Starting and maintaining a corporate blog has been a very interesting experience. When working with Banyan Branch, our social media consultants, we decided that the blog would be more effective if our posts were thought pieces written by our architects, planners, and marketing staff, instead of corporate blogs, which typically post about company news and events. By choosing this method, we could not only showcase the incredible group of individuals at our firm, but could also stay on top of current topics in the architecture and planning world.
Because we have our team write most of our posts, however, we sometimes hit a week (or two) where no one really has time to put something thoughtful together. So instead of the Monday News Roundup, which I missed this week, I thought I would pull together a Friday News Roundup, and hopefully we'll be back on track next week.
RAFAA’s Solar City Tower for Rio 2016 games features energy-generating waterfall (World Architecture News)
Going for green at the Olympics in Brazil, with the briefest mention of Vancouver’s green Olympics.
Enabling walking in cities (Washington Post)
The time has come to acknowledge that walking will be an indispensable component of 21st-century transportation.
How to turn your streets into sidewalks (GOOD)
What if streets belonged to people and not cars? With the rise of car culture over the last half century, our roads have grown bigger and wider, while our sidewalks have grown smaller and more narrow. The global movement “Ciclovia” wants to reverse that trend, at least for a day. The idea has caught on and spread throughout South America and up north to places like Ontario, New York, and El Paso.
Cul-de-sac hell and radius of demand (Human Transit)
Cul-de-sacs make people travel more miles
Our first sustained decline in driving (GOOD)
The New York Times has a fantastic infographic up that charts the price of gas and the number of miles we drive per capita. And while we've declined before, this is the first sustained decline in US history.
Throw out the spare tire, replace it with an electric bike (EcoGeek)
Living small in Vancouver (The Globe and Mail)
The city's first laneway house drew a big crowd. Is this the beginning of an affordable housing revolution on our back lots?