You're looking at a picture of a "desire line" created by people who don't really care about urban planning. Although I find this hard to believe, it is said that at Harvard, they don't make sidewalks for the first year after construction, so they can see "where the people want to go". The people, like water follows the path of least resistance, end up carving these "desire lines" into the landscape, and show the landscape designers where to put their sidewalks. It's like when Japan used slime mold to show them how to design the Tokyo subway network, or how when it snows you can see the parts of the road that don't need to be road because they are untouched. Desire lines show us the difference between what people want and what designers or executives or artificially intelligent algorithms tell us we want.
For all the anti-urban planners out there:
Depression is more common in the suburbs than in city centers, finds new research
May 2023, phys.org
It's true, the suburbs kinda suck.
But because this was published in the Conversation, part of me thinks it's just deep-brain, deep-pocket propaganda from commercial real estate interests to get people to move back into the city.
To find out which factors in the built environment were the most important for psychological well-being so that cities can be designed better to be both sustainable and supportive of mental health, they categorized satellite images of all buildings in Denmark over 30 years (1987-2017) and combined the resulting map with individual residential addresses, and health and socio-economic registers.The results show the highest risk was found in the low-rise and single-family housing suburbs."We think the relative higher risks of depression found in sprawling, low-rise suburbs may be partly down to long car commutes, less public open space and not high enough resident density to enable many local commercial places where people can gather together, such as shops, cafes and restaurants. But of course, there may be many other factors, too."They recommend to invest in high-rise housing where lifestyles are not dependent on private car ownership, combined with thoughtful spatial design to increase access to shorelines, canals, lakes or urban parks. We could also improve existing suburbs' accessibility to both urban services and to public open spaces, and to make sure there are more walkable neighborhoods in these car-centered areas.In Copenhagen, people grab a beer or pastry and hang out with friends along the canal. These areas are at the fringe of both shops and nature—making the spaces social.
via Yale, Stockholm and Gävle universities in Sweden, and Aarhus University in Denmark: Tzu-Hsin Karen Chen et al, Higher depression risks in medium- than in high-density urban form across Denmark, Science Advances (2023). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adf3760
New study suggests clues to urban resiliency lie within ancient cities
Jul 2023, phys.org
They study the Prehispanic Mesoamerica Mayan archaeological site of Caracol in Belize, which flourished for many centuries and was then replaced by smaller cities that subsequently arose and flourished.
Most of the collapses of Mayan cities are associated with autocracy and inequality.
via University of Houston: Diane Z. Chase et al, Mesoamerican urbanism revisited: Environmental change, adaptation, resilience, persistence, and collapse, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (2023). DOI: 10.1073/pnas.2211558120
AI system found to outperform humans in creating urban planning designs
Sep 2023, phys.org
One of the most obvious use cases:
Apparently, the ideal urban plan du-jour is the "15 minute" plan, where everything is within 15 walking minutes of everyone's house (hold on, this almost sounds like most "organically-grown" European cities, maybe I'm confused).
*I'm not sure I can be 100% on-board with "the ideal urban plan"; I am suspicious that such a thing exists.
via Tsinghua University in China and MIT Senseable City Lab: Yu Zheng et al, Spatial planning of urban communities via deep reinforcement learning, Nature Computational Science (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-023-00503-5
Also: Paolo Santi, AI improves the design of urban communities, Nature Computational Science (2023). DOI: 10.1038/s43588-023-00515-1
Population ecologist warns that humanity is on the verge of massive population correction
Aug 2023, phys.org
Rees notes that there are already signs of stress due to overpopulation -- the planet is growing warmer and critical resources are at risk, such as the availability of fossil fuels as well as food and water. He notes also that many of Earth's cycles are being disrupted, such as weather patterns and the global nutrient cycle.Taken together, he suggests that planet Earth is headed for a major population correction -- perhaps before the end of this century. Such a correction, he notes, would be a drastic reduction in human population. He adds that such a reduction could come about in one or more ways, through war, famine, habitat instability or disease.
In Calhoun's rat studies, many of the rodents simply withdrew from society, refusing to work, or even attempt to procreate.
via University of British Columbia's School of Community and Regional Planning: William E. Rees, The Human Ecology of Overshoot: Why a Major 'Population Correction' Is Inevitable, World (2023). DOI: 10.3390/world4030032
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