The movement toward revitalization of downtown areas in the United States with streetcars brings 19th century urbanism together with 21st century sustainability, despite the usual fossil fueled detractors.
Sustainability
Detroit Works: Urban Farming and Reforestation as Neighborhood Preservation
Detroit Future City, the long-term planning vision for the long-rusting Motor City, embraces the urban farming, permaculture, and ecological urbanism movements seen in cities across the United States, to chart the way to more a prosperous and sustainable future.
Singapore: Gardens By The Bay Sprout Supertrees and Horticultural Conservatories
Gigantic steel, concrete and wire trees rise from manicured serpentine gardens, human-blessed symmetry reaching skyward. At the bay’s edge, two sustainably-designed domes invite visitors to explore world biomes and horticultural paradises. A public amusement park, ecological urbanism designed to invite the populace to rediscover the earth, a visit to Singapore’s Gardens by the Bay evokes a green wonderland, human-designed, artistically crafted, growing “wild” and sort-of-natural.
Toll Lanes as Congestion Management: Mobility for the Wealthy Few
Converting freeway lanes to tollways in the name of congestion management, without viable transit alternatives, will only reduce mobility for the majority in exchange for wealthy drivers getting to work on time.
Hello Urbanism: Southern California Sprawl Grows Up
Southern California’s new Sustainable Communities Strategy plan posits that as a region, we have to grow up, not out. That doesn’t mean Hong Kong skyscrapers, but more apartments near light-rail stations and vibrant mixed-use areas like the ones in downtown Pasadena.
Ecological Urbanism: A City Green Re-Imagination
We must view the fragility of the planet, the disaster of our resource addiction, the warming of the earth’s atmosphere as an immune response to our daily environmental mis-stepping, a call for a re-conceptualization of our cities. We must demand a retrofitting of our urban environments to live together more efficiently, giving credence to community, allowing space for the open wild in us and them.
Detroit’s Sprawling Legacy: How to Overcome the Automobile?
Detroit must overcome its landscape sprawl and its prime benefactor: the automobile, to revive the economy and become an environmentally sustainable 21st Century city.