ENGAGED CITIES

• Seattle’s Chinatown International District is a historic area where you cannot only enjoy Dim Sum and marvel at early twentieth century brick buildings, but also empty your pockets-of-change at the Seattle Pinball Museum. The district also faces a resilience challenge of preserving the heritage character and cultural identity within Seattle’s urban fabric, while updating infrastructure and implementing new policies and housing standards to protect the buildings that may not stay standing when the next big ‘quake hits. The Seattle Chinatown International District Preservation and Development Authority (SCIDpda) carried out a community engagement mandate to work with residents and property owners in the historic area.
• Smelling your way through the city – here are 5 tips for smellwalking. Go ahead, smell your city!

DESIGN

• On making room for the invisible micro-urban spaces in ecological urban design, and how the benefits of the small-scale urban can help create more liveable cities.
• Given the transit referendum on March 16^th and ongoing scepticism of new major cycleways in Vancouver, here’s an interesting look into the economics behind the planning for increasing bicycle infrastructure in Christchurch, New Zealand.
• Are ‘defensive architecture and design’ tactics in urban environments creating pervasive, unwelcoming public spaces that make the lives of city dwellers more hostile and ignorant? The article praises RainCity Housing’s shelter-bench initiative as a ‘ray of hope’ for creating more inclusive and equitable cities.

HERITAGE

• A photographic journey into Phnom Penh’s rapid urban development and the effect on the city’s landscape and society.
• The streetscapes of Shanghai’s old neighbourhoods give a glimpse into a Japanese war-time legacy remnant from the past.

PLACEMAKING

• The Guardian asked their network of ‘city bloggers’ from around the world what they would change if they were ‘mayor for a day’ in their city. The answer? More inclusive public space.
• Up, up and away! Submitted to the 2015 Folly Competition by Australian architect Jesse Lockhart-Krause, the playful Balloon Swing may send you soaring as you sit on a swing attached to a colourful hot-air balloon. Recommendations for best Balloon Swing location in Vancouver?
• 7, 500 miles (or 12,070 km) of LA’s underused city streets will transition into active, vibrant and accessible public space with the recently launched program, People St., designed to support community projects that enhance the quality of life in the city.
• A look into the public life of Cairo through 1001 street chairs.
• Birmingham Policy Commission’s recommendations for enhancing quality of life in future cities, which includes ‘a call for processes that engage citizens and create systems and policies for local empowerment.’

PLACEMAKING

• Finding a seat in Ireland’s public spaces­­—a photo story.
• Reflections on how Jan Gehl’s people-oriented approach to urban connectivity and design transformed Melbourne’s city centre – which historically lacked the vibrant public life evident today.

ART

• Lest we forget. The Tower of London Remembers the First World War with 888,246 ceramic poppies filling the Tower’s moat.
• Échale Coloris a community engagement program promoting community development and integration, using art in the public sphere as the medium. A project of Venezuelan NGO’s Somos Posible, Échale Color’s public art installations transform public spaces in the barrios of Caracas.

NATURE

• A glimpse into an almost century-long process of incorporating green space and green infrastructure into Los Angeles’ urban fabric.
• What is the interconnected role of art and the green (and blue) spaces that create the nature of cities? This roundtable forum discusses the nexus of art and urban nature.

DESIGN

• 900 vendors gather under the solar-panelled roof of Haiti’s Port-au-Prince Iron Market after its regeneration from the devastating destruction caused by the 2010 earthquake. The collective process of rebuilding the 123 year old market not only restores the marketplace as a centre of community, but is also an example of how markets can be a tool for disaster recovery.
• The world’s first solar-powered bike lane. If you haven’t heard, yes it’s true, it’s called SolaRoad, is in the Netherlands, and you can read about it right here.
• From swimming pools in the Thames, to urban swings in Mexico City, and support for informal waste pickers in Bogota, the 2014 Guardian World Cities Day Challenge gave cities their chance to tell the world their city’s best idea, and why other cities should adopt it.

ART

• Les Passages Insolites is an urban public space art festival that brings a vibrant kaleidoscope of contemporary art installations to Quebec City’s forgotten passages, making the invisible, visible.

DESIGN

• Forget the urban highway and restore walking as a way of life. Project for Public Spaces paves the road towards creating liveable streets for everyone by challenging the high-speed, auto-centric landscape of many urban centres.
• While street trading and vendors play a vital role in the informal economy of a city, and also add to the vitality and public experiences of cities, street traders are often left out of the urban design equation. Including informal vending in a city’s streetscape, especially where street vending is growing such as in Bangkok, also brings forth this question discussed on Informal City Dialogues—How Can We Reconcile Street Vending With Pedestrian-Friendly Sidewalks?
• As a commuter in Nigeria’s megacity Lagos you’ll spend over three hours in traffic on your daily grind. While mobility remains a challenge for the city’s commuters, Lagos is pursuing mass transit options, such as installing Africa’s first bus rapid transit. Find out more on what the future of sustainable transport looks like in Lagos.

PLACEMAKING

• How do you ask the people of Shoreditch, East London for their thoughts on how they imagine green spaces in their community? Drop four large cubes in public parks.
• NL Architects have restructured shipping containers into interactive public kiosks that aim to facilitate interaction in Seoul’s Dongdaemun Plaza.
• Using Caracas, London and Cape Town as examples, This Big City article focuses on the in-between spaces of our cities, and how these under-utilized parts of the urban landscape can benefit the community.

ART

• Copenhagen. Helsinki. Tokyo. Montreal. Melbourne. Since the first Nuit Blanche all-night art festival in Paris in 2002 cities around the world have taken part in this creatively expressive event. Last week’s Nuit Blanche in Toronto transformed the city into an open art gallery.
• Bringing meaning to place, Wolfstrome connects people to community through communication and cultural placemaking. Wolfstrome’s Lightwriting in Durham, England is a recently-awarded installation that expresses a place-specific narrative through typography and information design using public art as the medium.

PLACEMAKING

• If you found yourself in La Paz on the first Sunday of September this year you would have noticed something missing on the streets – and not just on one or two main avenues – you wouldn’t have seen a single car on the road between 9am and 6pm in this South American city that touches the clouds. Turning streets into soccer pitches, the fourth annual Day of the Pedestrian and Cyclist reclaimed the public streets of La Paz and neighbouring El Alto for pedestrians and cyclists. See it in photos and words here.
• São Paulo-based non–profit Bela Rua creates projects to transform ordinary public spaces in Brazil’s metropolis’ into colourful places that inspire good moods and community.
• Every first Sunday of the month in Amsterdam, urban citizens ‘adopt’ benches to craft a shared public space offering anything from a slice of pie to salsa lessons; creating what the organizers BankjesCollectief call “the largest outdoor café in the world.”
• Have you ever waited at a bus stop for what seems eternity and often devoid of conversation, imagining how much better waiting for the bus could be? Project for Public Spaces had, and transformed Pittsburgh’s bus stops into vibrant public spaces through placemaking and community engagement collaborations.

NATURE IN THE CITY

• From Mr. Rogers to Jane Jacobs, neighbourhoods are often the living room of a city. Read about why neighbourhoods matter for city-building and creating resilient and liveable cities, and where we are going wrong here.
• Working towards 20% more urban green space in Australia by 2020, the 202020 Vision campaign advocates the need to include more trees and plants in city design and the Australian urban landscape.

This iconic building took around two and half years to build is now home to a community of students, faculty members and researchers. Situated on a large open space, the Pharmaceutical building with a slanted exterior definitely stands out and catches my eye every time I walk by. The idea behind the Pharmaceutical Building design emerged from a tree metaphor. This tree metaphor illustrates the intertwining of the tree canopy, which is inspired by the evolving development of modern medicine. This is why the interior of the building is built mostly from cedar wood, which also reflects pharmaceutical drugs having derived from plants. The interior captured my attention with the overarching stairs, slanted walls, lecture rooms that still have the smell of cedar, and huge windows that bring in natural light.

UBC Tennis Centre

Home to eight indoor tennis courts and one outdoor tennis court, this building is a very well lit. The building is also built and designed so that tennis tournaments could be televised as well. The architects behind this building pushed for a series of windows running horizontally across the south side of the building. This creates transparency from the building to the streets. The idea was to create a greater sense of safety on the sidewalk, especially at night. However, only a few windows were installed due to the limited budget.

Beaty Biodiversity Museum

Home to a variety of different species, but perhaps most famously known for where the exhibition of the blue whale is located. This museum always causes students walking by to take a second look at the enormous blue whale’s skeletal body that extends the whole upper museum floor. Often students think that the museum is only where the blue whale is shown but they don’t realize the museum extends underground, full of amazing specimen. Definitely a worthwhile visit. The building is connected to three other research buildings which seems like they are built separatly, but are actually connected underground. It is also built perpendicular to UBC’s Main mall, West mall and East mall. Additionally, in the centre of the building is a large open green space with long benches that creates a very welcoming atmosphere for people to enjoy. This museum is an excellent way to welcome public education as well. Previously, many of the specimens were preserved in jars and kept behind closed doors in the research labs. However, because there was a great potential for public education and no reason why these amazing specimen should be hidden from public display, the Beaty Biodiversity Museum was built.

Known for its natural beauty, skyrocketing property prices and a “most livable” designation, Vancouver has infrequently been characterized as a hub for innovative design. That was, however, until its diverse and creative scene of architects, craftsmen (and women), typographers and graphic designers to name only a few, were thrust into the bright light of Vancouver Design Week(s).

Spanning across 14 end-of-summer days, Vancouver Design Week (VDW) was a collection of events organized to showcase and raise public awareness of Vancouver’s “unique design ecosystem.”

Kicking off the celebration was the city’s first Urban Design Awards. Conceived of in the corridors of city hall by VDW Director Jennifer Cutbill and councilor Andrea Reimer, the award ceremony recognized the best in progressive built form.

“Design,” posited mayor Gregor Robertson, “Is about expressing what type of city we want [Vancouver] to be…[It] is one of the most important forces shaping our city and our lives.”

Highlighted across the night were designs that very much embodied Vancouver’s modern direction. Those prioritizing sustainability, density and aesthetics that differed from the City of Glass skyline, were rewarded.

In total, 36 projects were submitted, while ten received accolades. In the Landscape, Public Space and Infrastructure category, top prize was given to Sharp & Diamond Landscape Architecture for their restoration of Jericho Beach Park. Characterized as a project that “celebrates the interface between the natural and urban environment,” the restoration increased accessibility and public interaction with one of the city’s most widely used parks, while also restoring the diverse riparian ecosystem.

From here, VDW stretched on to reveal a truly interdisciplinary range of programming and presentation. Embracing the ambiguity of design as a discipline, events such as “Why I Design” at the Museum of Vancouver provided insight into the range of creation and the impetus behind invention. Showcased were more than 30 designers and projects like the “Snug Vest,” an inflatable vest that simulates hugging, positioned alongside FP Innovations’ impermeable exterior building material created from fused bark.

Drawing attention to the diversity of design also served to bring focus to how design influences daily life on a micro level:

“[Design] affects every aspect of our lives,” stated Robertson at VDW’s inaugural event, “from buildings, to our public spaces, to how we deliver services, to how we care for each other – all of that is wrapped up in design.”

This was similarly expressed at the “Demo Nite Edition 1: The Story Behind Design,” where objects that tend to blend into the background, such as a backpack, suddenly were highlighted, improved upon, and transformed into something like The Transfold Bag by Steven Enns.

As much as VDW was about diversity, it was also about connection. From industry socials to the Hawkers Neighbourhood Block Party, (which the city would do well to allow music for next year), to the studio tour, the attempt of participants to see through the eyes of local designers created a very positive dynamic. This interactivity also encouraged people to don their own design lenses and to express their ideas about the potential of design through the ‘Design is/can’ trope that was carried throughout the two weeks.

Provided the opportunity to traverse graphic design and architecture studios, and to speak to industry professionals happy to explain what fuels their passion was also a valuable experience for young designers. Trendy and eager with pen and paper in hand, these bright patrons were no doubt inspired by the previous generation they spoke to. This sharing of skills and knowledge, questions and answers, worked only to grow and strengthen the city’s culture of design.

While Vancouver’s horizon may not resemble cities like Barcelona or New York, where design is very much valued, its decision to follow in their footsteps and host the Vancouver Design Week certainly positions it on a similar plane. The fact that VDW was organized entirely by volunteers only further enunciates the city’s rich design present and its desire to make itself known.

In the end, the answer to the ‘Design is/can’ questions was: anything.

DESIGN

• (Re)designing a city for the people, Future Christchurch released a documentary series telling the people’s story of how the post-quakes-ravished-city on New Zealand’s South Island is revitalizing itself as a city rebuilt by the people, for the people.

• From Talking Streets, to Corkabitation and Mobile Benches, Cape Town is bringing projects to the city and surrounding areas that highlight design as a transformative means to social, cultural and economic development as the 2014 World Design Capital. One project featured hopes for a more equitable, and shared public street design to bridge the social and spatial divides of the city. Open Streets is a citizen-driven organisation dedicated to fostering discussion and (re)education on re-designing and re-working Cape Town’s streets.

• Earlier this month, Buenos Aires hosted the Future of Places conference where public space experts, practitioners, placemakers and urbanists discussed the importance of the public realm in city planning. This year’s theme: Streets as public spaces and drivers of urban prosperity. The key messages developed will contribute to shaping UN Habitat’s mandate for public spaces in cities around the world.

ART

• Neon Nomads. Bodies in Urban Spaces. The Walking Neighbourhood. Sydney, Australia becomes a living canvas this week as Art & About Sydney brings art to every nook and cranny – and an armchair— in the city.

• In a city where the walls narrate pieces of history through the portraits of Che, Fidel or Raul, French artist JR collaborated with Cuban-American artists José Parlá photographed the wrinkles of the city to tell a different story of Havana. Wrinkles in the City is a public-art series that crosses culture, histories and continents; a short documentary illustrating the process in Havana is the most recent edition made available online for public viewing.

PLACE AND THE PUBLIC SPHERE

• Lagos Wide & Close is an interactive documentary film that takes you on a journey into the streetscapes and soundscapes of the megacity that is Lagos, Nigeria.

• Bridging economic development and the contemporary challenges of maintaining organic urban public space, URBIA: cities I communities l people explores the emerging and disappearing human scale of Asian cities.

• Placemaking in Kibera, Kenya is leading the way in creating safe and accessible spaces for the community to gather by taking a participatory approach to building recreational and citizen-focused spaces in one of Nairobi’s informal settlements.

PLACEMAKING in Your ‘Hood

Check out Vancouver’s ‘place happenings’, and subscribe to the VPSN blog for more good reads.