15 June 2011
There are some 56 Chinese central cities with more than a million residents; most of us can’t even name the top five (Shanghai, Beijing, Guongzhou, Shenzhen, Tianjin). Despite our ignorance, Chinese urbanization is one of the great human stories of our time, of course…
16 December 2009 | Philadelphia City Paper
On the first morning of December, milky light streaks the city and the day gets going. I’m on top of Drexel University’s new Millennium Hall, a 17-story residence designed by Erdy McHenry Architecture and structural engineer Cecil Balmond as a model integrating engineering and architecture.
19 September 2008 | Philly Skyline
All this, the rush of it, the filth and sweat (never mind what’s getting built), combined with the torrid energy of the foreign born, is dazzling, and it feels good. And now, says, Inga Saffron in last Friday’s Inquirer, facing down financial crisis and burst bubble, “Philadelphia’s greatest real-estate boom in half a century has come and gone.”
26 August 2008 | Philly Skyline
On Friday, we found ourselves in front of the National Palace, in the middle of the celebration of the 30th anniversary of the August 22, 1978 ceding of power by the dictator Somoza. Red and black Frente flags were everywhere and union members chanting “the people united will never be defeated.”
20 June 2008 | Philly Skyline
French cities — and Tunis was one for a time — have benefited from a planning technique that allows a city to grow without demolishing and building over the old. Critically, Haussmann ignored this technique when he built Paris’s 19th century boulevards, but more modern planners have embraced it.