As a bit of an urban planning enthusiast, I’ve often wondered how cities that predate widespread car-ownership can be so car-dependent nowadays. For example, I am from Chicago, a city that was booming well before the Model T hit the assembly line..
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Few things provide context for a place like an aerial view. When we only see what’s in our immediate field of vision on the ground, it’s tough to understand how we fit into the world around us. Gaining this larger perspective.
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Forgive us if we seem like anti-sprawl-ites, but evidence keeps mounting that sprawl is neither planet nor people friendly. A study commissioned by Smart Growth America called “Measuring Sprawl and its Impact” looked at 221 metropolitan areas and 994 counties.
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Forget NYC and San Francisco as the American leaders in smart urban growth. Seattle is where it’s at. The two former cities–with their tight geographies and urban grids conducive to walking, public transport and compact, efficient living–have always packed people.
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We often talk about housing density. We’re mostly in favor of it. In general, density allows more people to live in less area, resulting in small, efficient homes, walkable/bikable/public-transportation friendly living, more social living (by virtue of being closer to.
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Thinking of moving to the burbs or the country? Want a little more room to spread out and raise the kids? Want to feel safer and more secure than you do on the city’s mean streets? Well, you might want.
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Last week we gave a micro view of the embiggened American home. Today, thanks to Google and the US Geological Survey’s Landsat images, we see the macro view. The GIF’s below, made by Texas architect Samuel Aston Williams, show the Houston,.
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Los Angeles has a new ally in combatting sprawl. Anonymous Architecture is churning out spaces that are small, useful, affordable and might help reign in the rate of ceaseless residential land expansion. We came across AA’s “Eel’s Nest” home via Fair.
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