Who dares say what counts as “smart” when neighborhoods evolve? Look no further than the beige-and-black cover of The Smart Growth Manual. That’s the guide to repurposing American land use, not a guide.

Who could claim such authority? Look down the cover for the author credits: this is a volume “from the authors of Suburban Nation,” Andres Duany and Jeff Speck, whose indictment of sprawl in that book inspired legions of citizens to learn mind-numbing public review procedures in order to give their towns a center again. Now Duany and Speck (who is a Metropolis contributing editor) say that this book is a go-to resource for citizens who have enlisted in that fight, complete with rounded corners for easy thumbing. Actually, they say it’s the go-to resource. It situates places along a rural-urban continuum and lays out how people should plan, circulate, live, and work in those places for a healthier life and climate.

Unsurprisingly, the authors easily defend their claims. We caught up with them via conference call with Speck in Washington, D.C., and Duany in Miami. An uninhibited discussion, with stirrings of a sequel, followed.

Who’s the audience?

Andres Duany: This is a response to the empowerment of citizens in planning. The public process has become very broadly based—it’s expected now [that citizens will participate in charettes] and often the outcome is questionable. That has to do with expertise. So this manual is for elected officials and for citizens who participate in the [planning] process.

Jeff Speck: You can read it in the public hearing, while you’re waiting for your project to come up. Read more…

Photos: Cristina Naccarato/Broken City Lab

Just across the river from Detroit sits a city forgotten. Battered by the fall of the auto industry and struggling to keep its economy running, Windsor, Ontario, has seen some tough times in recent years, and things aren’t likely to improve any time soon. It has the highest unemployment rate in Canada, a plummeting population, and the empty storefronts and foreclosed homes that have come to define this generation’s Great Recession.

Though geographically south, Windsor’s been called the Detroit of the North. For some locals, it’s simply a broken city. But there’s a growing movement that believes Windsor is a city that can be fixed.

A group of artists, activists, and urbanists has come together in Windsor with the straightforward-yet-complex goal of repairing the city. Their group is called the Broken City Lab, and it meets weekly to collaboratively dream up ways of engaging the community in a conversation about Windsor’s future. Read more…

A rendering of the CityCar on the streets of Manhattan. Image: William Lark, Jr., Smart Cities

When I first saw computer renderings of the MIT Smart Cities research group’s CityCar a few years ago, I thought I was looking at a pie-in-the-sky vision of a distant (and idealized) future. This compact, stackable electric vehicle is supposed to dock at charging stations throughout a city, allowing lucky urban dwellers to simply swipe a card for an instant, on-the-go rental. But it turns out that a system like this—dubbed Mobility on Demand by the MIT researchers—could become a reality in the tantalizingly near future. The Smart Cities team has already developed three concept vehicles, including the CityCar—it’s currently working with General Motors on a drivable model—and it has an initial pilot program, using an electric bicycle, tentatively lined up for Boston next summer. Ryan Chin, a PhD candidate in the Smart Cities group, predicts that a full-fledged system will happen within the next five years. (A $100,000 prize awarded by the Buckminster Fuller Institute last June should help here.) Recently, I spoke to Chin about the principles of Mobility on Demand, his team’s fleet of lightweight electric vehicles, and the differences between car development in Cambridge and Detroit.

So what exactly is Mobility on Demand?

Mobility on Demand, at the highest level, is a very sustainable personal-mobility system for urban environments. How it works is you have a fleet of lightweight electric vehicles that are placed at charging stations throughout the city. And at each of these charging stations you can pick up or drop off one of these vehicles. You have either an RFID reader or an access card or a credit card that releases the vehicle to the user. And then you are allowed to drive any one of these vehicles to any other station in the city. So these stations would be distributed throughout the city at convenient locations, within reasonable walking distance. And the whole idea is that you can pick up vehicles and drop them off anywhere; you don’t need to return it back to the location you took it from. Read more…

Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read her previous posts.

I’ve suddenly developed a mild case of urban envy of…Washington, D.C. That’s right, as of today the not-exactly-progressive town has something New York is sorely lacking: a bike station. Funded by the District and the U.S. Department of Transportation and built by Mobis/Bikestation, the 1,600-square-foot facility offers secure parking for 130 bikes, a changing room, lockers, rentals, and repairs. An annual membership costs $100, or you can buy a daily pass for a buck. Cities like Seattle, Santa Barbara, and Long Beach, California, (where Mobis/Bikestation is based) have already had success with these facilities, but the D.C. station is the first of its kind on the East Coast. Which raises an important question: How useful is a bike station sans showers during warm, humid eastern summers? Perhaps I should reserve my jealousy for Chicago, whose McDonald’s Cycle Center offers showers and towel service. I could get used to the name.

Photo: Jeff Caldwell

Within hours of arriving in Detroit, nearly $14,000 worth of computers, iPods, cameras, and art supplies went missing from the backseat of a car. The robbery was surprisingly quick, executed in the few minutes the vehicle was left unguarded on the street. The two victims knew better than to leave valuables in plain site, yet they hadn’t quite expected the crime. Neither had they backed up their hard drives properly, so the loss was more than just monetary.

Welcome to Detroit. Read more…

Book photo, Sarah Palmer; others courtesy Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern

When it comes to taking popular images of Las Vegas, the picture-postcard nighttime shots of the Bellagio with its streams of fountains on the Strip or the slightly drunken and very silly party shots in front of the Eiffel Tower replica are the probably the norm. Architecture and urban theorists Nicole Huber and Ralph Stern have taken a more serious view of Sin City in their new photo book, Urbanizing the Mojave Desert: Las Vegas, which shows a hybrid landscape reshaped by everyday urbanization, focusing on the radical transformation of the Mojave Desert. Their 192-page book (published by Jovis Verlag) features a lengthy essay and 150 color photographs of everything from billboards and abandoned trailer parks to power plants and golf courses rising out of the desert. I spoke to the authors about the book, the idea of a green Las Vegas, and how  recent developments in Las Vegas are redefining the desert landscape.

How did you come up with this idea for the book?

Ralph Stern: In architectural theory and architectural circles in Las Vegas, much of the identity is still organized around Venturi/Scott Brown’s Learning From Las Vegas, and there’s still this allegiance to the Strip as an ideal, even though the original has all but vanished. When I got there in 2004, the greater metropolitan area population was at 1.7 million and already planning for a city of four million. The Strip is certainly an element, but it’s not what’s going on here. It is this incredible metropolis that nobody seems to address in terms of its impact on the surrounding federal lands, on any land use and land policy issues, or on water issues. Our book is a response to the misplaced focus on the Strip and a lack of attention to the city on the whole. Read more…

It’s hardly news to architects and planners that the increase in security after 9/11 has changed American cities, with bollards, blockades, and security cameras sprouting like toadstools after a rainstorm. But exactly how much space is affected?

A new Web site called Secure Cities is helping to quantify the issue. Professor of urban design Jeremy Németh and his partners at the University of Colorado, Denver, surveyed the civic centers and financial districts of New York (left), Los Angeles, and San Francisco, evaluating public spaces on three criteria: accessibility (are the entrances blocked off?), mobility (are there restrictions within the space, like security checks?), and surveillance (are security personnel present?). Read more…

I’m a sucker for best-of lists, so I always look forward to Monocle’s annual ranking of the world’s top 25 most livable cities—and I’m always amused by how poorly American burgs fare in the editors’ estimation. Granted, Monocle’s target reader appears to be the sort of wealthy European jet-setter who favors Aspesi outerwear and has strong opinions on the virtues of Gstaad versus St. Moritz—in other words, not someone likely to be lured by the discreet charms of Des Moines. Still, the magazine seems to take special pride in ignoring the States. Last year was an exception—for the first time, three American cities made the cut: Honolulu (number 12), Minneapolis (19), and Portland, Oregon (25). This year, however, only Honolulu hangs in there, moving up one spot to number 11. Why Honolulu? It satisfies several of Monocle’s key criteria for livability: good public transit, plentiful annual sunshine, a balmy average temperature, bars open until the wee hours, and relatively few chain stores (only 16 Starbucks and zero Zara outlets!) It’s worth noting, however, that the editors care nothing of affordability—thus Hawaii’s “paradise tax,” which matches one of the highest costs of living in the country with middling wages, is a non-issue here.

For your kvetching pleasure, here’s the full list: Read more…

Metropolis’s senior editor, Kristi Cameron, is contributing semi-regular posts on issues regarding livable streets in a feature we’re calling The Street View. Click here to read previous posts in this series.

Perhaps it’s the fact that people in California spend so much time outdoors, but whatever the reason, the streets I strolled on a recent trip to the Golden State were a lot friendlier than the ones I’d left behind in New York. In San Diego, for instance, there were pedestrian crossing buttons at every intersection and all were in working order. (A fair percentage of the ones I find in New York are permanently depressed, and I have to wonder what kind of signals they are submitting to the network.) And each public park I entered, from San Diego to San Luis Obispo, had a bin of emergency poop bags for dog owners left high and dry. It finally occurred to me to take a few pictures of these amenities, so here goes: Read more…

I’ll admit that I’ve been thinking about maps a lot these days, particularly our evolving relationship with space and planning now that we have access to so much mapping technology. The way we see the world is changing thanks to innovations like Google Earth and perhaps it’s my recent obsession with bird’s eye views that drew me to Storefront for Art and Architecture this weekend to see Work AC: 49 Cities, Mapping and Measuring the Utopian Metropolis. Read more…