Tag Archives: urbansim

Espoo Venice!

With a lot less exposure than the Central Library competition but with much potential the city of Espoo has launched a competition for a masterplan of Finnoo-Kaitaa for 20,000 people. There has just previously been a masterplan report made (download pdf here ) by WSP Finland who won the Helsinki 2050 competition a few years back. This site has previous as it was featured in Europan 09 with a winning entry that caught my eye at the time. It would be centred between the harbour and as yet unconfirmed station on the west leg of the metro. The City of Espoo seems to be saying all the right things like trying to make this development carbon neutral by 2030. Could we see a properly urban plan enacted somewhere in Espoo soon? Go here for competition details.

David Byrnes’ Perfect City

A great article by David Byrne about his perfect city,

If a city doesn’t have sufficient density, as in L.A., then strange things happen. It’s human nature for us to look at one another— we’re social animals after all. But when the urban situation causes the distance between us to increase and our interactions to be less frequent we have to use novel means to attract attention: big hair, skimpy clothes and plastic surgery. We become walking billboards.

He just writes so well about the world. I might need to add his new book Bicycle Diaries to the wanted list. (via)

The Self Sufficient City Competition

The IAAC has a competition that’s free to enter to envisage the future city. If you are interested you can find out more about the competition  and register at advancedarchitecturecontest.org. Entries must be submitted by 29th September so you don’t have too much time.

The contest is open to architects, planners, designers and artists who want to contribute to progress in making the world more habitable by developing a proposal capable of responding to emerging challenges in areas such as ecology, information technology, socialization and globalization, with a view to enhancing the connected self-sufficiency of our cities.