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RUDI publishes original features by urban design writers and professionals working around the world. Our peer-reviewed content covers all aspects of placemaking and sustainability.We also publish shorter pieces commenting on the latest placemaking opinion, trends, debate, proposals and analysis from around the world.For news, events, tender and competition information visit Urban Design Update We welcome ideas for articles from our members, but we cannot be responsible for unsolicited materials. Please contact us to discuss your editorial and content ideas before sending text or pictures. If you'd like to air your views on placemaking and sustainability, please access RUDI's forum.Click here for a 'quick link' to an alphabetical listing, by title, in date published order of articles, to provide fast access to information for those of you who know what you are looking for. If you are a non-member you will need to subscribe now or register for a free trial in order to see the features. |
Successful spaces: developing a public realm that supports a sociable and sustainable urban environment
The key role that effective public spaces play in the delivery of thriving and sustainable urban environments is now widely recognised by public agencies, private developers, planners, place making and management professionals and politicians. Videos/multimedia presentations from the 13th Quality Streetscapes Conference are available to view online...
Community ownership of social housing in Glasgow: building more sustainable, cohesive communities?
The community cohesion agenda has gained increasing prominence within the UK in the last decade, with events such as riots in northern England in 2001 and the 2005 London bombings, coupled with fears about migration and asylum seekers proving particularly significant. A contested concept, which has been applied and defined differently by academics, policymakers and practitioners alike, it is underpinned by a desire to create communities that are 'in a state of wellbeing, harmony and stability'. Housing, although often identified as a major factor contributing to socio-spatial segregation (Forrest and Murie 1988; Phillips 2007), has also been held up as the ‘curative balm’ able to draw out the ‘infection’ undermining community cohesion.
Fairy tale or horror story - join the debate
Collaborations between artists and urban designers as part of a design team are generally seen as ‘a good thing'. But what is the real added value of these partnerships and how do they work in practice?Follow the debate started by RUDI and Public Art South West (PASW) http://www.publicartonline.org.uk/ through the links and video clips below. These are taken from the recent conference Fairy Tale or Horror Story organised by RUDI in Bristol (http://www.rudi.net/pages/19570)
Streets for people; streetscapes for engineers?
For many years past, RUDI has organised an annual shindig called the Quality Streetscapes Conference. By my reckoning, this June's event will be the 13th such occasion. However, my purpose is not to speculate about whether or for whom this may be unlucky but, rather, to pose the following simple, but leading, question: What does 'streetscape' mean to you? By John Dales End the highly restrictive planning laws that constrain housing development, says LSE author
The fast-growing cities of the Victorian age made Britain the workshop of the world. Tim Leunig of the LSE argues that there are important lessons for how we manage today’s economy, notably the need to end the highly restrictive planning laws that constrain housing development in the South East and in cities associated with our top universities
Fairytale or horror story... Urban designer and artist collaboration: what value does it bring?
Collaborative practice between artists and urban designers produces creative solutions for urban environments; enhancing the quality of urban design and creating imaginative environments that reflect local identity and meet communities’ needs. RUDI and Public Art South West (PASW) presented a one-day conference with the aim of informing, challenging and debating collaborative practice in the realm of contemporary art and urban design.
Multimedia presentations from the day, featuring sound, graphics, slides and video, are available to view
Technology, people, place and space: ideas for urban modelling, mapping and liveability
RUDI's knowledge-sharing event debated the subject of technology, people, space and place. There was plenty of time for sharing and collecting information, and the lively discussion is available to view below, as are the presentations.
The issues discussed included:
- Real time data collection methods and parametric modelling at the urban scale
- The future possibilities of 'remote control urbanism'
- The emotional mapping of space
- The latest design and promotional uses for 3D city models and 3D software
- Using public data to map how people to live and work
- Web mash-ups using Google Earth and Maps
Personalised cities: sustaining suburbia
No longer can the simplistic idea of 9-5 commuting to the city centre and role of the local shop define suburbia. Increasingly suburbia presents the perfect location for personalised cities built on a modern day mantra of choice and personal mobility. This shift in behaviour has significant impact on the nature of how we understand and classify suburbs, and how we comprehend the infrastructures which support suburbia.
This project aims to develop a series of integrated ‘next practice’ toolkits that can span the design of the built environment, social software, policy and service delivery in line with the interdependent challenges of sustainability. In process, developing a series of propositions that are based on the effective design of supply chains – water, energy etc and the efficient use of mobility – rather than seeking to rebuild romantic notions of the local.
Cities as machines for living: emergent orders which arise from the bottom-up
In a special February 2008 edition of Science on cities, UCL CASA researcher Mike Batty writes about progress in building a robust theory of cities built from the bottom up which has much more potential for addressing urban problems than current top-down approaches. There is a video clip on the Science page and you can see this by clicking here.
In the 1960s, the predominant approach to cities and city planning changed from a concern for form over function to one in which cities were considered as machines for living. Social engineering and the systems approach were seen as providing a more considered and relevant way of generating effective plans which met our quest to make the functioning of the city more efficient and the way resources were distributed within it more equitable.
It has taken much longer than we ever expected to make progress using these ideas and progress is still painfully slow. But progress there is. Mike Batty charts some of this in his short paper in Science where he argues that the systems approach has been enriched by a massive shift in perspective in the last 20 years from considering cities as organisations and ecologies structured from the top down to emergent orders which arise from the bottom-up.
