Compact cities not only preserve the environment, but they also generate synergies across urban systems that are smarter and provide more equitable growth.
JoinedJune 8, 2020
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For LWK + PARTNERS' second installment of the Red Envelope journals, themed 'In Between', the company's MENA managing director, Kerem Cengiz, offers an opening word on the meaning of the topic.
In part six of Round City’s ARound: Najaf series, Iraqi architect and doctor Turath Jamil examines the city’s historic khans.
Large dense and sprawling cities are part of an inescapable global reality. Their advantages have long been praised ever since the Modernists argued for “town as a machine for movement”, but what of their disadvantages? If regulations have shaped the affluent cities in the advanced economies, what of the unregulated or under regulated cities across the world?
23 centuries after it was first drawn in sand, the world’s oldest planned, still inhabited street continues to mark the ongoing transformations of an ever-evolving city.
In July 2020, South Koreans were shocked to find out that a North Korean who defected to South Korea a couple of years ago fled back to North Korea through the impermeable demilitarized zone (DMZ) after supposedly committing a horrendous crime. This crossing was one of the very few known unauthorised crossings over the past 70-odd years, where a civilian transgressed the impenetrable DMZ.
Iraqi academic No’man Bayaty explores Erbil’s Justice Tower, and provides insight into its architectural form and the urban challenges it poses.
In Sudan, decades of economic and political strife that marked the latter half of the 20th century, meant a lack of the necessary urban planning and regeneration of decaying areas. Following the 2019 revolution, the country’s streets and buildings have been given a makeover, courtesy of Sudanese street artists.
In Bhuj, a municipality in the Kutch district of western India’s Gujarat, a network of community members, government officials and non-profit development organisations worked together to devise an emergency re-urbanisation plan following the disastrous 2001 earthquake. One particular case study takes us to Sardar Nagar, a rehousing settlement that threatened to become a slum of thousands.
Drawing from Chinese and South East Asian societies, which share the custom of giving gifts in red envelopes or packets, LWK + PARTNERS’ three-part Red Envelope series seeks to freely share thought and insight as a global source of knowledge.