guy Debord
    en.wikipedia.org

    Psychogeography is an exploration of urban environments that emphasizes playfulness and "drifting". It was defined in 1955 by Guy Debord as:

    • "The study of the precise laws and specific effects of the geographical environment, consciously organized or not, on the emotions and behavior of individuals."
    • "A total dissolution of boundaries between art and life."
    • "A whole toy box full of playful, inventive strategies for exploring cities...just about anything that takes pedestrians off their predictable paths and jolts them into a new awareness of the urban landscape."
    1. ​​Who the fuck is Guy Debord?​​
    2. ​​20 Minutes in Manhattan​​
    3. ​​The drift​​
    4. ​​Raindrops leaving an erratic trail​​
    • walking
    • cities
    • urbanism
    • play
    • exploration
  • Title Cities

    An Artwork by Nicholas Rougeux
    www.c82.net
    Screenshot of www.c82.net on 2020-10-05 at 4.13.57 PM.png

    A book’s title page contains more than its namesake—including its author, contributors, publisher, and release date, and. Antiquarian books are known for having lengthy titles, especially those of a scientific nature. These books’ frequently unassuming title pages are gateways to a wealth of knowledge and the focal point of this project.

    Title pages of antique influential scientific books covering a variety of subjects were coded and reimagined as colorful cityscapes based solely on their words to illustrate the unique body of knowledge readers would find within.

    Boxes were drawn around each word of a title page and color-coded by its first letter (words beginning with “A” are one color, “B” another, and so on). Each title page has its own palette. Those boxes were then upended and arranged to form an abstract cityscape while maintaining their original sizes relative to each other.

    • reading
    • cities
  • Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42º N Latitude

    A Book by Michael Sorkin
    www.goodreads.com
    1. ​​The source code for SimCity​​
    2. ​​Local Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design & The Nature of Cities​​
    • regulations
    • law
    • cities
  • Local Code: 3,659 Proposals About Data, Design & The Nature of Cities

    A Book by Nicholas de Monchaux
    localco.de

    Local Code’s data-driven layout arranges drawings of 3,659 digitally tailored interventions for vacant public land in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Venice, Italy. The natures of these found parcels is as particular as the cities that house them — land under billboards in Los Angeles, ­dead-end alleys in San Francisco, city-owned vacant lots in New York City, and abandoned islands in the Venetian lagoon — but have in ­common an unrecognized potential as a social and ecological resource.

    1. ​​Names vs. The Nothing​​
    2. ​​Local Code: The Constitution of a City at 42º N Latitude​​
    • cities
    • urbanism
  • Urban Street Network Orientation

    An Article by Geoff Boeing
    geoffboeing.com
    Image from geoffboeing.com on 2020-09-12 at 11.32.37 AM.jpeg

    This study measures the entropy (or disordered-ness) of street bearings in each street network, along with each city’s typical street segment length, average circuity, average node degree, and the network’s proportions of four-way intersections and dead-ends. It also develops a new indicator of orientation-order that quantifies how a city’s street network follows the geometric ordering logic of a single grid. These indicators, taken in concert, reveal the extent and nuance of the grid.

    1. ​​The grid and its difficulties​​
    • grids
    • cities
  • New Urbanism and Beyond: Designing Cities for the Future

    A Book by Tigran Haas
    books.google.com
    1. ​​New-urbanist projects​​
    • urbanism
    • cities
    • architecture
  • All the buildings in New York (that I've drawn so far)

    A Blog by James Gulliver Hancock
    allthebuildingsinnewyork.com
    Image from allthebuildingsinnewyork.com on 2020-08-12 at 9.38.32 AM.jpeg
    • drawing
    • urbanism
    • cities

See also:
  1. urbanism
  2. architecture
  3. home
  4. transportation
  5. walking
  6. identity
  7. place
  8. geography
  9. wayfinding
  10. understanding
  11. history
  12. design
  13. maps
  14. order
  15. function
  16. i
  17. choice
  18. form
  19. resources
  20. machines
  21. math
  22. community
  23. drawing
  24. crime
  25. theft
  26. play
  27. exploration
  28. art
  29. problems
  30. complexity
  31. grids
  32. nature
  33. emptiness
  34. names
  35. regulations
  36. law
  37. reading
  38. geometry
  39. details
  40. ambition
  41. software
  42. collections
  43. streets
  44. waste
  45. gardens
  46. style
  47. class
  48. humanity
  1. Christopher Alexander
  2. Kevin Lynch
  3. Jane Jacobs
  4. Michael Sorkin
  5. Robert McCarter
  6. Juhani Pallasmaa
  7. Brian Hayes
  8. Geoff Boeing
  9. Roman Mars
  10. Smiljan Radić
  11. Lawrence Wechler
  12. Robert Irwin
  13. Tomoyuki Tanaka
  14. Edmund Bacon
  15. Tigran Haas
  16. David Sim
  17. Andres Duany
  18. Elizabeth Plater-Zyberk
  19. Jeff Speck
  20. James Gulliver Hancock
  21. Murray Silverstein
  22. Sara Ishikawa
  23. Geoff Manaugh
  24. Guy Debord
  25. Richard Serra
  26. Nicholas de Monchaux
  27. Graham Coreil-Allen
  28. Nicholas Rougeux
  29. Emily Garfield
  30. Kurt Kohlstedt
  31. Paul Graham
  32. Bill Bryson
  33. Matt Webb
  34. Alfred Twu
  35. Dan Hill
  36. Brian Eno
  37. Enrique Peñalosa
  38. Kengo Kuma
  39. Chris Arnade