Archive for the ‘urbanism’ Category

December 27, 2014

Urban Pioneer Builds a Tiny Cob House and Shows how to Live Sustainably in Modern Times

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet *Join us for a tour of this amazing, one-of-a-kind cob structure on January 10, 2015 at 11am. See the end of the article for more information.* Artist Dan Reed Miller built a tiny house before tiny houses were all the rage. Inspired by Thoreau, Dan wanted to see if he could live simply in the city without the clutter and extra things that come with modern living but just aren’t necessary. In 2006, he got a chance to experiment with the idea. His friend Debbieanne had just bought a house in the quiet north Portland neighborhood…

November 05, 2014

5 Things I Learned from Enrique Peñalosa

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Enrique Peñalosa is the former mayor of Bogota and he has become famous for putting in place radical equity measures such as restricting private car use and installing hundreds of kilometers of sidewalks, bicycle paths, pedestrian streets, greenways, and parks. Some of his most well known accomplishments during his tenure as mayor of Bogota are organizing the first city-wide Car-Free day in 2001 where a city of 6.5 million people banned cars from its streets, opening up public spaces for all people to walk, bicycle, and enjoy the city and bringing a very successful Bus Rapid Transit system to…

October 10, 2014

Big Data Backs Jane Jacobs: Cities Need Old Buildings

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet In The Death and Life of Great American Cities, Jane Jacobs said that “Cities need old buildings so badly it is probably impossible for vigorous streets and districts to grow without them.” But in an age of burgeoning urban populations and a pressing need to accommodate a more and more people into cities, does this still hold true? Shouldn’t we be replacing older smaller buildings with LEED Platinum high-rises? “Where do older, smaller buildings fit within cities that are seeking to maximize transit investments, increase density, and compete in the global economy” ask some urbanists. A new report…

September 17, 2014

Reclaiming Urban Space for People with the Picnic Blanket Effect

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Recently, fellow blogger Hart Noecker of Rebel Metropolis shared this photo from Shorpy with me: I was struck how these people managed to define a totally new space within this parking lot merely by taping down a bunch of butcher paper. It’s as if they were “drawing” a new space on a plan, but they did it in real life at full scale. I encountered another example of defining a new space merely by putting something on the ground this weekend at the Belmont Street Fair. At the intersection of SE 34th and Belmont, which is usually never…

September 11, 2014

It’s Official – More Bike Infrastructure Equals Healthier People

by: Lucky Sharma

Tweet Today’s post is by contributing writer Lucky Sharma: I always thought that the better a city’s bike infrastructure is, the higher the number of people who bike and the healthier the general population is compared to its counterparts. I hypothesized this based on the innumerable observations I had gathered in my head while biking for hundreds of miles in cities within and outside the US. My intent was to confirm the hypothesis that establishes the correlation (if not causality) between the bike-ability or ease of biking in a city and the fitness of its citizens. Based on data from…

August 28, 2014

How Bike Moves Can Go Beyond Just Being Subversive to Actually Being Useful

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Similar to the notion of people who bike because they want to and people who bike because they have to, the person who is in the Bike Move #1 photo above is hauling stuff by bike because he has to. The person in Bike Move #2 photo is hauling stuff by bike because she wants to. The guy in Bike Move #1 would jump at an opportunity to move that stuff by car, but he’s moving it on his bike because he probably can’t afford a car. The person in Bike Move #2 has every opportunity to move that…

August 25, 2014

How to Ride a Bike in Copenhagen

by: Paul Loomans

Tweet Today’s post is by guest contributor Paul Loomans. Paul is a development professional involved in sustainability, community, and biking. He is car-free in Phoenix Arizona. Paul is COO of Firefly Living, a new generation real estate organization. He also loves cats. It was my last night in Copenhagen. Over most of the past two weeks, I’d seen the world’s best biking city from the seat of a bike. Since I had gone car-free in Phoenix about three years ago, I figured it was time to visit Mecca for biking inspiration. I stayed with four different Couch Surfing and Airbnb…

August 21, 2014

The Ranch Mine does Infill the Right Way in a Historic Phoenix Neighborhood with the LINK House

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet “We need to look at infill as a piece of an existing puzzle rather than trying to create your own identity within an existing neighborhood and disregarding what’s around you. A good infill project is one that takes in what’s existing and also adds to it,” says Cavin Costello, co-founder and designer at The Ranch Mine. Costello and his partner Claire Costello prove these principles with their new infill residential project for developer Evan Boxwell of Boxwell Southwest, the LINK house, in the historic Pierson Place neighborhood in uptown Phoenix. The LINK house got its name because it was…

August 20, 2014

The Power of Public Spaces

by: Taz Loomans

Tweet Recently I’ve been awed by the power of public spaces. Summer in Portland draws everyone out into the public realm. So far this summer I’ve been to two festivals at Pioneer Square, a street festival, a movie at the park, Shakespeare at the park, several picnics and have enjoyed time by myself at different parks. And this is only a fraction of what’s available to do in Portland in the summer in public spaces. Here are 5 things I love about public spaces: 1. Public spaces are transcendent. They bring people together that normally would not sit next to…