SPUR (San Francisco Planning + Urban Research Association) | In their latest report, “The Urban Future Of Work: How denser, more urban workplaces will strengthen the Bay Area’s economic competitiveness,” SPUR makes the case for the strong link between density and job growth. They’re recommending 20 strategies for increasing density, strengthening the regional economy and promoting job growth. “As our economy changes,’ they encourage us,”the emerging story is also a positive one.”
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INTERSECTION FOR THE ARTS | “Every generation or so, a new key idea (and buzzword) grips the imagination of an entire population of creatives,” Intersection for the Arts explains. In this recent post, they share how the new millennium has arts leaders deeply re-thinking location, both physical and virtual; as a vehicle equally for commerce and culture; in terms of architecture as well as inhabitants.
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FAST COMPANY | With Stanford University withdrawing it’s bid to establish a top-tier engineering school in NYC - is it New York that’s losing out in the innovation race?… or is it Stanford?… This article in Fast Company explains that New York City is in need of a design school, the likes of Stanford’s d.school, but it’s Stanford that needs a city the likes of New York even more. With the focus of innovation shifting away from building better technology to creating better user experiences, engineers need to think more like anthropologists and artists - and look to the places where culture is constantly being defined - in cities.
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GOOD MAGAZINE | GOOD and CEOs for Cities will be collaborating on GOOD Ideas for Cities, funded in part through a grant from ArtPlace, a new nationwide initiative to drive urban revitalization through the arts. GOOD Ideas for Cities aims to advance the role that creative problem-solving and civic engagement play in building great communities.
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NEW YORK TIMES | What purpose do our parks, plazas, and what is more broadly called the public realm serve for our cities? Take a stroll through New York with Mr. Garvin and as he says, “learn from, this…”
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TED | Every year TED grants a prize to an individual whose ideas have the capacity to change the world. This year however, the TED Prize is not awarding a person, rather an idea - City 2.0. The City 2.0 is not a sterile utopian dream, but a real-world upgrade tapping into humanity’s collective wisdom… and they’re making it a collective process….
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5M | Who is Jane Jacobs? This November marked the 50th anniversary of the publication of Jane Jacobs’ seminal work, The Death and Life of Great American Cities. In this book, Jacob’s describes the essential qualities make a city come alive - from more evident effects of mixed uses and density of activity, to the indirect influences of the use of sidewalks, the scale of blocks, repurposing of old buildings, and the idea of “eyes-on-the-street.” Why are her ideas still relevant over fifty years later? Especially to the 5M Project…
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NEW YORK TIMES | Most Americans understand that a mortgage meltdown was the catalyst for the Great Recession… less understood is the divergence between center cities and inner-ring suburbs on one hand, and the suburban fringe on the other. It was predominantly the collapse of the car-dependent suburban fringe that caused the mortgage collapse - argues Christopher B. Leinberger for the New York Times
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NEW YORK TIMES | In an era of concern about climate change, residential suburbs are the focus of a new round of critiques… yet rethinking sprawl might begin much more effectively with the suburban office. Rethinking pastoral capitalism is integral to creating a connected, compact metropolitan landscape that tackles rather than sidesteps a post-peak-oil future - explains Louize A. Mozingo for the New York Times.
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SAN FRANCISCO BUSINESS TIMES | “The last two years have been about re-imagining places for our emerging economy and what kind of environment helps facilitate that,” said Alexa Arena, vice president of Forest City. Exactly how those ideas will translate on a larger scale into bricks and mortar — actual office towers, public plazas, apartment buildings, galleries — is something that will be hammered out over a two- to three-year public planning process that will start now, she says.
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