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Tag Archives: City Planning
Veto the tower, Mr. Mayor
I wrote a letter to Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza today [Monday]. I sent it by email and then hand-delivered another copy tucked inside my book Lost Providence, where I inscribed the title page in his honor. “Delivered with the sincerest … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Development
Tagged City Planning, Hope Point Tower, Jason Fane, Jorge Elorza, Lost Providence, Providence RI, Zoning
2 Comments
Committee’s Fane flip-flop
Learning nothing in its latest public hearing that it did not already know, the Ordinance Committee of Providence City Council reversed itself on Thursday to recommend that the council neuter the city’s zoning laws. It voted three to one to … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture, Development
Tagged City Planning, Fane Tower, Hope Point Tower, Jason Fane, Providence City Council, Providence RI, Urban Renewal, Zoning
3 Comments
Prov’s City Beautiful parks
Catherine Zipf’s piece in today’s Providence Journal, “Bus proposal is appalling,” is dead on. The more you think about it, as Zipf has clearly done, the more difficult it is to imagine a rational reason for the state’s proposal to … Continue reading
Tragic London tower lesson
The Grenfell Tower that burned in London, costing several score of lives, offers lessons that we can and will again fail to heed. No building can be perfectly fireproof, and no ladder truck can reach beyond 20 stories anyhow. If … Continue reading
Posted in Architecture
Tagged City Planning, Grenfell Tower, London, Manhattan, Simon Jenkins, Urban Density
9 Comments
‘Transforming Providence’
Yesterday’s announcement of the publication date of Lost Providence brings to mind that Transforming Providence, by Gene Bunnell, a professor of city planning at SUNY/Albany, has just been published. I am pleased that he has weighed in on the redevelopment … Continue reading
A Jane Jacobs cornucopia
Here is an excellent review of recent books published by and about Jane Jacobs in the past year, which was the centennial of her birth. “What Jane Jacobs Saw,” by Michael Lewis in the upcoming March issue of First Things, … Continue reading
The parking meter idiocy
Providence Mayor Jorge Elorza appears determined to serve a single term. How do I know? Just look! He is trying to offend every constituency he can by installing parking meters where they shop. Several neighborhoods on the East Side have … Continue reading
Plymouth after World War II
Mark Motte, author with Francis Leazes of Providence: The Renaissance City, urged me to view an old documentary on video called “How We Live Now,” filmed in 1946, about the effort to rebuild Plymouth, the most heavily bombed city per … Continue reading
Posted in Architects, Architecture, Architecture Education, Architecture History, Development, Other countries, Urbanism and planning, Video
Tagged Britain, City Planning, Documentary, How We Live Now (1946), Mark Motte, Plymouth UK, Propaganda, Providence: The Renaissance City", Video
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Is this tactical urbanism?
Here is a street sign that seems to epitomize the fatuousness, and perhaps the corruption, of municipal bureaucracy. Warning signs just like this have been popping up in the middle of streets in Providence for the past year or so. … Continue reading
