Left, Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects; Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners; Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects
Designs Unveiled for Tower Above Port Authority Bus Terminal by Richard Rogers, Cesar Pelli, and Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects:

The on-again, off-again plans to build an office tower over the north wing of the Port Authority Bus Terminal took at least a conceptual step forward on Thursday with the unveiling of competing designs by three leading architectural firms.
Easily the most striking is a 42-story constructivist assemblage by the London firm Rogers Stirk Harbour & Partners, which is also designing Tower 3 at the World Trade Center site. It takes the form of four discrete boxes stacked atop one another and bound together by open diagonal trusswork that echoes the bold X-shaped steel braces girdling the main terminal below.
In complete contrast, for its suavity and lucidity, is a proposal by the Manhattan firm Kohn Pedersen Fox Architects. The central element of this plan is a sheer, glass-clad, 48-story tower whose surface has an almost icy gleam. In this plan, the X braces would recede in importance behind a screen.

Ventanas cívicas, originally uploaded by Kevin Vásquez "AURINEGRO"

• Herzog & de Meuron’s revised Tate Modern extension revealed
• The Sub-Neighborhoods of Greenpoint, Brooklyn
• A survey of wind turbines
• Stuck in Traffic: Free-Market Theory Meets the Highway Lobby
• Embodied energy and LEED Buildings
• Olafur Eliasson Artkrush Interview
• A pictorial chronology of the Burj Dubai’s changing proposed height

CCTV rising above Sanhuan Beijing, originally uploaded by Bruce in Beijing

Richard Florida says that The days of urban sprawl are over:

What’s happening here goes a lot deeper than the end of cheap oil. We are now passing through the early development of a wholly new geographic order – what geographers call “the spatial fix” – of which the move back toward the city is just one part.
Suburbanization was the spatial fix for the industrial age – the geographic expression of mass production. Low-cost mortgages, massive highway systems and suburban infrastructure projects fuelled the industrial engine of postwar capitalism, propelling demand for cars, appliances and all sorts of industrial goods.
The creative economy is giving rise to a new spatial fix and a very different geography – the contours of which are only now emerging. Rising fuel costs are one thing, but in today’s idea-driven economy, it’s time costs that really matter. With the constant pressure to be more efficient and to innovate, it makes little sense to waste countless collective hours commuting. So the most efficient and productive regions are the ones in which people are thinking and working – not sitting in traffic. And, according to detailed research by the Nobel Prize-winning economist Daniel Kahneman, commuting is among the least enjoyable, if not the single least enjoyable, of all human activities.

What is implied but not expressly stated, is that the suburban sprawl of the last 60 years was enabled and fueled by the subsidization of basically free transportation by the federal government. The suburban condition is not a natural state as has been often stated by suburban apologists, developers and the construction industry. It is only natural that a correction is happening, especially in light of our energy situation.

neue nationalgalerie / berlin, originally uploaded by kissing_the_beehive

As my previous post, Minimum FAR for Walkable Urbanity & Westerville, Ohio discussed, there is a minimum floor for walkable urbanity; an urban situation where density reaches critical mass allowing all of the Jane Jacobs virtuous effects of urbanism to form: independence from the automobile, more eyes on the street, etc.
Below is a historical survey of four different Columbus, Ohio area residences and one Brooklyn, NY residence. These diagrams are figure-ground relationships illustrating the lot, setbacks (front, side & rear) and house size.

1. East Coast Urban Lot
2. Midwest Urban lot – German Village
3. First Suburbs – Huber Ridge
4. Reagan Suburbs – Dublin
5. Midwest Exurbs – Dublin

Note how large the lots have become throughout the years, and the location of the house in context of the lot itself.
Upcoming diagrams will argue that the large front yards of newer developments are both wasted space and are a principle reason why Suburban landuse isolates their homeowners.

Computer punch card, originally uploaded by Mirandala

Big Media Matt makes comments about low quality US data:

Every once in a while I toy with the thesis that someone ought to make a big deal about the fact that a lot of the standard statistical data about the United States that we track is of a kind of low quality. One noteworthy example is the poverty rate formula, which is basically nonsense.

There are three legs which make up the iron-triangle of good research data:

1. High quality data,
2. Easily accessible data, and
3. Extensible data in usable formats

The amount of work I put into finding the correct, and congruent, data for my Comparative Analysis of NYC & Washington DC’s Area, Population, Density & Average Income was enormous. While different governmental agencies such as the Office of Management and Budget create standards upon which different agencies collect and report data, finding that data was quite an undertaking. At least there is Fedstats.gov, which as quite the collection of data sets which most are downloadable in multiple formats.
It would be very helpful if the State and Local municipalities followed the US Government’s lead on this and open up their data sets.

David Alpert’s discussion of transit-oriented mixed-use cites a very interesting land use statistic by Christopher Leinberger, who states that the minimum FAR to support walkable urbanity is 0.8:

What does “walkable urbanity” look like?
Christopher Leinberger: It starts at an FAR of around 0.8–five times denser than classic suburban development. If you go a bit denser, you get places like Reston Town Center near D.C. The bulk of Reston is a typical master-planned, cul-de-sac suburb, but they left a 300-acre greenfield site for something special. Mobil, which owned Reston at the time, created this very urbane place, with highrises right up to the sidewalk, retail on the ground floor, fountains, and an ice-skating rink. It’s a phenomenal success–5,000 housing units to date, with rental rates and housing prices that are 50 percent higher than the drivable Reston market, because people can walk everywhere. Of course, some might argue that it’s a suburban version of a real downtown.

Reston Town Center – by RTKL
The above plan of Reston Town Center give us some scale of what is required for walkable urbanity. Living in a walkable neighborhood just doesn’t make sense for those training for Olympic Powerwalking. Without even talking about $5 gasoline, having the option to walk to the store for quick errands without having to get into your car is a life-altering situation. This is the very definition of freedom of mobility.
So I wanted to compare Leinberger’s minimum for walkable urbanity to my hometown, Westerville, Ohio, which gives us this diagram:

Which, in execution, produces the scattered sprawl below:

Street after street of detached single-family houses with unused front-yards and low FAR. Not that these weren’t (or aren’t) lovely places to grow up, but from experience these neighborhoods were dead. Compare the above to Uptown Westerville, which is the original crossroads settlement with much higher FAR, and is the most desirable area to live in Westerville. But it isn’t just the FAR which creates the major difference between the two neighborhoods, the front yard setback requirements create either a Suburban feel – 30′-0″ setback – or a more urban feel – 10 – 15′-0″ setback.
Just take a look at the revised diagram below:


Not only is Uptown Westerville denser, but also is universally loved and desired throughout Westerville. It is where you went on first dates, where you got ice cream, where you went to buy cute gifts for your mom on Mother’s Day. But for some reason Westerville restricts this type of development, when it should expanded.