Good rules and how to administer them are of utmost importance to city design. Design by precedent is at best too simple minded a way of making a city, and at its worst, a way of allowing the legal profession to usurp something best handled by designers.

I'm attracted to alternate circulation systems in cities; a means of getting around on foot that circumvents the normal street grid, normally to solve of grade changes, or for getting around impermeable infrastructure. These alternative structures, if done well, transform how a local neighborhood works, while actually helping the urban street grid work.

Architects shape their visions with a combination of ideals and practical concerns of the design problem; an attempt is made to fit the parti to align with our personal vision. It’s that purity we seek, sometimes oblivious to its surroundings. The notion that what we are doing has an effect up and down the street can be a complication we don’t want to consider in any kind of meaningful way.

Fortunately, sometimes this works out OK.

There are broader, more basic truths about the design of cities than can be captured in one theory or design movement. Even if you are a rabid proponent, or even if you’ve 'invented' a design methodology, if you're honest, it takes someone else about a minute to determine some of the ways to contradict your ‘manifesto’.

Going home. Two very evocative words. We usually think of this phrase as applying to a return to a lost place we left long ago in a place far away. The words have a longing attached to them, evoking a deep desire to return to the nurturing fundamentals of life.

I laugh, because I'm not sure they are the renegades they make themselves out to be. The High Line project in New York may be their most well known work, and at the face of it, seems like pretty radical thinking. I think it works as good design, perhaps for some of the reasons that the designers offer up, but more likely, it works for some age old reasons that have contributed to crafting great cities for thousands of years.

Most of the inhabitants of cities have not fully fleshed out what the ideal city, actually looks like, works like, or feels like. The dreamer, and the NIMBY, the planner, and the chronic complainer, the entrepreneur, and homeless man all occasionally ponder our own vision of a city. We see through the lens of our own narrow interests, missing an all encompassing vision of the community. Our lens doesn't permit the vision of how the whole place works, and how all the various pieces all work together to make a better place…

Most of the inhabitants of cities have not fully fleshed out what the ideal city, actually looks like, works like, or feels like. The dreamer, and the NIMBY, the planner, and the chronic complainer, the entrepreneur, and homeless man all occasionally ponder our own vision of a city. We see through the lens of our own narrow interests, missing an all encompassing vision of the community. Our lens doesn't permit the vision of how the whole place works, and how all the various pieces all work together to make a better place…

To pick a number, I think that the City of Pasadena where I live should make a goal of cutting automobile and truck travel by 50%…

An architect is trained to think of each building as a discrete whole, bounded by its sides and top. An object understood on its own; more simply put, four walls and a roof. A program is understood, the needs of the inhabitants are thought through, and a shape is made to wrap what goes on inside. If the program is lavish, if the architect is a sculptor and makes a statement with each work, the shape is fully considered from all sides. This isn’t about the rugged self-reliance of the architect. Those who commission the building, and those who build it see it as a very singular act, governed by vague notions about ‘fitting in’.

As a society, we prescribe a procedure and a set of rules to make good cities. We like good, and we dislike bad. When someone does something bad, makes a bad building, or does something that is deemed inappropriate to the health and welfare of the general public, a rule is made, and a procedure is enlisted to carry out the rule.

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.

It's very easy target to identify the desire for a local place as a faddish antidote for perceived threat of globalism, the threat of a folly that propagates an increasingly secular and disenfranchised world. Given that the localism movement is, in some part, a reaction to global sameness, he may have correctly identified the fad. Folks with reactionary blood in their veins, conspiracy theorist types who ascribe every evil to corporations, and practical people who believe that shipping food halfway around the world is silly, all flock all flock to a desire to return to local economies and networks.