A redundant elevated railway line stretching almost 1.5 miles along the west side of Manhattan, now converted into a linear pattern.
Articles
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As a child in the early 1950s, one of my literary heroes was the great athlete Alf Tupper, who appeared weekly in the Rover magazine. He was a working-class mile runner, whose diet was mainly fish and chips. He worked as a welder in an arch of a railway viaduct, and he sometimes slept there too before a race. Ever since I have been interested in railway arches and the businesses that are found in them. Being an academic, I now refer to their premises as parasitic architecture.
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Urban designers like to bang on about the sanctity and the inviolability of public space (well, I do). But there is a sliding scale of value which we put upon different kinds of street. We put a lower value on one which is full of motor vehicles passing through, and a higher value on one where people on foot can move freely and use the street as a social space.
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At a meeting of a design review panel we assessed a scheme for 40 houses, most of which were to be built on two cul-de-sacs. We were all decidedly unpersuaded by the proposal, on the grounds of its internal ‘unconnectedness’ as well as for other failings.
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In July I gave a talk about early municipal housing in central Birmingham. I showed seven case studies, which went from the first council houses (1890), to the first council flats (1900), and on to the first high-rise flats (1955).
My Favourite Plan
Copenhagen ‘Finger Plan’ (Fingerplanen) 1947 Regional Planning Office (1947, reprinted 1993) Skitseforslag til Egnsplan for Storkøbenhavn (Copenhagen: Regional Planning Office)
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The wonderful Flatpack film festival hit Birmingham again in April, with a packed six-day programme of events in 24 different venues. Two documentaries made last year about two parallel lives, those of Jane Jacobs (1916-2006) and Laurie Baker (1917- 2007), were outstanding films for me.
Apart from stealing the title of Martin Creed's exhibition at the Hayward Gallery a few years ago, I wanted to collect my thoughts on the power that cities and the public realm have over our health, happiness and prosperity.
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I am working for a heritage regeneration trust, making a masterplan for the regeneration of the Chance Brothers glassworks site in Smethwick, Sandwell. It is a very historic place: a scheduled ancient monument, in a conservation area, with eight listed buildings.
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I was recently on a panel which reviewed a development proposal by University College Birmingham. As well as substantial demolition of old buildings in a conservation area, and their replacement by new buildings, it proposed to take over ownership of a street running between the buildings.
My Favourite Plan
Redditch New Town Masterplan, Second Generation New Town, designated 1964
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For once, more by chance than intention, this Endpiece is actually written on the theme of the issue. HP Sauce used to be made at Aston Cross in Birmingham. On the opposite corner stood Ansells brewery.
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In UD 137 I mentioned the photographs that Janet Mendelsohn took in the streets of Balsall Heath in the late 1960s, when she was studying under Stuart Hall at the Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies (CCCS) at Birmingham University.
