On the ground. Observations from Harvard

On the ground. Observations from Harvard

 

Why are there so many dogs in downtown? Does commuting make you fat? Will the arts save your city? Can the government sell your house to a developer? In this publication, writer and journalist Tracy Metz goes in search of the answers to these and many other topical issues in land use and planning, as practiced in the U.S.A. The book is a pocket-sized anthology of the columns and essays Metz wrote while she was a Loeb Fellow (2006-’07) at the Harvard Graduate School of Design. 

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FUN! Leisure and landscape

FUN! Leisure and landscape

Free time is becoming an ever more important factor in the shaping of our society, in the changing landscape, and in the physical and spatial arrangement of the Netherlands. Fun is ubiquitous and has a far-reaching effect on the development of the inner cities, the periphery and the countryside. My book Fun! Leisure and landscape examines, describes and analyses this phenomenon in text and photographs.

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Atlas of Change: Re-Arranging the Netherlands

Atlas of Change: Re-Arranging the Netherlands

In the Netherlands, as in many other countries, urban and spatial planning often seem driven by good intentions, policy initiatives, and blueprints, and not by actual changes in the public’s way of life. When these kinds of ‘planning’ actually do come alive, when people find that something in their daily living environment has changed, they are not sure why. Seeking to shed some light on how spatial planning and daily life intersect, I worked with photographer Theo Baart and urban planner Tjerk Ruimschotel to create ‘ Atlas of Change’,  a portrait of the perpetually changing Netherlands.

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