The Natural Swimming Pool
The pool uses many processes already found in nature to save energy and refresh itself. Like a traditional pool, the natural pool is separated from the ground by manmade materials such as rubber or reinforced polyethylene. But unlike a traditional pool, the water cleaning process uses a regeneration zone of aquatic plants and stones instead of harsh chemicals like chlorine… [Read More]
Florida’s eco-city
They’re building one in Abu Dhabi, and now southwest Florida will have one too: Their very own solar-powered city. Real estate developer Kitson & Partners, along with Florida Power & Light have announced “the city of tomorrow”, Babcock Ranch… [read more]
miniHome hitting California
Slumchitecture
While policymakers — backed by real estate developers, the development industry, and the pressures of global capitalism — are pushing slum redevelopment models that replace informal settlements with high-rise blocks, some urban practitioners are using slums as models for redeveloping decaying neighborhoods in the West.
Why Tackling Urban Sprawl Is More About Proper Planning Than Eco-Towns & Green Buildings
“Townmaking,” one planner assured me, “is a complicated business. Without a guiding authority you’re not going to get the necessary level of sophistication. It’s necessary to have a long-term master plan that over time continues to add value to the development.”
For the new urbanists, building an eco-town is not a matter of building “green” buildings. For some, in fact, green buildings are non-starters, taking 25 to 65 years to recoup the energy used to build them; and once built, they can become quickly obsolete, saddled with already out-of-date technology.
“Everyone gets seduced by the ‘green bling,’” Stephen Platt of Cambridge Architectural Research told me. “Making the houses energy-efficient is the easy bit. The key problem is making this a long-term socially acceptable place where people will want to live and prosper.”
Time Square goes car free?
Mayor Bloomberg, “People avoid Times Square because the traffic is so terrible and people are getting pushed out into the streets – the sidewalks can’t handle it. People don’t come to look at cars stuck in traffic. They come to look at the lights, the buildings and the excitement, and this is going to have a lot more of it.“ The street closings (or openings, rather) will occur on Memorial Day, and the plazas will be completed over the summer. The permanent street closing to vehicles will occur on Broadway Boulevard at 47th Street to 42nd Street in Times Square and from 35th Street to 33rd Street at Herald Square, with crosstown traffic allowed. The rest of Broadway will follow a precedent set by the Broadway Boulevard project.
The Decline of Los Angeles
A century ago, when L.A. had barely 100,000 souls, railway magnate Henry Huntington predicted that the place was “destined to become the most important city in this country, if not the world.” Long run by ambitious, often ruthless boosters, the city lured waves of newcomers with its pro-business climate, perfect weather and spectacular topography.
As a result, L.A. surged toward civic greatness. By the end of the 20th century, it stood not only as the epicenter for the world’s entertainment industry, but also North America’s largest port, garment manufacturer and industrial center. The region also spawned two important presidents–Richard Nixon and Ronald Reagan–and nurtured a host of political and social movements spanning the ideological spectrum.
Now L.A. seems to be fading rapidly toward irrelevancy. Its economy has tanked faster than that of the nation, with unemployment now close to 10%. The port appears in decline, the roads in awful shape and the once potent industrial base continues to shrink.
Is it Green? Concrete.
It lasts. This is the stuff the Romans built their empire with. Concrete is highly resistant to heating and thawing. It’s impermeable to air and wind-driven rain. And concrete is inedible, so bugs and vermin can’t gnaw at it. This durability means that a building can preserve its concrete foundation or concrete exterior while replacing less durable parts like windows, insulation and plumbing (you get a point from LEED if you reuse a building).
A building with exterior concrete walls can also be energy-efficient, especially in climates that have daily temperature fluctuations. Even though concrete provides little insulation, it creates thermal mass that can store warmth or cold, reducing indoor temperature fluctuation. White concrete also reflects heat and can mitigate the urban heat island effect. LEED also awards points if you build concrete walls and a concrete ceiling with no coating.
Reviving the City of Aspiration: A Study of the Challenges Facing New York City’s Middle Class
As the inflow of new arrivals to New York has surged to levels not seen since the 1920s, the cost of living has spiraled beyond the reach of many middle class individuals and, particularly, families. Increasingly, only those at the upper end of the middle class, who are affluent enough to afford not only the sharply higher housing prices in every corner of the city but also the steep costs of child care and private schools, can afford to stay—and even among this group, many feel stretched to the limits of their resources. Equally disturbing, even in good times, the city’s economy seems less and less capable of producing jobs that pay enough to support a middle class lifestyle in New York’s high-cost environment.
Effects of privatization and ownership in transition economies
The paper evaluates the effects of privatization in the post-communist economies and China. In post-communist economies privatization to foreign owners results in a rapid improvement in performance of firms, while performance effects of privatization to domestic owners are less impressive and vary across regions, coinciding with differences in policies and institutional development. In China relatively more estimates suggest that privatization to domestic owners improves the level of performance. Concentrated private ownership has a stronger positive effect on performance than dispersed ownership in the post-communist economies, but foreign joint ventures rather than wholly owned foreign firms have a positive effect in China. Worker or collective ownership does not have a negative effect. In the post-communist economies new firms are equally or more efficient than firms privatized to domestic owners, and foreign start-ups are more efficient than domestic ones. Privatization is not associated with lower employment. When accompanied by complementary reforms, privatization has a positive effect on economic growth. Three factors appear to drive the more positive effect of privatization to foreign than domestic owners. [Continue to read]
