The Eiffel Tower is an iron tower built March 31, 1889 (hoisting the flag to the top) for the Universal Exhibition in celebration of the French Revolution on the Champ de Mars beside the Seine River in Paris. The tower has become a global icon of France and is one of the most recognizable structures in the world.

Now, the Société d’exploitation de la Tour Eiffel has just announced that the tapering signature of the Eiffel Tower is to be reshaped, altering the skyline of Paris, in time for the structure’s 120th anniversary next year. Serero Architects of Paris have won the open competition to redesign the structure’s public viewing platform and reception areas as a celebration of the 120th birthday of Gustave Eiffel’s original creation. Aiming to “create a temporary horizontal extension of the third floor of the tower in order to increase the quality of the access of the public as well as experiencing the fantastic 360 degrees sight of Paris.”, the designers project will extend the top floor plate of the tower by grafting a high performance carbon Kevlar structure on it. The winning design (above), which will be 276 metres (905ft) above the ground, will not require any permanent modification of the existing structuref. It will double the capacity of the public viewing area on the tower’s top floor.

[read more…]

Which infrastructural improvements do you anticipate for the districts, in which such arenas are going to be built?

Proper roads of good quality and sufficient width to take up vehicle population for next 20 years, good drainage and santiation conditions, proper planning, identifying locations for industries, housing, recreation, etc.

Which personal benefits could be a result, in your opinion, from potential changes in social structure and job market situation?

Better standards of living, increase in avarage age of life, finance and economy of the individualand the nation will go high, reduction in journey time and journey cost

[read more…]

In the light of our PerfectCity Charter and the poll on environmental conditions and sustainability, we would like to go to detail on another factor or rather on the goal of the factor “green public transportation”: car free cities.

To realize car free cities there is a movement in which individuals and organisations (including urban planners, transport planners, cyclist and others) work together believing that cars are to far dominant in most modern cities. The movement’s goal is to create places where the use of cars is limited to a minimum or even eliminated. Thus, the recovered space like roads and parking space could be used for public and to rebuild compact urban environments where most destinations are within easy reach by public transport, walking, or cycling.

The big challenge is to remove cars and trucks from cities while at the same time improving mobility and reducing its total costs. But what is a solution for that?

[read more…]

Which infrastructural improvements do you anticipate for the districts, in which such arenas are going to be built?

Improved access by road and train. More green areas. Better cycle paths and more decorative traffic signs, such as the heart shaped pedestrian lights in Prenzlauer Berg.

Which personal benefits could be a result, in your opinion, from potential changes in social structure and job market situation?

A wider range of cheap restaurants.

[read more…]

Finally the second part of the issue of the PerfectCity Charter "The City of The Future" is now online. It includes the results and the interpretation of these results of the latest poll, which was to find out the most important factors of city architecture. It also provides an overview on the discussions on city architecture.

The overall goal is the development of the PerfectCity Charter, which is being developed stepwise in and through discussion and represented by the corresponding dossiers of each issue. The next dossier is environmental conditions and sustainability.

Please leave your comments, annotations and your suggestion here under this post or at the end of the dossier in the sidebar..

Recently our provincial government (British Columbia) proposed a budget that introduced a carbon tax. This was described by our finance minister, Carol Taylor, as a "small first step" to discourage the consumption of fossil fuels and support emerging sustainable technologies. Ours is the first large jurisdiction in North America to introduce a carbon tax. 

[read more…]

Which infrastructural improvements do you anticipate for the districts, in which such arenas are going to be built?

Well, supporting services like transport, and public services always improve in the areas where arenas such as this are built. So I would think that these same improvements would be made in the areas that these arenas are built.

Which personal benefits could be a result, in your opinion, from potential changes in social structure and job market situation?

Well these services that are improved will need people to run them, so there is the potential to create new jobs and new forms of employment.

[read more…]

Regarding our PerfectCity Charter a new poll is now online. This time we want to focus on environmental conditions and sustainability. Please vote for the most crucial facets and aspects of this issue shaping the city of the future. We are interested in the following question: What do you think is most important about environmental conditions and sustainability in the City of The Future?

You can cast your votes in the sidebar by distributing 100 points between the following factors which are listed in a random order:

• Energy conservation systems
• Waste management / recycling
• Green construction and buildings
• Green space
• Energy efficiency and production
• Green public transportation  
• Xeriscaping

This poll will be online until the beginning of April. Please take a few seconds to cast your votes.

We look forward to your votes!  

We have closed our poll on city architecture and we would like thank everyone who has voted for the factors in our poll. Now we would like to present the summarized results to you:

[read more…]