unit 7 cities

An Intriguingly Detailed Animation of How People Move Around a City

Watch the commuting patterns of New York, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

This CityLab article and the embedded maps show the rhythms and patterns that make city life so beautifully complex. The Center for Advances Spatial Analysis has compiled numerous maps, time-lapse videos and other animations to show flows of urban life. These are great resources to visualize the ‘spaces of flows.’

Tags: mobility, mapping, visualization, urban, planning, unit 7 cities, transportation.

July 12, 2014 0

This Is the Traffic Capital of the World

There are only 650 major intersections here—but somehow only 60 traffic lights.

Source: www.newrepublic.com

Dhaka is the capital of Bangladesh and (as I often tell my students) it is the biggest city that nobody has ever heard of. The infrastructure is so incredibly limited that traffic jams cost the city an estimated $3.8 billion in delays and air pollution. This is an excellent article to explore some of the problems confronting megacities.

Tags: Bangladesh, transportation, planning, density, South Asia, development, economic, megacities.

July 5, 2014 0

Developing World Cities and Population Density

Without a question, we are living in an urban era. More people now live in cities than anywhere else on the planet and I’ve repeatedly argued that cities are our most important economic engine. As a result of these shifts, we’re seeing megacities at a scale the world has never seen before.

Source: sustainablecitiescollective.com

As our cities have massively expanded in the last 70 years, so has the ecological footprint of these metropolitan areas. This article discusses some of the challenges confronting megacities and their functions within the global urban network.

Tags: sustainability, density, megacities, housing, urban, planning, unit 7 cities.

June 26, 2014 0

The Rise of Innovative Districts

“Today, innovation is taking place where people can come together, not in isolated spaces. Innovation districts are this century’s productive geography, they are both competitive places and ‘cool spaces’ and they will transform your city and metropolis.”

As described by the Brookings Institution in their exploration regarding innovation districts, they are geographic areas where leading-edge companies, research institutions, start-ups, and business incubators are located in dense proximity. These districts are created to facilitate new connections and ideas, speed up the commercialization of those ideas, and support urban economies by growing jobs in ways that leverage their distinct economic position.

Tags: density, sustainability, housing, urban, planning, unit 7 cities, labor.