Olympic game development is  rushed,  expensive and large-scaled.  Now, more than ever, winning the right to host Olympic games also comes with large-scale responsibility. Olympic game hosts are given the opportunity to present their country as leader of the current  times -  and in our time, its becoming more and more obvious that such large-scale development must be carefully pursued by the sustainability conscious.

London took this challenge and ran with it. The new East-London Olympic park that will soon boast world-class sporting facilities for the 2012 summer Olympics was once, not too long ago, just an unvisited, industrial wasteland.

Over the last couple of years (work began in spring of 2008), Landscape architects have worked the brownfield site into a transformational park for London. Before construction, the East-London polluted area was secluded and fragmented by pylons and railways. An eyesore for those who passed by, the area was largely abandoned and unlivable. This is why the neighborhoods that surround the future Olympic park will be so dramatically revitalized with this 500 acre transformation. Planners expect the park to serve as a hub for East London, creating opportunities for education, cultural development and training, and jobs.

They are calling it the city´s new ¨sustainable quarter¨ for the community to enjoy after the games. A closer look at the reasons behind this sustainability claim has uncovered impressive efforts:

although more than 200 buildings were demolished before construction, 97% of this material was reclaimed for reuse in the creation of the park. For example, the green-way, which will be the key walking and bicycling route has been created with recycled materials like bricks, man-hole covers, paving stones, and tiles that were salvaged from previous site demolition. Hundreds of thousands of tonnes of soil upturned during demolition is being cleaned and reused for the park instead of being transported off site, and more than 20 million gallons of contaminated groundwater was treated as well. To reduce the amount of carbon-emissions released in the construction process, rail and water routes surrounding the site were utilized for transportation of materials to and from the park. These waterways were cleaned and improved for future use during the construction process too.

Before development, river walls were failing, invasive species were taking over the river banks, and water quality was poor due to years of neglect. A multi- million pound dredging program removed tons of silt and rusting artifacts, including a car or two. Now the waters will be a more accessible habitat, both for the wildlife that has been protected during demolition and construction phases, but also for the newly translocated newts,toads,lizards, and fish. Bird´s nests have also been created on and around site. 45 hectares of diverse wildlife habitat will also host more than 4,000 trees, 74,000 plants, 60,000 bulbs and 300,000 wetland plants.  Also, the invasive Japanese knotweed plant was largely cleared from the area. A staff of ecologists is keeping a close eye on the new wildlife habitat

Regarding the sport-related construction:

Olympic park venues have been designed to be energy and resource efficient.

The Velodrome is nearly 100% naturally ventilated and it´s design maximises the use of natural light to reduce energy consumption. Rain water will also be collected from the rooftop, which is made of unwanted gas pipelines, for flushing toilets and park irrigation. The stadium´s river banks will be lin ed with granite from King George V docks.

Within the building, water used to clean the Olympic swimming pool will be recycled for toilet flushing as well and the energy used to power Olympic venues will be provided by a new energy center network, providing low-carbon power and heat using biomass boilers and other new technologies. Although not nearly carbon neutral, a combined Cooling Heat and Power plant will capture the heat generated by electricity production, making it 30% more efficient than traditional generation. Many of the Olympic venues and bridges will also have living habitat spaces incorporated into walls and roofs.Materials for venue construction must be approved socially and environmentally responsible before contractors build, and a concrete batching plant that recycles materials in place of raw-materials, has been set up on site to reduce the carbon expenditure of transporting the heavy material.

London has turned this potentially carbon-draining large-scale development into, probably, one of the most beneficial developments- both socially and environmentally – that the city has seen. By focusing development to one of the most disadvantaged areas of the English capital, the Olympic site will sustain its social value through its ability to support the environmental systems of the area.

Detroit is known by many as the birthplace of techno, a reputation that has preceded the shrinking city among music-savvy youth for 20+ years. Like most twenty-something Americans,  I have never really considered visiting the city of Detroit – that’s why, when i was asked “what Detroit is like” while living in the other techno-capital, Berlin, I didn’t have much of anything to say – except for something along the lines of “i hear it’s pretty cold”.

Other than to be credited for its music history, Detroit is not one of those U.S. cities that makes contemporary culture news too often. It doesn’t boast notable American monuments (unless you count the first headquarters of auto Industry which, admittedly, unfortunately have shaped our nation quite significantly). It is not, either, one of those U.S. cities that generates tourism like New York, Los Angeles, Miami or Boston.

In fact, the most recent U.S. census report shows that people are migrating away from Detroit at a higher rate than ever before. It’s now estimated to hold 18th place for the largest U.S. City, and Detroit’s population loss has made Michigan (Detroit’s state) the only state to register a net population loss since 2000. While recent census data shows that the total U.S. population has grown 9.7 percent, Michigan’s has fallen by 0.6 percent.

It wasn’t always like this.  Before 1920, Detroit was a modest, compact city that situated its manufacturing along the river, taking advantage of water provided transportation for incoming supplies and outgoing goods. Most of its population lived within a few mile radius of downtown and no one industry dominated-  until the 1920s, when the booming auto industry settled into Detroit.

1914 announcement of Ford’s $5 day sent hordes of job-seekers to the company’s factory in Highland Park (images from the Collections of Henry Ford via. www.autolife.umd)

This initiated a growth spurt for the city, making Detroit, also known as Motor City, the fourth-largest city in the country.  At the cities peak in the 1950’s, it held the title of 5th place.

Ford’s Ford’s Highland Park Plant. (Image from the Collections of Henry Ford via. www.autolife.umd)

Some attribute Detroit’s population loss over the last decade to the travails of the auto industry and the collapse of the industrial-based economy. Others blame a Michigan brain-drain due to a low-quality of life in Detroit. The educated and financially stable residents of Michigan are migrating to other, more attractive cities for work, leaving Detroit-based companies at a loss for qualified employees. Eventually, these companies are forced to move themselves – and unemployment ensues.

A recent New York Times article titled “Detroit Population Down 25 Percent, Census Finds”, quotes 32-year-old Samantha Howell who expresses concern about Detroit’s population decline, “Yes, the city feels empty physically, empty of people, empty of ambition, drive. It feels empty.”. The dramatic scale of population loss (237,500 people in one decade) that the 2010 census has revealed seems to finally be pushing Michigan’s need of an urban face-lift onto the wider radar.

Andrew Basile, Jr, owner of a growing Michigan-based law firm recently shared his story with Rustwire, a blogging site dedicated to consolidating thoughtful, constructive stories about post-industrial cities across the Rust Belt. “We have a lot to learn from each other”, the blog reads.

Basile ‘s essay thoughtfully explains recent migration statistics, the lack of shared developmental values between older governmental officials and younger residents, Michigan’s population’s growing poverty, and the “lack of quality living options other than tract suburbia” – what he calls “poor quality of space”

“The fundamental problem it seems to me”, he writes,“ is that our region has gone
berserk on suburbia to the expense of having any type of nearby open
space or viable urban communities, which are the two primary spatial
assets that attract and retain the best human capital.”

Basile ‘s Images of Metro Detroit, “we have built a very bad physical place”.

As the first region with a automobile freeway, Detroit has adopted an automobile culture and produced Michigan leaders who support urban sprawl rather than work to curb it. As I mentioned in my last Ecological Design Fundamentals post, American cities have been severely influenced by automobile-accommodating design. Michigan is a very good example of the problems that automobile-focused sprawl can bring to space.

Despite Basile’s admitting that he doesn’t see any forward progress or even a meaningful attempt at forward progress to reclaim Detroit’s brain-drained population and better develop urban areas, his term, “poor quality of space”, is still hopeful. With this word choice, Basile is acknowledging the potential that a more ecological re-design of the city space has to re-attract workforce, mitigate poverty problems, and stop environmentally damaging urban sprawl. The problem isn’t Detroit, it’s the special spacial planning, or lack thereof, that has made this urban space undesirable.

Of course, creative efforts to call attention to the the need to improve the under-resourced and intensely blighted Detroit community have been hatching for years. In the 1980s, artist Tyree Guyton and his grandfather began transforming vacant lots and abandoned houses into gigantic art sculptures, integrating the street, sidewalks and trees. This work become known as the Heidelberg Project.

This year marks the Art initiative´s 25th year anniversary. Set in one of the most economically depressed zip codes in the country, with over  90% of people living below the poverty level, the Heidelberg Project has developed as a engine for social and economic change. HP’s goal is to inspire people to appreciate and use artistic expression to enrich their lives and to improve the social and economic health of the greater community. HP’s Beautifying of Heidelberg Street has made it one of the safest places in the area, not to mention one of the best quality spaces in the city.

The city of Detroit is experiencing a low point, Basile has gone so far as to say that the city is approaching the point of no return “where the constituency for reform dwindles below a critical threshold and the region’s path of self destruction becomes unalterable”. Still, that point hasn’t been reached- just yet. And initiatives like the Heidelberg Project prove that it doesn’t take much for individuals to bring great change with creative efforts and re-design.

Detroit will likely present the biggest American urban planning challenge of the next decade. But, i believe, that clever re-design and a few more hands up for Detroit, as Basile and Guyton have proved, could revitalize the city dramatically.

And that’s what I plan to tell people when I get back to techno-pumping Berlin.

By Maria Popova

In December, the now-infamous map of Facebook friendships revealed an uncanny cartography of the world depicted purely through social relationships data. Now, a project by Christian Marc Schmidt and Liangjie Xia is taking the concept ambitiously further: Invisible Cities is a transmedia mapping project, displaying geocoded activity from social networks like Twitter and Flickr within the context of an actual urban map — a visceral, literal embodiment of something VURB‘s Ben Cerveny has called “the city as a platform,” the idea that cities are informational media and living computational systems for urban society.

“By revealing the social networks present within the urban environment, Invisible Cities describes a new kind of city — a city of the mind.”

Individual nodes appear whenever real-time activity takes place and the underlying terrain represents aggregate activity. As data accumulates, the landscape morphs into peaks and valleys that represent highs and lows of data density and information activity — a data topography visualization not dissimilar in concept to Aaron Koblin’s Amsterdam SMS project, and also built with Processing.

“The interplay between the aggregate and the real-time recreates the kind of dynamics present within the physical world, where the city is both a vessel for and a product of human activity. It is ultimately a parallel city of intersections, discovery, and memory, and a medium for experiencing the physical environment anew.”

Invisible Cities is available as a free download for Mac OS X and Windows — read the instructions and go play on your own.

via Creators Project

Researcher looks for link between people’s health and where they live
We know that smoking causes cancer, yet we still light up. We know that overeating causes obesity and diabetes, yet we still overeat. We know that exercise makes us healthier, yet we can’t resist the couch’s siren song.

We all want to be healthier, and we know how to become so. Yet we just don’t do it.

S.V. Subramanian, associate professor of society, human development, and health at the Harvard School of Public Health and a researcher at the Center for Population and Development Studies, has heard all of the theories explaining why living a healthy lifestyle is so difficult. We’re predisposed to pack on pounds to survive the famine that, in olden days, was certainly coming. We’re addicted to the nicotine in cigarettes and the fat in burgers, which get their hooks into us. Convenience is key: Who can drag themselves to the gym every day and cook healthy meals of nuts, fruits, and vegetables when the golden arches beckon?

Subramanian understands that those theories may help explain our resistance to things that are health promoting. Indeed, explanations based on the idea that we are programmed to be who we are and do what we do appear to be returning with some force in recent years with an explosion of genetics research.

But he feels that this has often come at the exclusion of other factors. In particular, the idea that our environments — the places where we live and work and play — may also be important.

“If it’s environment, then there are levers we can pull,” Subramanian said.

Subramanian has embarked on a study that will examine the link between health and location. The study will utilize several longitudinal nationwide data sets to get to the roots of the linkages between neighborhoods and health.

In doing so, he’ll compare health statistics such as those gathered by the Framingham Heart Study, which recorded health outcomes of three generations and followed people as they moved around the country. He’ll probe the age when healthy behavior is formed in the National Longitudinal Study for Adolescent Health, which examines 9- to 16-year-olds. The third data set is a national health and retirement survey of those 50 and older who were recruited in 1992 and revisited several times since then.

Subramanian also plans to use data from national geographic information systems (GIS) and plot the locations of businesses that might be detrimental to health, such as liquor stores and fast-food restaurants, as well as those that might be helpful to maintaining a more beneficial lifestyle, such as health clubs and parks. He can overlay that information with data from the studies and census data on income, race, and ethnicity, creating a rich picture of health and location.

“There’s a thought that poor neighborhoods are underserviced, but we don’t know if that’s true,” Subramanian said.

Subramanian, who received an investigator award in health policy research from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation to pursue this work, said the effort is like finding hot spots, places that are both socially and resource disadvantaged. In addition, he said, instances when these two aspects do not appear together may also offer interesting insights.

Though medical science often looks to intervene at the personal level — helping a patient to make healthy choices — the research may show that there are also effective interventions that can be made at the neighborhood level, such as tax cuts for health-related industries to move into a neighborhood, or incentives for nonprofits to conduct activities that encourage better health.

“What are the things that we can change about a place without having to move the people?” Subramanian said. “It’s an interesting public policy question: Should interventions be at the person level or a higher level, a school or neighborhood?”

One unusual wrinkle that Subramanian is planning to investigate is the extent that free will plays in people living in unhealthy neighborhoods. People generally choose the places where they live, and while some seek parks and good schools, others may select for other factors. Though there is a myth of social mobility in this country, Subramanian said it is actually quite difficult to change social class, and most people end up in neighborhoods like the one they left out of constraints or choice.

“We can learn about health-seeking behavior,” Subramanian said. “I want to quantify how much health and health-related conditions drive the choice of neighborhoods.”

Subramanian said examination of that last factor is important because it has been raised in critiques of other studies, and Subramanian wants to bring data to bear on it.

It’s important, Subramanian said, to understand that exposure to neighborhood landscapes doesn’t equate to taking a fast-acting pill or poison. Instead, effects of neighborhood conditions may lag exposure or accumulate over time. In addition, the life stage at which one is exposed may also matter. When the three-and-a-half-year study is completed, Subramanian plans to write a book on health and disadvantage in American neighborhoods.

“If you have an environmental exposure in a neighborhood, it’s not going to show up for a long time,” Subramanian said. “If you’re exposed in utero, it may not show up for 25 years.”

Article from Harvard Science.

Mr. Subramanian is an associate professor of society, human development, and health at the Harvard School of Public Health and a researcher at the Center for Population and Development Studies.

BOSTON, Mass. (November 9, 2010)—For the first time in history, more people live in cities than in rural areas. According to the United Nations, that urban head count tallies up to more than half of the world’s 6.7 billion people. While city life may offer many benefits—ready access to social and cultural events, more employment opportunities, and the promise of higher living standards, as examples—research does show that city life can have drawbacks. For one thing, it’s hard on the brain.

Scientists who have begun to look at how the city affects our brains have uncovered some surprising findings, including evidence that city life can impair basic mental processes, such as memory and attention. A study conducted by University of Michigan researchers in 2008 found that simply spending a few minutes on a busy city street can affect the brain’s ability to focus and to help us manage self-control.

In that study, one group of participants strolled in a park, while another perambulated along busy city streets. After undergoing a battery of psychological tests, the people who walked the city streets scored significantly lower on attention and working-memory tests compared to those participants who ambled in the park. The researchers concluded that the stimuli of city life—traffic, neon lights, sirens, and pedestrian-packed sidewalks—direct our attention to things that are compelling, but only fleetingly so, and that this alteration of focus can occur at a pace that leaves us mentally exhausted.

“On a busy city street, it’s probably more adaptive to have a shorter attention span, ” says Sara Lazar, PhD, an HMS instructor in psychology and director of the Massachusetts General Hospital Laboratory for Neuroscientific Investigation of Meditation. “If you’re too fixated on something, you might miss a car coming around the corner and fail to jump out of the way. ”

Some people might call these stimuli distractions, but as Lazar points out, they are actually vital pieces of information. Yet these stimuli do use up a lot of the brain’s natural processing power. The result is something called directed attention fatigue, a neurological symptom that occurs when our voluntary attention system, the part of the brain that allows us to concentrate in spite of distractions, becomes worn down. People suffering from directed attention fatigue can experience short-term feelings of heightened distraction, impatience, or forgetfulness. When the condition is severe enough, people can exhibit poor judgment and feel increased levels of stress.

Fortunately, there are quick, easy fixes to help the brain restore its ability to focus. Studies show that spending a short period of time—even one as brief as 20 minutes—in a more natural setting can help the brain recover from the stresses of city life. That may be why urban greenways such as Central Park in New York City, Hyde Park in London, and the Emerald Necklace in Boston remain such popular venues—they allow city dwellers a place to escape the turbulence around them.

The benefits of a room with a verdant view can be found in studies involving hospitalized patients and residents of public housing complexes. Patients staying in hospital rooms that looked out on trees, for example, were found to recover more quickly than patients without an arboreal view. Similar results were found in studies involving women residing in public housing projects; those whose apartments overlooked grassy areas reported they could more easily focus on the tasks of daily life.

This nature–brain symbiosis may be the result of a concept known as attention restoration theory, which was developed by environmental psychologists Rachel and Stephen Kaplan in their book, The Experience of Nature: A Psychological Perspective. According to this concept, people can concentrate better after spending time in nature or even after simply looking at pictures of nature. Watching a beautiful sunset or the nesting of birds in a tree doesn’t demand the type of attention from the brain that filtering a multitude of competing stimuli on a bustling city street does. Natural vistas allow the brain’s attention circuits to refresh.

In her laboratory at Mass General, Lazar is using neuroimaging techniques to study cognitive changes associated with meditation and yoga, practices that are, like nature, calming to mind and body. Lazar and her colleagues have found that people who meditate develop denser, thicker networks of neurons in the prefrontal cortex and right anterior insula of their brains. These areas govern attention and sensory processing.

She says such findings may help explain why urban life can affect our ability to hold things in memory. Memory, she says, relies on the hippocampus, a neural region that is sensitive to cortisol, a hormone secreted by the adrenal glands. Cortisol is linked with stress and secretion of it increases during the body’s fight-or-flight response to fear or danger.

“If people are stressed about basic survival, they will have more cortisol and a smaller hippocampus, and thus potential difficulties with memory formation,” says Lazar. “Moving to a quieter place could help reduce stress, which in turn can reduce cortisol levels and create conditions conducive to neuroplasticity. ” Neuroplasticity describes the brain’s ability to form new neuronal connections to compensate for injury or changes in one’s environment.

If you could use a break from the strain of city life, but don’t see your future including a move to a less demanding environment, Lazar says you may want to consider taking up—or increasing your practice of—yoga or meditation. Your brain, and your lifestyle, could benefit immensely.

Article by Scott Edwards, Harvard Medical School

This article appeared in the Fall 2010 issue of On The Brain. It is the sixth in a series on how internal and external forces  affect the brain.

Más información sobre Saul Steinberg:

The Saul Steinberg Foundation

Wikipedia

Situación del mercado en las inmediaciones de la Plaza Mayor de Madrid

A principios de Junio se puso de nuevo en funcionamiento el mercado de San Miguel de Madrid, un edificio que destaca no sólo por su arquitectura singular sino por la escala compacta, adecuada a las condiciones de su enclave en el casco histórico de Madrid…

Como nuevo vecino del barrio nunca llegué a verlo funcionar antes de su paralización, pero buscando fotos del aspecto anterior, se evidencia su funcionamiento como tal mercado, tanto por la forma típica de los puestos [de chapa metálica, con persianas independientes] como por el aprovechamiento del edificio [no sé exactamente la cifra, pero ahora hay un número muy inferior de puestos ya que se ha despejado un espacio central como zona “multiusos”]

Vista interior del estado actual

Es significativo el que 2 de los únicos 3 puestos “de mercado” es decir, que venden productos frescos de primera necesidad, sean de los únicos dos tenderos que se negaron a renunciar a los derechos de arrendamiento sobre su puesto antes de comenzar las obras de reforma del mercado, siendo el resto de puestos dedicados a la hostelería y a venta de productos “gourmet”. Curiosamente fueron los dos puestos que no pudieron abrir el día de la inauguración junto con el resto por problemas administrativos.

Vistas interiores del aspecto anterior a la transformación.

Supongo que por estrategia de imagen, los puestos “de mercado” están situados en el ángulo más visible y representativo del mercado, el que se ve según se sale de la Plaza Mayor por la C/ Ciudad Rodrigo. De esta manera el aspecto a primera vista es el de un auténtico mercado de abastos.

Detalles de la fachada antes y después de la rehabilitación.

Mi visión al respecto es positiva en términos arquitectónicos porque el edificio ha ganado en cuanto a que la rehabilitación ha mirado por evidenciar la estructura metálica y ha conseguido una mayor transparencia y ligereza del edificio al eliminar el peto perimetral de fábrica de ladrillo y continuar el paño de vidrio hasta el contacto con el suelo, también se han rediseñado los puestos y se ha suprimido la persiana para dar mayor continuidad al espacio, decisión que no se puede llevar a cabo a la ligera en una estructura de mercado a la usanza tradicional, ya que cada puesto tiene que guardar su género [ni que decir tiene que esta sensación también viene dada al eliminar tantos puestos, se consigue poner en relevancia la estructura de pilares metálicos.]
Lo reprobable de este caso, es que para rehabilitar un BIC,  [catalogación que posee este edificio] haya que sacrificarlo como mercado, porque es un hecho que ya no va a funcionar como tal.

Vistas interiores del aspecto actual

Es evidente que el del Mercado de San Miguel es un caso mas de gentrificación en el centro urbano de Madrid, en tanto que los realmente perjudicados por esta operación de “replanteo” del uso del mercado son los residentes de toda la vida del barrio, que son los que sufren de verdad la presión que se ejerce sobre ellos al eliminar un servicio de primera necesidad. Por lo tanto, hablando en términos urbanísticos, es razonable considerar los mercados de barrio como servicios que alientan la vida urbana y no como una actividad comercial más.

El ambiente de la plaza antes y después de su construcción en 1910 y 1950 respectivamente.

Dos ejemplos de mercados madrileños que pueden contribuir a ilustrar la escasez y pequeña escala de los existentes actualmente, son los desaparecidos Mercados de Olavide y San Ildefonso. Ambos se demolieron en los años 74 y 70 respectivamente bajo la misma operación urbana. “La demolición del Mercado de San Ildefonso, se inscribe en la operación de rescate de las plazas públicas ocupadas, -a partir del siglo XIX, por edificaciones de mercados. Y es en los años sesenta cuando aquella operación se promueve en el Ayuntamiento de Madrid.“

Mercado de San Ildefonso en el corazón del Barrio de Malasaña y La Plaza resultante de su demolición [1970]

El caso de Olavide representa uno de los escasos ejemplos de Mercado exento en Madrid. Construído en 1931-34, es obra de Javier Ferrero,  célebre arquitecto madrileño que realizó singulares proyectos durante la 2ª República, como el Viaducto de la calle Bailén y el Mercado Central de Pescados de la Puerta de Toledo.

El Mercado de Olavide y su demolición [1974]

La última vez que fui a Barcelona quedé entusiasmado, y lo digo con envidia sana, porque da gusto ver un mercado funcionando a pleno rendimiento y conservando el pulso de la vida del barrio, estuve visitando los mercados de San Antoni, La Boquería, y Santa Caterina.

Mercado de la Boquería

Mercado de San Antoni

Mercado de Santa Caterina

San Antoni me dio la impresión de tener un carácter más de barrio pese a su gran escala, mientras que el de La Boquería es mas turístico pero sin perder su carácter. El de Santa Caterina es muy reciente y sustituye al anterior mercado. Su perímetro está lleno de restaurantes y no tiene la entidad de los otros dos, al estar cerrado cuando fui, no tengo una impresión sobre su ambiente, pero por las imágenes interiores no se percibe un gran aprovechamiento aunque si parece que predominen los puestos de productos frescos.

Hay que destacar que estos mercados tienen una escala que nada tiene que ver con el de San Miguel y en general con los de Madrid que son más pequeños y no suponen una infraestructura urbana tan potente como estos tres casos de Barcelona. Lo de “infraestructura urbana potente” creo que trabaja en favor de la calidad del servicio, tanto por la accesibilidad [mejor preparada para el abastecimiento] como por la cantidad de puestos, que vela por la sana competencia, el control de precios y la diversidad.
Fuera de España acabo de visitar recientemente otros ejemplos que abarcan diversos tipos:
El mercado central de Budapest [Központi Vásárcsarnok] de finales del XIX y restaurado en 1994 es un claro paradigma de una rehabilitación que vela por mantener fielmente su uso. Esta gran edificación industrial permite tener auténticas avenidas cubiertas como calles. Rompiendo el tópico del mercado bullicioso, de calles repletas de gente, por las que es difícil transitar.

Mercado Central de Budapest

En Sarajevo, el mercado central [Markale] es simplemente una cubierta que permite desarrollar toda la actividad al aire libre. Fue objeto de los morteros serbios en 1994 durante el asedio a la ciudad, provocando una masacre civil. Pero hoy en día, la abundante vida que contiene no refleja en absoluto la huella aquel terrible suceso.

Mercado Central de Sarajevo

Al igual que el de Sarajevo, el mercado preexistente antes de la construcción del de San Miguel en 1915 era tan sólo una cubierta. Esto demuestra que el tipo edificatorio de mercado no está cerrado, y que con una mínima intervención se puede desarrollar una actividad tan intensa como la de un mercado.
¿Deben protegerse los mercados? ¿Son una actividad comercial más o urbanísticamente tienen carácter dotacional?

Este articulo ha sido escrito por Javier De Paz para el blog “La Ciudad Viva“, una iniciativa de la Consejería de Vivienda y Ordenación del Territorio de la Junta de Andalucía.
Para este mismo blog hemos escritos otros interesantes artículos:

NO HACER NADA, CON URGENCIA,
Los rincones olvidados
Tu ciudad, detrás de una tapia,
Ciudades de código abierto. Estrategias urbanas participativas de dinamización social,
[Ciudades de código abierto] La arquitectura del espectáculo ha muerto, ¡viva la arquitectura sensata! y
¿Espacio libre=Espacio público? Espacio basura y potencial de transformación en el corazón de las ciudades.

We present some of these references that seem the most appropriate:

The Greenwich Millennium Village (GMV) is an innovative mixed-tenure modern housing estate on an urban village model in Greenwich in south-east London, and part of the Millennium Communities Programme under English Partnerships. The village is designed by architects Ralph Erskine and partners with EPR Architects Ltd as executive architect as part of the regeneration of the whole brownfield site of Greenwich Peninsula former town gas works. GMV is south of the former Millennium Dome, now renamed the O2.The Village is being built by Countryside Properties and Taylor Wimpey. The housing is of modern, environmentally-friendly design, and the development aims to cut primary energy use by 80% using low-energy building techniques and renewable energy technologies. It will continue to expand until about 2015, with its own integrated village shopping and community centres. 1,095 homes and the village square and shops had been completed by 2008.

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The Hockerton Housing Project is a small community of five earth sheltered homes on the outskirts of Hockerton, Nottinghamshire, UK. The houses were designed by ‘green’ architects Professor Brenda Vale and Dr Robert Vale. Low carbon living is facilitated through the use of renewable energy, the water system, food grown on site, and the community’s approach to work and transport. The homes were completed in September 1998 after three years of planning and 18 months of construction, at a cost of about £65,000. Two homes have since changed ownership on the open property market. The development consists of a terrace of five single story dwellings which are earth-sheltered at the rear (North), so that the ground surface slopes and blends smoothly into the field at the back. The houses have passive solar heating (a combination of high thermal mass and the south-facing conservatory) removing the need for a space heating system and the greatest factor in lowering energy use. Each house is 6 metres deep with a 19 meter conservatory to the south. This runs the full width of each dwelling. A repeated modular bay system of 3.2m in width was used for ease and cost of construction. Most of the internal rooms have 3 metre high French windows linking them to the conservatory. Those rooms that are not so dependent on natural light, such as utility and bathing areas are located towards the rear of the homes. The surrounding 10 acre site allows for crop cultivation, the rearing of sheep and chickens, and self-sufficiency in water and energy.

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New homes at Tübingen-Südstadt are developed by innovative building partnerships – groups of individuals working together on a co-operative basis. Designed by Lehen 3 Architekten. The housing market is tight. Families are increasingly priced out by buy-to-let for student rental, and the loss of families and middle income groups to surrounding villages is perceived as a persistent problem. In 1990 the French military decided to leave its base in the Südstadt. This offered a welcome opportunity for the municipality to develop the 65ha brownfield site as a mixed-use urban quarter, which was to provide space for 6,500 inhabitants and 2,000 workplaces. In 2006 the project is nearing completion, with 1,100 residential units built so far, accommodating a population of 3,600.Tübingen is a university town 80km south of Stuttgart. Its population is 87,000 and has been growing for a long time, mainly due to in-migration. A further 8,000 inhabitants are expected by 2020. In Germany the quarter is widely known for its strong and vital community, its distinct urban character and a vibrancy which is unusual for new-build developments. These characteristics are primarily attributed to an innovative development process in which land is acquired and assembled by the municipality and then sold to building partnerships, groups of usually 5-30 parties (individuals, flatshares, couples or families) who themselves commission an architect and a contractor with the design and construction of their homes. Thus no private developer is involved. The concept was unique at the time but has now been imitated by a number of other municipalities such as Kassel, Freiburg, Trier and Hamburg.

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In Amsterdam, the GWL-terrein housing development shows how keeping a community car-free can foster strong community spirit and encourage residents to live in a more sustainable way. Masterplan by KCAP.
GWL-terrein is a large-scale community housing development built on the site of Amsterdam’s former municipal water facility. A central focus of the development’s masterplan was to provide housing predominantly for families with children and to incorporate environmental considerations into the design.
GWL-terrein consists of high-density housing and a series of linked public spaces. The development is car-free in its interior and few parking spaces are provided for residents. It is located less than 3 kilometres from central Amsterdam and is very well connected to surrounding bus, tram and train routes. The car-free nature of the development contributes significantly to its unique character and has earned the development international attention.
The developers retained and refurbished some of the former waterworks buildings, which has helped create a strong sense of local identity. The addition of a distinctive modern water tower provides an additional landmark to the area.
Since the late 1990s, it has been a central policy of the Dutch government to pursue urban renewal through a more balanced proportion of social and market-rate housing. This policy was implemented in order to combat the creation of “ghettos” of social deprivation, as well as physical and social monotony. GWL-terrein responded to this initiative by providing a mix of both social and market rate housing.

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EVA lanxmeer is the name of an eco-neighbourhood (240 houses) build from 1994 to 2009 in the Dutch town of Culemborg in Nederland. It is an environmentally-friendly-housing development.
It was initiated by Marleen Kaptein, who was looking for a more sustainable way of building housing in urban areas. The project was a strong partnership among future inhabitants and the city of Culemborg, consultants and other people. It incorporates many of the principles of high environmental quality and ecotown but its principal originality is the promotion of the constant participation of the inhabitants. Indeed, this area (except for his masterplan) was designed and conducted with representatives of future residents in a creative process (bottom-up; from bottom to top and not imposed by management or administration), often regarded as a model for several of its aspects (for example in Europe by Energie-Cités and in France by the Department of Ecology, Energy, Sustainable Development and Sea).

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Viikki, Helsinki
In December 1998, the Government approved a programme of ecologically sustainable development for the construction and property sector, which focuses partly on arriving at models of good practice. In 1998-2000, a special subsidy for pilot projects in line with the principle of sustainability was linked with the Government experimental building programme. During the period 1998 to 2002, an experimental area of ecological building of international importance is being constructed at Viikki, a district to the Northeast of the centre of Helsinki. Viikki is situated 7 kilometres from the heart of Helsinki. Buses began running between Viikki and the city centre in autumn 1999. In the future the area will also be served by the new orbital ‘Jokeri’ line, running across the Helsinki Metropolitan area. By 2010, Viikki residential district will be completed with Science Park as its hub. The Science Park is an international centre of excellence growing up around part of the University of Helsinki situated in Viikki which specialises in biology and biotechnology. Viikki will then provide 6 000 jobs, places for 6 000 students and homes for 13 000 people. The Viikki eco neighbourhood blocks are the result of long-term work aimed at putting ecological principles into practice in actual building. Two design competitions were organised for the area and a number of seminars and debates. The master plan competition was won by a proposal based on a finger-like structure with alternating buildings and green open spaces. The layout permits functions to be combined naturally, nutrients and water to be recycled (composting, allotments, collecting surface water run-off), and the utilisation of solar energy. Another competition was organised for the first blocks. The proposals were evaluated using eco-criteria drawn up by an interdisciplinary working group. The eco-criteria define levels of five different aspects: pollution, natural resources, health, bio-diversity and growing food. An environment profile was calculated for each competition proposal. In this system, points for those five aspects are added up. A zero-points scheme fulfils the strictest minimum criteria for conventional residential building. A ten-point design represents an ecologically excellent scheme and to exceed twenty points requires exceptional innovation.

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Bo01 is a newly developed district of Malmo situated in a former industrial site by the ocean. It encompasses commercial and social services together with about 500 housing units and is entirely sustainable. The project offers 100% locally renewable energy, minimised future transport needs and car dependency, ecological buildings, increased biodiversity, local investment and improved waste recycling facilities.

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Hammarby Sjöstad is a new district to the south of Stockholm, which extends the inner city beyond Hammarby Lake for the first time. Masterplan by Stockholm City Planning Bureau.
The name ‘Hammarby Sjöstad’ means ‘city surrounding Hammarby Lake’ and this new 200 hectare city district will comprise 9,000 apartments, housing a population of 20,000 people, and 200,000 sq m of commercial floor space attracting a further 10,000 people to work in the area. Approximately half of the total area has been developed to date and it is anticipated that the final scheme will be completed by 2015.
The concept for a new district in this location was born in the early 1990s. At that time, the City of Stockholm had developed a plan for development on the north side of the harbour, and this stimulated interest for a more strategic plan for the whole area around Hammarby Lake, both on the north and south banks. The idea was to exploit the unique opportunity to expand the inner city with water as a central focus for the development, whilst at the same time transformed an old port and industrial area into a modern city district.
Impetus was gained for development and infrastructure in the area when plans for Stockholm’s bid for the 2004 Olympic Games were being prepared. The core area of Hammarby Sjöstad was envisaged as an Olympic Village with a strong emphasis on ecology and environmental sustainability, which was promoted as one of Stockholm’s unique selling points as an Olympic city. Although the bid was unsuccessful, development was already underway and the momentum for change had been established.
Hammarby Sjöstad is built on former industrial brownfield land located on the south side of Hammarby Lake, to the south of the city centre, which has historically formed the natural border to the inner city area of Stockholm. The project seeks specifically to expand the inner city across the water.

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Widespread community involvement in the planning and development of the Vauban district has helped it to become a sustainable and flourishing neighbourhood.
The site (38 hectares) will be home to more than 5000 inhabitants and 600 jobs. The main goal of the project is to create a city district in a co-operative and participatory way, meeting ecological, social, economic and cultural requirements.
The landowner, the City of Freiburg, is responsible for the planning and development of the site. This has been characterised by a ‘Learning while Planning’ principle allowing flexibility in reacting to development proposals and through extended citizen participation.
A major achievement by the City of Freiburg has been to divide land into small plots and allocate it in preference to private builders and Baugruppen (co-housing groups). Although the development plan included some regulations for the design and layout of the homes, a variety of structures exists and builders have had the freedom to design and develop the homes they aspire to. Coherence is provided through the extensive use of ecological measures and the ‘car-free’ and ‘parking-free’ concepts of living.
Perhaps the greatest strengths of the Vauban project are the ideas, creativity and commitment of the people involved and their common goal in creating a sustainable and flourishing neighbourhood.

source:
http://www.cabe.org.uk/#1
http://www.cardiff.ac.uk/archi/programmes/cost8/case/holistic/viikki.html
http://www.wikipedia.org

The White House Office of Urban Affairs and the Domestic Policy Council hosted a day-long discussion about the future of America’s urban and metropolitan areas. Participants included policy experts from across the country, several cabinet members, and elected officials. Discussions covered the evolution of metropolitan areas, best practices in urban communities, and how the federal government can be a more effective partner in these communities.
After the roundtable discussions, the President spoke on some of the challenges facing urban communities today. The President is personally familiar with these challenges after spending much of his life in urban areas, saying he received his greatest education working in Chicago’s South Side. These challenges are only exacerbated by the recession, which is why the administration has been committed to making sure our cities not only rebound, but also prosper in the future:
But what’s also clear is we’re going to need to do more than just help our cities weather the current economic storm.  We’ve got to figure out ways to rebuild them on a newer, firmer, stronger foundation for our future.  And that requires new strategies for our cities and metropolitan areas that focus on advancing opportunity through competitive, sustainable, and inclusive growth.  And that’s why all of you are here today.  And I know that there were a lot of ideas that were shared throughout the morning and afternoon.
Now, the first thing we need to recognize is that this is not just a time of challenge for America’s cities; it’s also a time of great change.  Even as we’ve seen many of our central cities continuing to grow in recent years, we’ve seen their suburbs and exurbs grow roughly twice as fast — that spreads homes and jobs and businesses to a broader geographic area.  And this transformation is creating new pressures and problems, of course, but it’s also opening up new opportunities, because it’s not just our cities that are hotbeds of innovation anymore, it’s our growing metropolitan areas.
The President outlined some of his administration’s proposals:
And we’re also going to take a hard look at how Washington helps or hinders our cities and metro areas — from infrastructure to transportation; from housing to energy; from sustainable development to education.  And we’re going to make sure federal policies aren’t hostile to good ideas or best practices on the local levels.  We’re going to put an end to throwing money at what doesn’t work — and we’re going to start investing in what does work and make sure that we’re encouraging that.
Now, we began to do just that with my budget proposal, which included two investments in innovative and proven strategies.  I just want to mention these briefly.  The first, Promise Neighborhoods, is modeled on Geoffrey Canada’s successful Harlem Children’s Zone.  It’s an all-encompassing, all-hands-on-deck effort that’s turning around the lives of New York City’s children, block by block.  And what we want to do is to make grants available for communities in other cities to jumpstart their own neighborhood-level interventions that change the odds for our kids.
The second proposal we call Choice Neighborhoods — focuses on new ideas for housing in our cities by recognizing that different communities need different solutions.  So instead of isolated and monolithic public housing projects that too often trap residents in a cycle of poverty and isolate them further, we want to invest in proven strategies that actually transform communities and enhance opportunity for residents and businesses alike.
The President highlighted the policies of Denver, Philadelphia and Kansas City for their innovative solutions to urban challenges. With these fresh ideas and successful solutions, and the help of the federal government, we can reinvent our urban and metropolitan areas for the 21st century.

More info

The four first projects we will present today are the first in the list: Destiny Florida in Destiny, Florida (USA), Dockside Green in Victoria, British Columbia, Canada, Godrej Garden City in Ahmedabad, India and Elephant & Castle in London Borough of Southwark, England.

Destiny Florida
This project is connected to an interesting strategic plan called: How shall we grow? Witch think about the future of the cities in 2050 in Florida.

A prototype for future cities, Destiny will be a forward-thinking Environmentally Planned Community of Today™ operating with minimal impact on the environment and a hub where the latest clean technology innovations will emerge. While Destiny’s boundary is marked by 64-square miles, its footprint is much smaller, with a compact design and a focus on preservation. Destiny will preserve more land than it uses. Through its creation, many thousands of acres will be protected, forever safe from development. Destiny will only utilize previously disturbed land, leaving untouched and pristine open space intact.
The idea of creating a sustainable, self-contained urban center outside of existing city borders was developed and adopted in the Central Florida Regional Growth Vision. The consortium of organizations identified areas in the Central Florida area where independent, self-sustaining urban cores could be created to halt continued sprawl from existing cities.

Dockside Green
Maybe the most completed overview of the project in this website.

While there have been eco-residential and eco-industrial developments in the past, none, to our knowledge have incorporated such a wide range of uses as Dockside Green.

A model for holistic, closed-loop design, Dockside Green will function as a total environmental system in which form, structure, materials, mechanical and electrical systems will be interrelated and interdependent – a largely self-sufficient, sustainable community where waste from one area will provide fuel for another. Here you will find a dynamic environment where residents, employees, neighbouring businesses and the broader community will interact in a healthy and safe environment, reclaimed from disuse and contamination.

Godrej Garden City
There is no website, I only find those images, not very charming, about some Green?? skyscrapers in the website worldarchitecturenews.

Godrej Garden City is a 10 towers project comprised of 20 storey skyscrapers and above. Recently supported by the Clinton Climate Initiative’s Climate Positive Development Program, the project has been chosen as one which demonstrates urban growth in a ‘climate positive’ way.
Being located at the fast emerging central suburb of Mumbai – Vikhroli, this property is at the heart of a dynamically evolving city. Of the six A-type towers, four towers already completed and occupied, the four B-type towers are set for construction this year. Most rooms overlook the scenic landscape of the verdant mangrove stretch and the distant hills of Ahmedabad in India. The property is judiciously embellished with amenities selected to serve aesthetic and practical concerns, keeping contemporary living standards in mind. The residential towers are earthquake-resistant, constructed using computerized ready-mix concrete and corrosion-resistant steel reinforcement.

Elephant & Castle
Probably the most interesting of this selection, because of the regeneration of a big communication center in London Borough of Southwark

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Elephant and Castle’s strengths include excellent transport links, including two zone one tube stations, an overland rail station and hundreds of buses each hour.
Although often perceived as being deep in south London, Elephant and Castle is further north than Victoria and closer to many of London’s key attractions such as the Houses of Parliament and London Eye than, for example, the West End.
The area lies within walking distance of central London’s economic, cultural and commercial centres. Elephant and Castle also occupies a key position within Southwark and has the potential to become the borough’s flagship location.
Its accessibility, proximity to the city, extensive public ownership of land and diverse population all provide a powerful base for regeneration.