This article was originally published on Common Edge.
The relentless drumbeat of climate disasters in the headlines—scorching heat waves, raging wildfires, historic floods, crippling droughts—are no longer a series of anomalies. As a grim new reality across much of the globe, these extreme weather events, driven by human-induced climate change, are becoming more frequent and severe. In short, they are clearly symptomatic of a broader and more pervasive environmental crisis.
Eastern and Southern Europe is enduring a severe heatwave, with temperatures reaching over 40 degrees Celsius in many countries including Greece, Croatia, Macedonia, and Romania. Driven by hot air from North Africa, this prolonged heatwave has raised significant threats for residents and has strained the cities’ mechanisms for protection and climate mitigation. As the heatwaves expose the vulnerabilities of urban infrastructures, cities across Europe are striving to implement measures to address these challenges.
Urban infrastructure intended for city connectivity disrupts urban patterns and often leaves behind a series of spaces without a properly defined use. Fortunately, the notion of space beneath infrastructure is being redefined, as architects are generating public spaces nestled under flyovers, bridges, and other urban structures.
Formerly neglected spaces, overlooked or dismissed as mere leftovers of urban planning, are now transformed into dynamic environments for community engagement and artistic expression. Architects, city planners, and the users themselves are embracing the challenge of reclaiming forgotten or underutilized areas and developing innovative solutions, integrating greenery, art installations, and sustainable elements into the urban fabric.
Following the collapse of the Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, construction group WeBuild, in collaboration with design office CRA-Carlo Ratti Associati and engineer Michel Virlogeux, has revealed an updated design for a replacement bridge. The new cable-stayed design aims to redefine the entrance to the Baltimore Harbor and offer an improved version of this symbol of the city.
MASSLAB has just won the competition for the new roof of Bragança's Water Treatment Plant in Portugal. Integrating public use of this infrastructure, which until now only serves a functional purpose, the project showcases adding value to existing infrastructure by rethinking them. Blending architecture, landscaping, and urban design to transform this structure into a vibrant public space, MASSLAB seeks to change the perception of water treatment facilities in urban settings. By reimagining the roof as a livable infrastructure, the project transforms the purely functional roof into an engaging and integral part of the urban fabric.
Social infrastructure encompasses the resources and services that allow the creation of communal bonds and social connections. Within the built environment, it manifests through public spaces like parks, libraries, and community centers alongside threshold spaces such as public transportation stops.
These public social spaces play a crucial role in strengthening communities and, in turn, their ability to respond to catastrophic climate-related events. They can provide physical shelter to the populations most vulnerable to these events and foster resilient networks of people who can more quickly recover. Given the escalating frequency of extreme weather events in the United States due to climate change and its social infrastructure inadequacies, examining public spaces as a critical tool for climate resilience becomes vital.
This article was originally published on Common Edge.
I am by no means an expert on public-private partnerships. But for about 10 years, as the University of California Berkeley’s campus planner and then campus architect, I watched these developments play out in higher education—sometimes from a front-row seat, sometimes as a participant. During that time, this strategy, promoted with great enthusiasm and optimism, was touted as the answer to whatever problem arose. And yet the definition of a public-private partnership was slippery. The concept itself seemed to be all things for all people, depending on what was needed, who was recommending it, and what equivalents (if any) existed outside the university. The bandwagon continues to play today, making it ever more important to nail down the pros and cons of this development strategy, not only for colleges and universities, but for all public decision-making.
CityMakers, The Global Community of Architects Who Learn from Exemplary Cities and Their Makers, is working with Archdaily to publish a series of articles about Barcelona, Medellin, and Rotterdam. The authors are the architects, urban planners, and/or strategists behind the projects that have transformed these three cities and are studied in the "Schools of Cities" and "Documentary Courses" made by CityMakers. On this occasion, Victor Restrepo, Coordinator of CityMakers in Medellin, presents his article "Medellin: A Case Study".
Medellín stands as an inspiring example for many cities worldwide. It is a city that transitioned from deep collective fear to hopeful enthusiasm for urban and social life characterized by quality and coexistence. The city's crisis has always been associated with violence and drug trafficking. However, this crisis is more structural and profound, it responds to many more factors, some of which are associated with the accelerated growth of its population, as in many Latin American cities.
CityMakers, The Global Community of Architects Who Learn from Exemplary Cities and Their Makers, is working with Archdaily to publish a series of articles about Barcelona, Medellin, and Rotterdam. The authors are the architects, urban planners, and/or strategists behind the projects that have transformed these three cities and are studied in the "Schools of Cities" and "Documentary Courses" made by CityMakers. On this occasion, Jaume Barnada, coordinator of the award-winning Climate Shelters project in Barcelona schools and speaker at the "Schools of Cities", presents his article "Barcelona, the public place as a synonym for the adaptation of the built city."
Cities are dense, built spaces in which pavements have been efficiently imposed on the natural soil. Cities like Barcelona have almost 75% of the land paved and waterproof. Without a doubt, it is an excess to reverse at a time of climate emergency, where we must reconnect with nature. Oriol Bohigas [1] told us that good urbanization had paved the squares of Mediterranean cities and that no one wanted to live in a mudhole. I'm sure he was right. Also, he taught us that the green and, consequently, the natural soil had to have dimension and especially an urban position. Squares are squares and parks are parks, and each space has a type of project. Today, concepts are too frequently confused when urbanizing public places and consequently, we find projects that blur the model.
The Indonesian parliament has approved a bill to relocate the capital from the city of Jakarta to a completely new city to be built on the island of Borneo, 1,300 kilometers from the current capital. The decision, first announced in 2019, comes as a reaction to the myriad of challenges faced by Jakarta, including pollution, traffic congestion, and, perhaps the most threatening, rising sea waters. As a consequence of excessive groundwater extraction, rapid urbanization, and rising sea levels, 40% of the city is currently below sea level, making it increasingly difficult for the infrastructure to protect the residents. President Joko Widodo proposes an alternative: relocating the administrative center of the country to a new green metropolis, to be named Nunsantara, meaning ‘archipelago’ in ancient Javanese.
Zaha Hadid Architects have released images of their design for the world’s first hydrogen refueling infrastructure for recreational boating. Continuing ZHA’s experience in maritime designs, the stations are to be installed in 25 Italian marinas and ports. Launched by NatPower H, the stations will begin to be implemented in the summer of 2024, with plans to expand to over 100 locations throughout the Mediterranean Sea in the next six years.
Highways, in their inanimate state, cannot be racist. However, the forces that located them and the consequences of their placement are inextricably connected to race. Deborah Archer, a law professor and civil rights lawyer, captures the central concept: “Highways were built through and around Black communities to entrench racial inequality and protect white spaces and privilege.”
In the new book, Justice and the Interstates: The Racist Truth About Urban Highways, editors Ryan Reft, Amanda Phillips du Lucas, and Rebecca Retzlaff explore racial injustice and the interstate highway system. They collect essays that address the dislocation caused by interstates. The book came out of a series of articles in Metropole, a publication of the Urban History Association.
Cities are the bedrock of civilization. For millennia, they have attracted people with the promise of superior standards of living — from better economic and educational opportunities to easier access to quality public infrastructure such as housing, healthcare, and public transport. Today, however, many cities around the world are finding it challenging to live up to this promise. With urban migration accelerating at a dizzying rate – the United Nations projects that over two-thirds of the world's population will live in cities or urban centers by 2050 – existing resources and services in cities are coming under increasing pressure, rendering them dysfunctional and leading to glaring inequities.
There is no singular way to define or assess liveability; every city has a unique set of characteristics, from its history, culture, geography, and demographics, to how it is governed and what urban issues plague it. Therefore, improving liveability requires concerted efforts from multiple stakeholders including people, governments, and experts, to identify critical problem areas and opportunities, and devise contextual solutions. The TV show Tale of Two Cities, where Indian architect and urbanist Dikshu C. Kukreja sits down with global leaders, brings out great insights into what some major cities in the world are doing to create more liveable environments for their inhabitants. Here we present five examples: from Bogotá, Kolkata, Hannover, Tirana, and Washington, D.C.
The Center for Arts and Innovation has just selected Pritzker Prize-winning architect Renzo Piano to design its new creative campus. The campus is situated in the heart of downtown Boca Raton in Florida and aims to become a global hub for creative excellence. Ultimately, The Center is on a mission to transform Boca Raton into an internationally recognized destination for culture, arts, innovation, and technology.
The concept of a city can be viewed as a constantly evolving system where both architects and users contribute to its design and redesign. While its framework may start with planners or designers, the character of the urban fabric is ultimately shaped by the societies and generations that inhabit it. The question of "city authorship" often arises in the context of masterplan design. Can architects and urban planners determine the extent to which a city will evolve through its initial design? The answer is no. User authorship then acknowledges that city planning should not be approached like building design, where designers attempt to predict every aspect of shape, pattern, behavior, and culture. Instead, it recognizes the role that people play in shaping the urban fabric through their personal taste in architecture, the development of neighborhood personality, and ongoing redesign that contributes to the story and spirit of a place. These factors should be considered in the initial design by engaging ideas related to future expansion, adaptable infrastructure, and empowering citizens to contribute to the city's architecture, thus making the city design democratic. This article explores conceptual radical cities where designers embrace the ideas of user authorship and the constant evolution of ephemeral architecture.
As the fastest-growing metropolitan city in the Midwest region, Columbus is situated amidst Central Ohio’s exciting blend of infrastructure and natural landscape. Columbus and its surroundings are currently undergoing a significant phase of cultural expansion and anticipate a population surpassing 3 million by 2050. In collaboration with Columbus-based Moody Nolan, Gensler has just revealed their design for the new terminal at John Glenn Columbus International Airport in Ohio, a facility to grow the city and support it in reaching these goals of expansion.
Architect Antoine Predock has unveiled his vision for the Albuquerque Rail Trail, a multi-use trail that will connect key destinations in the greater downtown area of New Mexico’s largest city. The project set out to combine the utility of pedestrian and bicycle pathways with the culture and history of the lands, encouraging healthy recreation, cultural expression and economic development. The Rail Trail project is of the Mayor’s Institute on City Design, Just City Mayoral Fellowship.
The 2023 United Nations Conference of the Parties, more frequently referred to as COP28 is a joining of over 160 countries that intrinsically agree to combat harmful human impacts on the climate. The International Climate Summit takes place annually, bringing together heads of state, delegates, and representatives from various countries to negotiate actions and agreements related to climate mitigation. Last year, COP 27 was held between November 6 and November 18, 2022, in Sharm El Sheikh, Egypt. As the upcoming COP 28 in the United Arab Emirates is around the corner, it is worth looking at the conference’s impact and what to expect.
COP 28 will convene from November 30 to December 12 2023 in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. In this year’s COP28, the program will be geared towards responding to the Global Stocktake and “closing the gaps to 2023.” The COP presidency has launched a consultation on thematic areas, encouraging international stakeholders to highlight the most pressing issues that should be prioritized in COP28. The themes for this year are Technology & Innovation, Inclusion, Frontline Communities, and Finance.
