Home
Share |

Content about Design

May 7, 2012
LIVE: CNU 20 Session Streamed Live on EngagingCities - [Looking Forward: New Urbanism and the New World]

Check out live streaming of CNU 20's - Looking Forward: New Urbanism and the New World. As the Congress for New Urbanism enters its third decade, economic, political, and environmental conditions pose serious challenges for the built and natural environment, as well as New Urbanist practice. Three of CNU's Founders will open this session with lectures addressing these challenges. Andres Duany will present the 21st century crises that call for New Urbanists to adapt, including slow development, the public process, suburban retrofit, agricultural urbanism, and the theology of metrics. Dan Solomon will discuss the tensions between new urbanism's roots in the nuanced complexity of the city and the reductive codifying of New Urbanist practice.

Live feed for Thursday morning session, Looking Forward: New Urbanism and the New World:

December 19, 2011
Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA): Great Places Awards for Place Design, Planning and Research 2012

EDRA announces the Call for Entries for the 14th Annual Great Places Awards for Place Design, Planning and Research. The deadline for entries is Friday, January 27, 2012. Winner announced at EDRA43Seattle May2012.

Environmental Design Research Association (EDRA) announces the Call for Entries for the 14th Annual Great Places Awards for Place Design, Planning and Research. The deadline for entries is Friday, January 27, 2012.

About the Program

December 2, 2011
NCI Charrette System: Stories of Community Transformation

November 30, 2011
Designing Geography Part II: Thinking GeoDesign

Born from landscape architecture, geographic information systems (GIS) technology has a complex pedigree. GIS and design have long been intertwined, hard to separate, and competitive. GIS was seen as the place for mapping, planning, and analyses at the macro and meso scale, while computer-aided design (CAD) was seen as a design tool for engineering and architecture at the meso and micro scale. Those boundaries, ill defined and arbitrary to begin with, are beginning to blur further with the introduction of GeoDesign. So exactly what isGeoDesign?

Born from landscape architecture, geographic information systems (GIS) technology has a complex pedigree. GIS and design have long been intertwined, hard to separate, and competitive. GIS was seen as the place for mapping, planning, and analyses at the macro and meso scale, while computer-aided design (CAD) was seen as a design tool for engineering and architecture at the meso and micro scale. Those boundaries, ill defined and arbitrary to begin with, are beginning to blur further with the introduction of GeoDesign.

November 10, 2011
Designing Geography Part I - Reframing an Old Idea

Design that considers geography has been going on since humans started designing. Ancient cultures built settlements in close proximity to water and with good mountain views; they designed cities to maximize shading and natural cooling; and they positioned themselves in proximity to natural resources and trade routes. For thousands of years, design considering nature was, well, just natural.

Design that considers geography has been going on since humans started designing. Ancient cultures built settlements in close proximity to water and with good mountain views; they designed cities to maximize shading and natural cooling; and they positioned themselves in proximity to natural resources and trade routes. For thousands of years, design considering nature was, well, just natural.

October 24, 2011
User Experience Experts Have Much to Offer Gov2.0

Government does not have to be inefficient and unpleasant to deal with - especially in a democracy where we are seeing a more concerted effort to help define best practices in user experience for government agencies. So what is the ideal design to offer citizens a touch point with government agencies which builds trust, transparency and loyalty? In a recent article published by UX Magazine, these complex questions were explored - in search of techniques that might be employed by Gov2.0 supporters, to inspire positive alternatives in typically change-resistant environments.  

March 2, 2011
The Innovation Generation

New York City rang in the new year with a new internal innovation software platform.  A division of Spigit’s idea management platform, “Simplicity” is being adopted city-wide in a two-phase roll-out that will eventually include all 300,000 New York City employees.

New York City rang in the new year with a new internal innovation software platform.  A division of Spigit’s idea management platform, “Simplicity” is being adopted city-wide in a two-phase roll-out that will eventually include all 300,000 New York City employees.  The city hopes to harness the software to overcome communication barriers across its many departments, improve collaboration and generate innovative ideas from the people who know the inner workings of the city best.  

December 16, 2010
Crowd-sourced and co-designed: experiments in urban social innovation

From online volunteering to open governance, the mainstreaming not only of Web 2.0 technologies but of the very values that underpin the ‘social web’ is having powerful effects on the way urban livability and social welfare are now engaged with and negotiated by diverse actors. As part of this movement, what I refer to as ‘place-based creative problem-solving’ (PBCPS) is empowering residents to become decision-makers over their own environment, creating enabling frameworks for urban participation both in the public sphere and at the institutional level.

September 21, 2010
Cultivating Innovation

Here at Engaging Cities, we love to tout the possibilities that public participation and collaboration can provide for planning. With the goal of innovation in mind, how can we better stimulate the great minds of people collaborating to make great things happen?  As it turns out, some of the experts at the Harvard Business Review have a few suggestions.  First on their list is meeting people’s needs.