Planning matters. The 2005 riots in France started in badly designed housing projects, while innovative planning helped Medellín, Colombia, shed its reputation as the most violent city in the world.
Crime is way down in one Flint, Michigan, neighborhood, where locals have teamed up to revamp neglected public spaces. Here, why ‘busy streets’ can prevent violence and save cities money.
Residents of two high-rise public housing blocks are being given ‘mood lights’ to express how they feel based on their experience of the process of redeveloping their neighbourhood.
We asked five architecture experts to name one building or structure they wish had been preserved, but couldn’t resist the tides of decay, development and discrimination.
A new project documents who uses urban industrial lands slated for redevelopment. It reveals a vibrant but largely hidden sector at the interface between creative industries and small manufacturing.
Many new housing developments are being built along busy roads and rail lines, but lack design features that would reduce occupants’ exposure to harmful traffic pollution.
Mixing public and private housing in urban renewal projects can be a contentious business. But public good and optimal use of public resources, not developer interests, should guide such decisions.
Luz, a once-elegant 19th-century neighbourhood in downtown São Paulo, is prime real estate. But redevelopment means clearing out a homeless encampment known as “Crackland”.
When wealth accumulation becomes the driver of urban regeneration, residents who already have little or no say in the future of our cities are further marginalised by gentrification.
Over the past 15 years, community groups in a rundown inner-city district have created public murals as part of a successful process of reversing decades of stagnation.
The Melbourne suburb of Richmond is prime inner-city real estate, but the community is paying a price for redevelopment that jars with the existing neighbourhood.
Adaptive reuse and recycling of heritage architecture may be all the rage, but are not new. Making new buildings from old has a long history in the ancient world.
Big ideas and big dollars have been invested in making ‘memorable’ places. Paradoxically, as similar solutions are adapted in diverse settings worldwide, this can lead to an uneasy new placelessness.
Who’ll profit from the value uplift arising from the huge investment of taxpayers’ funds in creating better-serviced, higher-density suburbs? And what will the changes mean for existing residents?