Urbanism

1 Ideas to discuss

• Smart city versus surveillance state.
• Development externalities.
• “urbanism”
• weaponised design
• politics of play
• NIMBY
• artificial reefs

2 Urban governance and innovation

• I hated Dubai until I learned about it | Derek Sivers
• How to Run a City Like Amazon, and Other Fables
• Start Here | Próspera City Builders Network
• Próspera | A Place to Build Business, Community, Innovation
• Próspera City-Builders’ Network | Dework (intriguing! get paid for doing units of work towrds designing a novel city)
• Astral Codex Ten on model cities
• Charter Cities Institute

3 To read

• stunning urban photography at r/UrbanHell

• Michael Batty’s vision at first glance is kind of capital-friendly techno-utopianism, which rings weird in my ears. I’m sure billion-dollar oligopolist public-private-partnership developments don’t need any extra cheerleading as they already have departments who are perfectly capable. But that is perhaps a necessary marketing strategy for urbanists in 21st century London, And some of the excesses of corporate smartcityland are refuted if you read past the abstract (vacuous urban dashboards etc). He devised some interesting mathematical models:

  • Batty’s review editorials in Environment and Planning B.

• Adam Greenfield is the guy who calls out technocapitalist utopians and will hence not get you funded. a piece for the Guardian’s “Resilient Cities” project.

• walkability versus cars

4 American homelessness and drugs

• Leighton Woodhouse, Sick City
• Leighton Woodhouse: Sociology, Social Psych, Homelessness, Addiction, Culture, Decline of Civilization
• Why Are Rich People So Obsessed With Proving US Cities Are Dystopian Hellholes?

5 Incoming

• Urban vs Rural Sustainability
• City Journal | Urban Affairs Magazine (I’m kinda fascinated that the HTML title brands this a “conservative” magazine
• Why did Kathy Hochul kill congestion pricing? How a bogus driving myth doomed NYC to more bad traffic )

6 References