Sprawl

An empty city for sale

Mathieu Helie — Thu, 12 Nov 2009 22:38:35 +0000

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

Mathieu Helie — Wed, 02 Sep 2009 20:14:07 +0000

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

Mathieu Helie — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 00:42:18 +0000

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

Mathieu Helie — Sat, 04 Apr 2009 12:00:51 +0000

I hate sidewalks.

A cuter form of sprawl

Mathieu Helie — Sat, 14 Mar 2009 02:19:14 +0000

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

Mathieu Helie — Fri, 31 Oct 2008 05:12:02 +0000

From The New Geography magazine.

The challenge of dense sprawl

Mathieu Helie — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 05:11:59 +0000