Posts

Messy cities: how to strive for more spontaneity in the planned city?
What do we mean by vibrant and liveable cities? Which buildings, activities and groups are desirable or undesirable in this context? And can this be planned and regulated from above by experts and professionals, or is it primarily a matter of leaving room for bottom-up initiatives? The answers to these questions ultimately determine how our cities look and feel: neat and orderly, raw and exciting, or a bit of everything. In the book Messy Cities, numerous authors express their preferences and s…

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Urban playground: a review
What type of cities do we want our children to grow up in? Car-dominated, noisy, and devoid of nature? Or walkable, playable and green? The answer to this question will be clear. The book 'Urban playground' looks for ways in which you can achieve the latter by describing different projects, principles and tools. 

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København: new city life
Copenhagen is considered to be one of Europe's leading cities in regards to quality of life and sustainability. Over the past couple of years a range of public buildings and spaces, infrastructure and entire quarters have been developed whose architecture and urban planning are in many aspects inspirational and exemplary. A new book about these projects was recently published.

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Designing child-friendly streets
Children spend only half as much time playing outside as their parents did.There are several reasons for this. The way we have organized our cities is one of them. How to turn this tide? How do you design streets that are child-friendly? What are the do's and don'ts? The publication Designing Streets for Kids provides various tools for this. In this article a summary and review.
Play is an important human right, as indicated in the UN Convention on the Rights of the Child. This states th…

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Soft City: building density for everyday life
Due to their increasing popularity cities are under pressure. To accommodate the influx of people, more and more buildings are being built in higher densities. The challenge is to keep these cities liveble, inclusive and sustainable. In his book Soft City David Sim gives numerous tips and examples for this challenge. He shows that higher densities and quality of life can go hand in hand. It's just a matter of people-friendly architecture and city planning.

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Happy City from a Dutch perspective
Dear Mister Montgomery,
My name is Gerben Helleman and I'm an urban geographer from The Netherlands. This summer I finally had the time to read your book 'Happy City'. Admittedly, a bit late, but my jobs, blog and six years old daughter kept me 'occupied'.

I really enjoyed reading your book. It is a great summary of all the movements in the last decades in urbanism, architecture, planning and design. With all the inspiring things you read on social media and websites abou…

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The Open City
Nowadays we make cities to much as a closed system: segregated, regimented, and controlled. Instead of this 'Closed City' we need an 'Open City' where citizens actively hash out their differences and planners experiment with urban forms that make it easier for residents to cope. This is the main message of urban sociologist Richard Sennett in his new book 'Building and Dwelling' that came out last month. Yesterday he gave an inspiring lecture at the Rotterdam Academy of …

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Pop-up City; city-making in a fluid world
After the success of the blog, this summer the book arrived: Pop-Up City. A city where existing urban planning frameworks and architectural landscapes do not hinder spontaneous human activity, but rather serve as an encouraging platform for innovative, inspirational and time-bound activities. In the book a diverse collection of these temporary initiatives pass by. Ranging from funny ideas to interesting improvements to the urban landscape.

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Triumph of the city
It is probably the most pro-cities book of the last years: Triumph of the City. Written by Edward  Glaeser, Professor of Economics at Harvard University. The book’s core thesis is that ideas spread easily in dense environments. “We must free ourselves from our tendency to see cities as their buildings, and remember that the real city is made of flesh, not concrete”. A summary and review of the book by using some of my favorite statements.

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Arrival City
In 2011, the British-Canadian journalist Doug Saunders wrote the bestseller 'Arrival City' about the drift to the city. Because of this process, there are worldwide more people living in the city than in the countryside since last year. The Guardian called it "the best popular book on cities since Jane Jacobs's The Death and Life of Great American Cities." That was reason enough to travel to Leiden, where Saunders gave a lecture.

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Places in the making
In the past, remaking cities has been the stuff of big visions and product-focused interventions. Now, as cities try to rejuvenate themselves, there is a new approach: bottom-up, flexible, temporarily and interactive. 

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The city from above
At a certain point, each Dutch Urban Planner or Human Geographer has to face it. At least, it used to be compulsory study material: the book ‘Ruimtelijke ordening’ by Van der Cammen and De Klerk. The book represents the history of the planned city and shows how tight The Netherlands is regulated. It does so by using descriptions of a great number of examples of spatial planning and many memoranda. I have no idea whether this book is still compulsory, but at the time I thought it was dry stuff b…

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Living in a City District
It had been in the bookcase for a while now, so this autumn it was about time to start reading it: ‘Afri’ by journalist Jutta Chorus about the Afrikaanderwijk in Rotterdam (The Netherlands). This district is for many the district of the multicultural market and the second generation of Turks and Moroccans that has gone astray. However, the book shows that a lot more, both positive and negative things, is happening in this migrant district.

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Urban Springtime Books
This blog is on the interface between the planned city and the lived city. It describes inspiring projects, articles, books and private observations. And it represents the beautiful, fun and exciting sides of the city. It is about making the most of opportunities, about creativity and unorthodox regulations. Summed up with the term ‘City in the spring’. This term is hard to define. It’s more a feeling than anything else. Like the first day of spring. In the specialist literature, there are seve…

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