Archive for April, 2009
When a picture is worth 1000 words…
This (from Slate) is an incredible visual representation of the current downturn, and of how fortunate we are to be in Texas. The blue circles represent job gains in the last year, and the red circles represent job losses. Click on the image to see the original, interactive page. It’s crazy.
New Mobility Northwest
Last month we had a great discussion about the Grand Parkway. I’ve been thinking about it a lot since then, and I decided that I wanted to make a little bit more elaborate case for an alternate. Prior to revising the Grand Parkway, I wanted to take some time to write about some useful terminology [...]
Updates and a Teaser…
A few site updates for today: We’ve set up new email accounts to use for the blog, which are shown on the sidebar and in the “About the Authors” page. These are simpler and easier to remember than the old rocketmail account, which we won’t be using anymore. Speaking of email, we’d love to hear [...]
The Urban Network
A few years ago Peter Calthorpe, one of the leading urban designers of our generation, was looking at a bunch of the tools that are advancing good urbanism today (like the Transect, Context-Sensitive Streets, and SmartCode) and felt that something was missing. What we needed, he argued, was a pattern for holding these things together [...]
Smart Code
Continuing in our look at the basics of Urbanism, I’d like to introduce another concept today: the SmartCode. SmartCode is a highly refined, form-based model development code. It was produced by Duany Plater-Zyberk during the 80′s and 90′s, and released to the general public in 2003. The entire code and a lot of supporting material [...]
Context-Sensitive Streets
Continuing in our discussion of some of the basic ideas behind good urbanism, today we’re going to look at Context-Sensitive Streets (or CSS). This idea came about after many years of study on the neighborhood impacts of very wide suburban thoroughfares, and the design requirements that mandated them. The definitive source of information on Context-Sensitive [...]
The Transect
UPDATE – From the feedback in the comments I decided to add a little on how and why the Transect is useful for Houston, see the end of the post. This week I’ll be writing about the future of Houston, and how we can embrace and encourage growth in a sustainable way. To do this, [...]
News and Updates
Good morning everyone! We’ve got a handful of updates for you, including some additions and tweaks to the site! First off, we have two new pages on the blog. The first is our very own book store, which we hope you’ll like. You can access the book store from the link at the top of [...]
Property Value Theory, Part 3: Places that Attract People
My Property Value Theory In urban settings the root value of all property is its attractiveness to human use, which I call “people-productivity“. This is different from resource-productivity, which is the basis for rural land values. There are two major things that attract people in a macro level: natural conditions (good weather, beautiful scenery, etc) [...]
Property Value Theory, Part 2: Interfaces and Conduits
Tuesday we took a look at the fundamental components of property values, at a macro level. In short, properties fall in two categories: resource-productive, and people-productive. Generally, if a property isn’t a farm or some kind of mine (or well) then it’s value is derived from it’s ability to attract human use. When humans use [...]