Emergent Urbanism

Rediscovering Urban Complexity

Sprawl

An empty city for sale

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Thu, 11/12/2009 - 17:38, last updated Mon, 09/05/2011 - 21:47

If we needed any further confirmation that China is the champion builder of sprawl in this decade (sorry America, you don't even come close against things like Dubai Marina), this reporter traveled to an entire city built by developers in Inner Mongolia, that, it turns out, no one wants to move to because there is no economy there, as compared to the traditional city down the road.

[youtube 0h7V3Twb-Qk]

Review of Radiant City

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Wed, 09/02/2009 - 16:14, last updated Mon, 04/09/2012 - 15:51

There is a scene early in the 2006 mockumentary Radiant City that provides the key explanation to the morphology of suburban sprawl. Our favorite writer James Howard Kunstler sits on a bench in a community bike trail that is enclosed in two rows of chain link fence in order to, I presume, secure it from the high-capacity arterial road that runs alongside it. The experience is vaguely what it must have been like to patrol the Berlin Wall, had it been encircled by an expressway.

A conversation about the geometry of nowhere

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Sun, 04/12/2009 - 20:42, last updated Mon, 02/20/2012 - 16:07

In response to my previous article, Bruce Liedstrand of Community Design Strategies in Paris writes,

I read with interest your essay on The Geometry of Nowhere because I divide my time between Paris and Silicon Valley (the site of your Cupertino Target store example). After re-reading the essay, I am puzzled. I hear your frustration with narrow sidewalks, but I am lost in understanding your concept of “place”.

The geometry of nowhere

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Sat, 04/04/2009 - 08:00, last updated Sun, 02/19/2012 - 23:32

I hate sidewalks.

A cuter form of sprawl

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Fri, 03/13/2009 - 22:19, last updated Sun, 11/20/2011 - 23:23

The National Post reports about the failures of Canada's most famous New Urbanist experience, Cornell in the Toronto Suburbs.

More evidence that New Urbanism is really dense sprawl

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Fri, 10/31/2008 - 01:12, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 01:08

From The New Geography magazine.

The challenge of dense sprawl

Submitted by Mathieu Helie on Wed, 10/22/2008 - 01:11, last updated Sun, 11/06/2011 - 00:59

Further comment

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