Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Mon, 10/05/2009 - 21:55, last updated Mon, 04/09/2012 - 15:16
Sometime last year this website attracted the attention of several members of the International Network for Traditional Building, Architecture and Urbanism, an organization sponsored by the Prince of Wales Foundation in order to support and renew traditions of construction. While this organization does great work to preserve the techniques of traditional building cultures, they have yet to define what the traditional urbanism of their name really implies. The importance of such a definition I believe to be primordial.
Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Fri, 05/22/2009 - 13:02, last updated Mon, 04/09/2012 - 15:31
The New York City Department of Transportation has published its street design manual, a collection of patterns that make absolutely no references to any traffic control devices of any kind.
Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Mon, 03/23/2009 - 07:00, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 01:02
This is part I of a series of excerpts of an article to be published in the International Journal of Architectural Research entitled The Principles of Emergent Urbanism. Additional parts will be posted on this blog with the editor's permission until the complete article appears exclusively in the journal's upcoming issue.
Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Mon, 02/16/2009 - 19:52, last updated Mon, 04/09/2012 - 15:29
In a medieval-era city the pace of urban growth is slow to a point where the growth of the city is not consciously noticed. Buildings are added sporadically, in random shape and order, as the extremely scarce economic situation makes no other pattern possible. Typically this means that the shape of streets will match the existing natural paths of movement, giving the street network an organic structure that is preserved through successive transformations in the urban fabric.
I will, but not very often. After something grows big, there comes to be a point where you contribute more by removing things than by adding more.