Weekly Roundup 038 – 14th to 20th November

FEATURE REPORT/ ARTICLE OF THE WEEK

‘The Urban Ultimatum: what should our cities be like?’
Authored by Deyan Sudjic

The Urban Age programme has been relentlessly asking this, and similar questions, in search of an answer, for the last ten years now. LSE cities founded the Urban Age programme in 2005, to carry out research and contribute to policy debate on key issues that shape urban societies today. The programme has held 13 conferences across the globe in the last ten years, with some of the host cities being Mumbai and Delhi.

The author delves into the multifaceted nature of our cities and the explorations of the Urban Age programme on how best we can work with our cities.

Read the whole piece here

Published by The Guardian.



ONLINE PUBLICATION OF THE WEEK

‘Community by Design’
Published by McGraw Hill

Community by Design, authored by Kenneth B.Hall, Jr and Gerald A. Porterfield, gives the reader an easy to understand tour of urban planning at a community level. The authors, in their explanation, break down various aspects of urban designing along with the steps of the designing process, and put it back together in the form of neat summaries.

This book is for the layman, the ringside viewers, the clueless bystanders, and for anyone else who wants to know what really communities are and what they are made of.

Read or download the publication here.

VIDEO/ PODCAST OF THE WEEK

‘The Shareable future of cities’
Created by TED Talks

Alex Steffen, an American futurist, talks about some unconventional stories and ideas to solve urban problems like carbon emission and parking requirements. His stories range from live Eco-neighbourhood projects to crowd sourcing under-used home drills. He questions the Utopian vision of a city covered in greenery, thus exposing the lack of integration with the underlying systems of a city.

Steffen skims through a range of issues and the probable solutions – some of which are being done right now.