Town Planning in Colombo: A Preliminary Report by Patrick Geddes (1921)

Refer the report

jonas eliasson: how to solve traffic jams

the archigram archival project

The Archigram Archival Project makes the work of the seminal architectural group Archigram available free online for public viewing and academic study. The project was run by EXP, an architectural research group at the University of Westminster. It was funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council and made possible by the members of Archigram and their heirs, who retain copyright of all images.

Shown:
Plug-in City : Paddington East, Expendable Place Pads
Hornsey Housing Study

Images and infomationVia The Archigram Archival Project

Apart from the historic interest and the archival value of the collective architectural input of the the Archigram this site contains an object lesson for those don't know how to use a set square or have never heard of an adjustable set square. or for that matter how to sharpen a pencil properly....... and call themselves "students of architecture" (no, I didn't mean 'architecture students' though some of them also may fall in to this category quite easily)  etc.....

TED TALK: urban design

Jaime Lerner sings of the city

James H Kunstler dissects suburbia

jane jacobs and the death and life of american planning

And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
— T. S. Eliot, "Little Gidding"

During a recent retreat here at Chapel Hill, planning faculty conducted a brainstorming session in which each professor — including me — was asked to list, anonymously, some of the major issues and concerns facing the profession today. These lists were then collected and transcribed on the whiteboard. All the expected themes were there — sustainability and global warming, equity and justice, peak oil, immigration, urban sprawl and public health, retrofitting suburbia, and so on. But also on the board appeared, like a sacrilegious graffito, the words "Trivial Profession." [1] When we voted to rank the listed items in order of importance, "Trivial Profession" was placed — lo and behold — close to the top. This surprised and alarmed a number of us. Here were members of one of the finest planning faculties in America, at one of the most respected programs in the world, suggesting that their chosen field was minor and irrelevant.
more 
via design observer

rubanization - online chat with Tay Kheng Soon on 30th March

Remember Rubanization and  Tay Kheng Soon?


The National University of Singapore is having an interesting event happening soon featuring Mr. Tay Kheng Soon as he talks about Rubanization. The talk will be streamed live from Singapore on the 30th of March at 7:30pm (Singapore time).

Do join them in their online chat where you can ask questions directly to Mr. Tay!

Official Website: www.nus.edu.sg/ualive

Tweet or FB  if you have any questions!
http://twitter.com/NUSGraduates
http://www.facebook.com/#!/nus.graduates


from Valerie from the National University of Singapore

13 failed urban design ideas

These 13 retro urban design ideas for the future, from perfectly symmetrical egalitarian communities to the egotistical demands of a deranged dictator, will probably never become reality – and in many cases, we’re better off that way. Read more...
via web urbanist 

rethink DC metro stations - a blog on metro architecture

Nice blog in metro (underground) architecture and the urban issues that goes with it. Great graphical analysis of urban systems.

cities for a small country, cities for a small planet (books #7)

#Cities For A Small Country by Richard Rogers, Anne Power
#Cities For A Small Planet by Richard Rogers
Two fantastic books. Books that base their ideas on facts. as expected the presentation of ideas and even statistics are very graphical (no, not 'graphical!').
'Cities For A Small Country' could be very relevant to S.L.
You can read a review here.

bhumi

DTCP (Department of town and Country Planning, University of Moratuwa) has launched their new research journal called ‘Bhumi (read: earth, land etc.) at a small ceremony held at the Uni. This was the result of an inattentive undertaken by Dr. Jagath Munasinghe (head of  TCP) and Plnr. P. K. Mahanama (Dean, Archi Fac).

Further info at  TCP Dept.

rubanisation

"It is neither the Urban nor the Rural, it is both. New architecture cannot come out of old planning! Cities of Asia, behold the countryside, and imagine the infinite possibilities. See one space, not two."- quoted from RUBANISATION  blog.

I had the opportunity to listen to Prof. Tay Kheng Soon a couple of months ago at a CPD organised by the SLIA (that is a continues professional development workshop organised by the Sri Lanka Institute of Architects!). I was quite fascinated by the theory proposed by him.

I often struggled to understand  clear differences of  the urban/ rural patterns in theories taught at the school (uni) and my inability distinguish those differences when I look around the Sri Lankan landscape. Where the city ends and the village starts? Especially along most of the ‘main’ roads l(say from Colombo to Galle) it is very difficult to distinguish between urban and rural.

May be TKS’s ‘Rubernization’ is the answer.

Proff. Tay Kheng Soon (TKS) blog on RUBANISATION

'Mega-Cities in the Tropics - Towards an Architectural Agenda for the Future' by Tay Kheng Soon

Image Credit - Proff. Tay Kheng Soon (http://www.rubanisation.org/)