New Towns

How they build today in Palestine

Mathieu Helie — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 22:20:10 +0000

Regional complexity and local community

Mathieu Helie — Wed, 07 Jan 2009 03:09:03 +0000

The housing crisis afflicting Britain has reached such an intolerable level that Prime Minister Gordon Brown is announcing what amounts to a nationalization of planning regulations (report via Planetizen). This comes on the heels of the mayor of Greater London being granted the power to override planning rules of boroughs in order solve the capital's even more outrageous housing situation, as recently as 2007.

The emergence of a sense of place

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 02:14:00 +0000

Modern urbanism has given us a landscape that many consider to be soulless. Everything looks the same. Nothing creates a sense of place. New Urbanism has attempted to reverse this by returning to traditional architecture and town planning forms. This was done in European new towns, under the advice of well-meaning men like the Krier brothers, in the late 1970's, and did not succeed.