Featured series 
Tag: urban planning and design
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Campus & Community
Barcelona works
A pioneer in his field, Richard forman has helped forge the basic concepts of landscape ecology, a science that sees the surface of the Earth as a complex mosaic linked by movements of people, animals, water, energy, nutrients, and other elements. It is a vision that goes well beyond urban planning in that, for example,…
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Science & Tech
Keys to the highway
Even though they have a massive effect on the natural world, roads have been pretty much ignored by ecologists, who prefer to focus on open areas – the territory between the roads. Nor have engineers and other specialists who design, build, and maintain roads been much concerned with the ecological effects of their creation. Richard…
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Science & Tech
Where do you want your building?
Humans are changing location more frequently and in greater numbers than ever before in history. But at the same time, the electronic revolution is allowing them to remain in contact with one another to an extent undreamed of only a few decades ago. How does that development affect the concept of architecture? Jennifer Siegal has…
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Science & Tech
Students tackle Harvard Square parking problems
A group of students who studied parking problems in Harvard Square issued wide-ranging recommendations, including installing wireless access-control gates at the more than 50 lots across the University, increasing parking fees in Cambridge coupled with increased enforcement of permits, establishing satellite parking lots and shuttles to encourage people to park there, and installing robotic –…
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Science & Tech
Street vendors often define urban landscape
“The question is, how is public space to be created — by designers, by the state, or by the people who use it?” asks Margaret Crawford, a professor at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. Crawford believes that “outlaw entrepreneurs” are helping to restructure and revitalize the city, not destroy it. Crawford has based much…
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Science & Tech
Workers in buildings with less fresh air more likely to call in sick
Donald Milton, associate professor in the Department of Environmental Health at the Harvard School of Public Health, hypothesized that the nature of the air that employees breathe affects how often they call in sick. In 1994, Milton and two colleagues measured ventilation rates in 40 buildings owned by Polaroid in Massachusetts with 115 independently ventilated…
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Science & Tech
Despite some progress, segregation persists in Boston area
A report, “Segregation in the Boston Metropolitan Area at the End of the 20th Century,” found that despite the progress that disadvantaged minorities have made in achieving homeownership outside of Boston, there is a danger that the benefits of such ownership may not accrue to them because of racial and ethnic segregation. In particular, the…
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Science & Tech
Discovering a new earthquake fault under Los Angeles
“Los Angeles is caught in a vise,” says John Shaw, an associate professor of structural and economic geology at Harvard who was half of a research team that discovered a large, active crack in the earth, capable of causing destructive earthquakes, under Los Angeles. The researchers announced their discovery in March 1999. The crack, or…