We are pretty regularly contacted by readers who would like to submit a guest editorial or share their thoughts on something we have recently published, but it is not all that often that we are contacted by someone like Mayeul Akpovi.
Mayeul sent us a message on Facebook pointing us to his latest video, which is a blend of time lapse and hyperlapse photography techniques, of Lyon. The nearly three-minute video of France’s third largest city is, quite simply, stunning.
The Paris-based web developer describes photography as merely a passion of his, and says that he produced the video from some 8,000 pictures he took over the course of a five-day trip to Lyon earlier this month.
Who wants to chip in and buy Mayeul Akpovi a plane ticket to Cincinnati so he can work his magic in the Queen City? Or are there any local photographers out there willing to step up and see if they can hold a candle to his work? Feel free to ping us at editors@urbancincy.com if you do.
There are many ways by which you can measure progress but there’s nothing like defining urbanity to put into perspective just how far along societies has come. Urbanity, after all, encompasses everything modern and progressive, the leaps and bounds that humankind has made through the years to essentially live better.
It’s in the trends of condos and high buildings. It’s in the gadgets and devices you carry around. It’s in the very air you breathe. Different people have different needs but it cannot be denied that everyone benefits from urbanity at some point or another.
That condo you’re living in? That’s a result of urbanity. As well as your favorite coffee shop and the latest flick they’re showing in a cinema near you. It’s around you and will continue to persist for as long as an individual interested in improving how one lives exists.
Chicago [Randy Simes]
Bogotá [Randy Simes]
Hong Kong [Randy Simes]
Defining Urbanity
What is urbanity? At the heart of it all, it is basically the refinement of experiences. If you think about it, anything urban is simply the better version of something else in a rural setting. If you think about living conditions, for instance, you’ll see a fine example in condo living.
Where living in a condominium can be considered as the pinnacle of comfort, luxury, and convenience in an urban area, the rural end of the spectra will show housing options of drastically lower quality. There is urbanity where there are jobs. There is urbanity where commercial structures abound. There is urbanity where modern living is applied. It is usually associated with large cities because their massive economic strength makes it possible for urbanity to thrive. It also usually paints a picture of glass and metal, starting full of promise but eventually fading into a backdrop of smog and gray skies.
Urbanity represents the good, the bad, and the ugly about progress. Identifying the bad and the ugly seems to be foreboding but this does not mean that all things urban are doomed to ruin eventually. True progress, and consequently true urbanity, has to do with finding solutions to everyday problems, making it easier for an ordinary citizen to wake up in the morning and go about their day.
This includes finding a balance between green architecture and innovative architecture, allowing cities to not only thrive with technology but to co-exist with the environment as well.
The Urbanity Equation
For the longest time, the urban setting has always followed a simple equation where you subtract green space when skyscrapers and others have to be added to the landscape. As such, as buildings and other structural feats filled the cities, lush greenery started to fade, until you’re left with nothing more than a few hardwoods used as accents. This pervaded until the disastrous effects of climate change started making themselves felt, making it known to every person that the environment will not take its destruction sitting down.
Calamities and disasters are clearly eye-openers that’s a why a more enlightened consciousness began to form, giving birth to architectures adapting to the needs of the times. People are increasingly becoming aware that their actions have consequences and that the results aren’t pretty. Fortunately, it’s not too late.
Mankind has done a great deal of damage to the planet but it is not too far gone that nothing can be done to remedy the situation. But if these efforts are to have a lasting impact, they have to be implemented at the soonest time possible while following a logical plan of action. After all, the sooner sustainability trends catch on, the sooner damages can be softened if not completely reverted.
Seoul [Randy Simes]
Seattle [Randy Simes]
Taipei [Randy Simes]
If you’re looking for a home in the sky, for instance, make sure you go with a condominium that employs green technologies in their property, like energy-saving measures. Aside from automatically helping you do your bit for the environment, green architecture has impacts on energy use so this helps you save on costs because overall resource consumption in your building will be reduced. You’ll see this when you calculate condo cost. A portion of your condominium dues accounts, after all, for your share in the upkeep and expenses of the building so lesser expenses means smaller monthly fees for you to pay. Saving money while saving the environment? Not a bad idea at all.
Does It Add Up?
Ask anyone and most people will tell you that they still appreciate urbanity, what with the conveniences it offers in many aspects of day-to-day living. It’s definitely understandable because there are just many things in your life that you wouldn’t want to go back to after having seen what a better way is like. But in your aim to amass the better things in life, are you sure the trade-off is worth it? Sometimes, it’s just not.
Green living is a little bit easier today because property developers have taken it upon themselves to introduce sustainable and environment-friendly features in their projects. But just because your building recycles water doesn’t mean that you’ve done enough of your part in taking care of the environment. You have to take a more active role than that.
You have to think beyond what your actions will mean tomorrow, next week, or next month. You have to consider what your actions will lead to years in the future, when a different generation is walking down the very streets you walked on. Are you leaving them a livable world? No one can really say what will happen in the future but having the future in mind in whatever you do today will help ensure that there is indeed one to look forward to.
Putting Two and Two Together
The modern world will always have a certain level of flashiness to it but there is hope that it wouldn’t be as bright as before, a time when people are blinded to the realities and consequences of urban living. By turning down the lights bit by bit, people are able to see more clearly where the brazen path to the urban realm is really leading to (not that it hurts to save on energy costs at the same time).
Calculate condominium expenses and you’ll get an idea as to how much living in the lap of luxury will cost you. But is that amount really all you have to pay to enjoy a life of convenience? Costs can come in various forms and most of the time people are not willing to pay what it takes to get what they want. Worse, they don’t want to pay anything at all. Nothing in life is free and it’s this kind of greed and selfishness that got everyone into trouble. The sooner people find a way to balance their needs and wants with that of the planet’s, the sooner they’ll be able to truly make the most out of living in an urban landscape.
Urbanity is not evil. Don’t fear endless urbanity. There’s no need to fall into a zero-sum mentality when everyone can emerge as winners. It will require work but green urbanity is more than doable.
Anna Rodriguez is a Project Consultant for various real estate developers. She has a degree in Industrial Engineering and currently lives in the Philippines. She has also backgrounds in online marketing, social media management, and is currently a writer for Agency Post, and owns Homey Guide Blog.
If you would like to have your thoughts and opinions published on UrbanCincy, simply contact us at editors@urbancincy.com.
The opening plenary of the 22nd annual Congress of the New Urbanism opened to an audience of over one thousand attendees. Keynote speaker Ken Greenberg, a Toronto based urban designer and author of the book Walking Home: the Life and Lessons of a City Builder addressed the audience. His message is that even though New Urbanists have accomplished much in the 22 years since the founding of CNU, there is much to do and that new urbanists need to change to meet the coming challenges of the 21st century.
Greenburg highlighted the many challenges facing urbanism today. The first is the oft cited decline in the use of automobiles. “We are seeing the back of cars,” he told the crowd. Total miles traveled is down and young people are delaying getting their drivers licenses at a significant rate compared to a generation earlier.
Second is the growing gap in income inequality between urban places and suburban places. In Toronto from 1970 to 2005 a majority of the city’s low-income population moved from the urban core to suburban communities while the core experiencing prosperity.
Ken Greenberg addresses the CNU. Photo by Paul Knight.
This divide is happening in cities across North America as urban cores have become desirable, and suburban areas experience decline. These trends were reported by UrbanCincy last month in Atlanta.
Greenberg goes on to say that this growing divide is also resulting in a political divide where urban places are not politically strong enough to demand for better urbanism because in most cases political power is still held in the suburbs and rule areas. As money grows scarce, money for urban areas dwindle. Urban areas are increasingly competing against the suburbs for scarce national resources. This is a familiar issue in many cities, including Cincinnati.
“All things public are under intense stress,” Greenberg argues, “just when we need them the most.”
Greenberg’s message to political leaders is, “There can be no national vision without a vision for cities.” Politicians should eliminate the “perverse subsidies” that continue to encourage costly, difficult to adapt and non-resilient infrastructure. He equates changing the direction of what he called the “sprawl industrial complex” to trying to turn an aircraft carrier: It will happen slowly.
The divide is allowing cities to both create good urbanism and bad urbanism because policy is so hard to change, good urbanism is often done by granting exceptions to policy.“We have plenty of examples of good urbanism. The challenge is to change that from being the exception to being the rule,” he told the crowd.
However the challenges remain tough. Greenberg urges that urbanists need to stop operating in silos and unite to build good policy. The threats of climate change and an increasingly urbanized world mean that cities are a necessary part of the future. He argues that we should embrace them and build them right.
Colonial Era Neighborhood on the Edge of Downtown Cali
If Medellín is the clean, gem of Colombia, Cali is the working man’s town. Visibly grittier than Medellín, Cali sports an incredible amount of assets that match and sometimes outshine Medellín.
Surrounded by mountains on one side, Cali’s skyline is more impressive than that of Medellín, while also seeming more original. Everything in Medellín is new, it seems.
Downtown Cali
Plaza de Caicedo and the Metropolitan Cathedral of Saint Peter the Apostle
Mountain of Tres Cruces
Cali Bike Lane
Bus Only Lane in Downtown Cali
Bus Only Lane in Downtown Cali
The Sprawling Cali Metropolis
Church of San Marcos de Leon near Parque de los Poetas
Construction Traffic Near Downtown Cali
Construction Traffic Near Downtown Cali
Estadio Bus Station
Cali Graffiti
Cali Graffiti
Cali Graffiti
Local Offices of Partido Liberal
Parque Panamericano
Downtown Cali High-Rises
Park View of Cali
Public Art and Dedicated Bike Lane Outside Cali’s Soccer Stadium
Residential Towers Along the Rio Cali
Rio Cali
View into Downtown Cali from the Riverwalk
Colonial Era Neighborhood on the Edge of Downtown Cali
Downtown Cali
Residential Towers Near the Rio Cali
Pedestrian Bridge Over the Rio Cali
While no rail transportation exists in the city, a large and extensive system of bus rapid transit allows traveling easy. In addition to their bus rapid transit system, Cali also has a system of bike lanes, although no bike share system.
They have impressive grand boulevards and arterials all throughout the city as well as grade-separated highways more impressive than those I saw in Medellín. In the downtown area, the city capped over a highway running along the river and made it a pedestrian and bus-only boulevard, following the river on the left and providing easy access to the center city and many historical buildings.
For a city with a reputation as being dangerous, it was incredibly efficient and had an impressive number of assets, including an incredible park system affording many breathtaking views of downtown Cali and the city sprawled out around it.
This two-part photo series on Colombia’s second and third largest cities was put together during a four-month assignment by Jacob Fessler, during which he was based out of the city of Barranquilla.
Paycor recently moved their headquarters from Queensgate to Norwood’s Linden Pointe on the Lateral. Norwood pulled out all of the stops to ensure that they brought these jobs (and the tax dollars that come with them) from the City of Cincinnati.
When moving into their new digs, employees were literally crying out of excitement for their new workspaces. The open design and floor-to-ceiling windows are complimented by walking routes that allow employees to walk the perimeter of the floors for exercise.
However, once they step foot outside the front door the only thing any Paycor employees will be walking to are their cars.
Paycor’s New HQ from Above (Google)
Paycor Site Plans (James Bonsall)
Lonely Bike Rack Outside Paycor HQ (James Bonsall)
No Man’s Land (James Bonsall)
Paycor HQ Entrance (James Bonsall)
Sidewalk Connectivity (James Bonsall)
Let’s back up though; the first phase of Linden Pointe actually had some great features. From sidewalks, crosswalks and bike parking, this development was well thought-out (other than the buildings being so far off-set from the street).
The Paycor development has absolutely no resemblance to the relatively pedestrian-friendly phase one. There are no sidewalks connecting the Paycor building to any local roads. Bike parking is also seemingly non-existent. But the biggest slap in the face to good design is Paycor’s complete disregard of the crosswalks already built in phase one towards the new development.
Instead of leading to a tree-lined sidewalk that runs to Paycor’s front door, these crosswalks lead to nowhere, seeming to indicate deliberate decisions taken by Paycor to avoid connecting their site to the rest of the development.
We can’t just blame Paycor for this mess though. Norwood’s Planning Commission & City Council approved the site plans too. The plan shows the crosswalks from the original development leading nowhere. The plan also shows no sidewalks connecting Paycor to any of the three nearby streets.
The plan does show a nice shiny building that will house lots of additional revenue. It is likely the City of Norwood did not want to push back too hard because the Paycor move was likely not a done deal. This is a shame though, because a better design would have benefited the surrounding neighborhoods and Linden Pointe as a whole by allowing for a comprehensively connected center instead of disjointed cul-de-sac style parcels.
James Bonsall recently moved, with his wife, to Norwood from New Albany, Indiana. In New Albany James served on the city’s planning commission. He has a B.S. in Business from Indiana University and currently works as an IT business analyst for a major health insurance company. You can connect with James on Twitter at @LouisvilleJames.
If you would like to have your thoughts and opinions published on UrbanCincy, simply contact us at editors@urbancincy.com.
