Bicycle Environments’ takes HSPH and GSD students for a ride >>

Harvard School of Public Health (HSPH) and the Graduate School of Design (GSD) have launched an interdisciplinary course titled “Bicycle Environments in the U.S. and the Netherlands/Denmark: Case Studies in the Promotion of Physical Activity.” The class uses case studies to examine how the bicycle communities in the Netherlands and Denmark help individuals stay healthy and reduce greenhouse gas emissions. One clear objective is to find strategic ways to make the United States more bicycle friendly in an attempt to address these central social issues.

[Harvard Gazette, December 18, 2008]

President-elect Obama nominates Shaun Donovan, MArch ’95, for Secretary of Housing and Urban Development

Shaun Donovan was added to President-elect Barack Obama’s Cabinet to help deal with an issue at the heart of the U.S. economic crisis.

If confirmed by the Senate, New York City’s housing commissioner and former Clinton administration aide will lead the Housing and Urban Development Department at a time when the mortgage crisis is being blamed for the financial market turmoil that has dragged the nation into a recession.

Obama praised Donovan’s record in New York, where he managed a $7.5 billion plan with a goal of putting a half-million New Yorkers in affordable housing. The Harvard-educated architect also kept foreclosures to a minimum in the city’s low- and moderate-income home ownership plan, with just five out of 17,000 participating homes.
Full article >>

[Chicago Tribune; December 13, 2008]

Related:
[New York Times; December 13, 2008]

Students use BMW’s GINA principles to design suburban housing

The inspiration for the studio option comes from a team at BMW Group Design Munich which created the GINA Light Visionary Model car.

Full article >>

[World Architect News; December 16, 2008]

New Edition of Everyday Urbanism, co-edited by Prof. Margaret Crawford, off press

First published in 1999, Everyday Urbanism has become a classic in the discussion of cities and real life. Co-edited by Margaret Crawford, Professor of Urban Design and Planning Theory, the essays explore the city as a social entity that must be responsive to daily routines and neighborhood concerns and offer both an analysis of and a method for working within the social and political urban framework.

This expanded edition (Monacelli Press, December 23, 2008), builds on the original essays focusing on the urban vernacular in Los Angeles with new material on interventions in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Hoogvliet, near Rotterdam in the Netherlands. Discussion of the Latino community in Los Angeles is expanded with a survey of Latino signage—big, bold, and painted on the walls, defying all the principles of graphic design. The evolution of the mall, from the mini-mall, for quick convenience shopping, to midi-mall and macro mall, destinations in themselves, to the minicity, complete with residential and entertainment amenities, is presented as a new challenge for planners.

Professor Crawford and the book’s other two editors, John Leighton Chase and John Kaliski, bring the discourse into the 21st century, examining the challenges and critical reaction to the approach and its application for the future.

Prof. Martha Schwartz defends importance of landscape architecture in public spaces.

When architect Will Alsop questioned the role of landscape architecture in the development of public spaces in a recent speech, US-born London-based landscape architect Martha Schwartz [Professor in Practice of Landscape Architecture] couldn’t resist a response.

Watch video presentation >>

[Wallpaper; December 10, 2008]

GSD 08 Platform book launch Dec 13th in NYC; exhibition opens at GSD >>

Paula Meijerink finds beauty in the asphalt jungle >>

An assistant professor of landscape architecture at Harvard’s Graduate School of Design, Meijerink has been addressing innovative ideas in asphalt design with her students and is cultivating a variety of grass-roots projects that bring new attention to what she calls “the asphalt universe.” Meijerink wants people to rethink how we use the material in terms of both creativity and function.

[Boston Globe; December 7, 2008]

Mumbai Metropolitan studio adapts city township lands >>

UPenn’s Thomas Sugrue presents on civil rights, the metropolis, and urban planning >>

Eminent historian and sociologist Thomas Sugrue presented “Planning for Justice: Civil Rights, Black Power, and the Metropolis” on November 25.

[Harvard Gazette, December 4, 2008]