California High Speed Rail. Image Courtesy of Foster + Partners
Foster + Partners and Arup have chosen to work together to design the Merced, Fresno, Kings/Tulare, and Bakersfield stations that will service high-speed train passengers on the first 171-mile leg of California High-Speed train (CA HSR). The Central Valley stations will be the grand entrances to America's first high-speed rail stretch, marking an important step towards providing all Californians with sustainable, carbon-free transportation. Planning, architecture, and engineering for the four new stations, which will serve as design templates for stations planned for the whole 500-mile Los Angeles/Anaheim to San Francisco line, are being done jointly by Foster + Partners and Arup.
The California high-speed rail will connect the state's mega-regions, promote economic growth and a cleaner environment, foster job growth, and conserve agricultural and protected lands. With up to 200 mph speeds, the system can travel from San Francisco to the Los Angeles basin in less than three hours. The Authority is collaborating with regional partners to implement a state-wide rail modernization plan that will spend billions of dollars on local and regional rail lines.
Countries around the world have urban, suburban, and rural problems- and it’s all connected by the problem itself. There are too many highway systems. In some cities that are notoriously known for their traffic jams, like Los Angeles, Minneapolis, and Atlanta, there are almost five miles of road per every 1000 residents. This has also impacted how some forms of public transit, like rail cars and busses, operate, significantly reducing their efficiency. So why do we build these superhighways, and how can we fix their congestion?
Following an international competition, MAD Architects, in collaboration with ChinaAirport Planning & Design Institute and Beijing Institute of Architectural Design, has revealed the design of the Changchun “Longjia” International Airport Terminal 3 in China. The new building is expected to accommodate 22 million passengers per year. After completion, the 270,000 square meters terminal will become the largest transportation junction in Changchun city and the Jilin Province.
Designed by URB, The LOOP is a 93-kilometer-long sustainable highway that aims to encourage Dubai’s residents to opt for a healthy mode of transportation. The structure provides a climate-controlled all-year environment to make walking and cycling the preferred type of transportation in the city. The initiative aligns with Dubai’s 20-minute city initiative, which hopes to see 80% of Dubai’s residents commute to work by walking or cycling. The project is currently in the research and development phase.
The Constant Future: A Century of the Regional Plan, an October exhibit at Vanderbilt Hall in Grand Central Terminal is a succinct yet gripping display of civic dreams selected from the imagination of the Regional Plan Association (RPA), an independent non-profit that conducts research on the environment, land use, and good governance with the intention of promoting ideas that improve economic health, environmental resiliency, and quality of life in the New York metropolitan area. The occasion is the organization’s centennial, and the show is a testament to its powerful role in developing the tri-state region. Not all of its ideas have been good, but the city owes a debt to the group’s long-term view.
In 2007, New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg proposed congestion pricing for Manhattan. The state legislature rejected the plan. Fifteen years later, we’re still debating the idea, fiddling while the planet burns.
The newest problem is that a new environmental study and traffic model from the MTA, The Central Business District Tolling Program Environmental Assessment, says that what’s good for 1.63 million residents of Manhattan and the planet, in general, will increase the pollution in the already unhealthy air in the Bronx. Yes, that’s a problem. Turning the perfect into the enemy of the good is also a problem. We need a plan that benefits all.
City Rail Link by Grimshaw Architects. Image Courtesy of Grimshaw
Grimshaw has revealed the final design for City Rail Link, or CRL in short, a large infrastructure project in Auckland, New Zealand. The project includes four new train stations and a 3.45km twin-tunnel underground rail up to 42 meters below the city center. It was developed in collaboration with WSP as part of the Link Alliance, a consortium of seven companies tasked with delivering the main stations and tunnels for the CRL project. The design of the stations is also developed in partnership with Mana Whenua, a local tribal authority that aims to integrate the narrative of the Māori creation story, Te Ao Marama, into the design. Each station's image and identity are a result of this collaboration, and it responds to the characteristics of each location as defined by Tāmaki Makaurau, the Māori name for the geographical region of the city of Auckland.
Can a piece of infrastructure literally kill a city? This is the question that writer Jim Krueger poses in his recent podcast, The Road That Killed a City. The place in question is Krueger’s current hometown—Hartford, Connecticut—which he grew up next to in the leafy suburb of West Hartford. Kruerger has lived in both towns, and that helps to balance the amazing story he uncovers about how Connecticut’s capital was impaled by a roadway (actually, two: east/west I-84 and north/south I-91 converge in Hartford in a sort of arterial highway ground zero). I spoke with Krueger about what prompted the podcast, some of what he uncovered about the history of this ill-fated urban “improvement,” and the legacy of a highway that continues to thwart Hartford’s rebirth—an inheritance shared by many cities across North America.
https://www.archdaily.com/981425/did-a-highway-kill-the-city-of-hartfordMichael J. Crosbie
Presidio Tunnel Tops is San Francisco’s upcoming national park destination, set to welcome visitors starting July 17th. The project reconnects the park formerly split in two by the Doyle Drive by creating new landscaped land over the highway now moved underground. Designed by James Corner Field Operations, the firm behind New York’s High Line, the project brings 5.6 hectares (14 acres) of new parkland to the Bay Area, featuring trails, picnic areas, and scenic views over the city as well as a nature play area for kids.
Over the past two decades, urban highways' social and economic ramifications have been brought into focus as a large part of this mid-century infrastructure comes to the end of its lifespan, prompting conversations over its role in contemporary urban planning. Freeway removal entails the replacement of the transport infrastructure with new urban developments, green amenities and alternative street grids to promote a healthier urban environment and smart growth. In some cases, the idea of removing highways is met with concern over the potential increase in traffic and gentrification of the areas adjacent to the road, but the pandemic has further exacerbated the need for quality public spaces and brought once again into question the hegemony of the car. The following highlights various highway removal projects, discussing how these interventions restore the urban fabric, reknit communities and recover urban spaces for city dwellers.
Dequindre Cut, Detroit / The High Line Network, SmithGroup. Image Courtesy of The Dirt
Decades of redlining and urban renewal, rooted in racist planning and design policies, created the conditions for gentrification to occur in American cities. But the primary concern with gentrification today is displacement, which primarily impacts marginalized communities shaped by a history of being denied access to mortgages. At the ASLA 2021 Conference on Landscape Architecture in Nashville, Matthew Williams, ASLA, with the City of Detroit’s planning department, said in his city there are concerns that new green spaces will increase the market value of homes and “price out marginalized communities.” But investment in green space doesn’t necessarily need to lead to displacement. If these projects are led by marginalized communities, they can be embraced.
Cities face much criticism with how they handle their car population, but have you ever thought about how much land use is dedicated to surface parking lots? In fact, it may be one of the most prominent features of the postwar city in the United States. Housing, community facilities, highway infrastructure, often garner much attention, but the amount of land dedicated just to park cars is astounding.
Pier 54 in New York has a history that dates back to the city's first inhabitants. After being severely damaged in 2012 with the passage of Hurricane Sandy, Barry Diller and the Hudson River Park Trust institution worked to create solutions to reactivate it and return the space to the public.
The final resulting project, Little Island Park, became an urban oasis of almost 10,000 square meters, which is structured on 132 pillars and houses amphitheaters, and several species of trees and other vegetation, in addition to other attributes. With the architecture developed by Heatherwick Studio and landscaping by MNLA, the work presented numerous difficulties, which required great innovation and collaboration between many professionals. Arup, a global company that develops consulting and engineering projects, was involved in the project from the beginning. We spoke with David Farnsworth, Principal at Arup’s New York office & Project Director of Little Island, about the challenges and learning involved in this process:
Although disability laws have been put in place decades ago, architects are still struggling with disability requirements. A recent article by CityLab explored how the rise of speed and efficiency-driven cities have overlooked accessibility, neglecting the needs of people who are physically unable to live or keep up with these dense neighborhoods. And while the "15-Minute City", one that allows people to walk or bike to most essential services within 15 minutes of their home, may seem as the future of built environments, it does not cater to disabled individuals or their movements.
Earlier this month, the city of Miami released a draft version of its comprehensive plan to combat the effects of climate change. The so-called Stormwater Master Plan (SWMP) will be implemented to alleviate the threat of flooding throughout the city, improve the quality of water in Biscayne Bay, and fortify its coastline against stronger and more frequent storm surges over the next 40 years, at an overall cost estimate of $3.8 billion.
"Deck parks are increasingly in vogue in the Southwest’s downtown cores but aren’t a good fit for El Paso," writes Sito Negron. Recently a lot of cities around the world have been rethinking urban spaces dedicated to transportation, introducing public areas over highways while expanding the vehicular realm. In this week's reprint from the Architect's Newspaper, the author explores the limits of this trend and questions its implementation in some cases.
In a piece, originally published on Metropolis, author Lauren Gallow highlights an urban transformation in California, led by a group of local organizations and designers. The project "replaces a previously hazardous alley with play areas, public art, and native plantings", in order to reveal the untapped potential of the overlooked public realm.
The human scale spans both physical dimensions and sensory perception. Designers create spaces and objects like steps, doorways and chairs that are closely aligned to human measurement and how we see the world. But as we look beyond the human scale, new ideas and typologies emerge that help us rethink how we conceptualize architecture and build for the future.
