We are constantly campaigning to bring back the "street" as an element of urban design. Cities and towns in times past have arranged themselves around the street with great success. Buildings on either side of about 3 storeys to create an architectural space: Enough distance between for privacy and access at the same time. A mix of uses. And you get a thriving place which is safe and most pleasant for shopping working and living. Explore more on Creating Compact Cities and BL

There is nothing exceptional about the architecture, yet there is something about the soul of this street in Nuremberg that is just right. Somehow it is a very human place to live. And somehow it encompasses what Arkitekt Frederick Rickmann (AFR), Thinking Urban, is about. Creating new city places which are human. Explore more on Creating Compact Cities and BLUE and other shapes. https://www.1234design.com/creating-compact-cities https://www.1234design.com/blue-and-other-shap

When Germany was reunited, many of signs of the East were removed - literally. Yet here is the graphic design of East Berlin. With its own aesthetic quality. Graffitti and all. Here displayed as a work of art. Explore more on Creating Compact Cities and BLUE and other shapes. https://www.1234design.com/creating-compact-cities https://www.1234design.com/blue-and-other-shapes-2 Buy from Amazon below: https://www.amazon.co.uk/s?i=stripbooks&rh=p_27%3AFrederick+Rickmann&s=relevan

Tourists flock to Lille in the north of France, not because of any grandiose masterpiece of architecture or theme park. They come because Lille has a broad network of the most pleasant streets imaginable. Twisting and turning and mixing with each other at small squares. The streets are full of local shops instead the huge brand chains so that town in lively and dynamic. Explore more on Creating Compact Cities and BLUE and other shapes. https://www.1234design.com/creating-comp

Date: January 19, 2015 By Nehal El-Sherif Numerous governments have tried to re-arrange Cairo’s urban planning by getting rid of many buildings built illegally, where the ownership of the land is always under dispute. However, with almost 50 per cent of the population living in such areas, the moves were always met with controversy and sometimes riots. The last move to redraw the provincial map in Egypt was in 2008, when two provinces were established around the capital, name

Date: January 13, 2015 By Nehal El-Sherif Cairo is one of the most crowded cities worldwide with an estimated population of 20 million, so there is less and less space to accommodate everybody. Many of the poorest citizens have even taken to building shanty towns in the city cemeteries. Construction and real estate boomed in Egypt in the 2000s, as it did worldwide. Under the rule of Hosny Mubarak, the government encouraged the private sector to develop mega projects. While ma

There are few cities in the world that have managed to create such an incredibly well functioning and harmonic city environment. All architects should learn from these prime examples of high density urban planning. The hierarchy of access is a very subtle yet effective means of protection for families and individuals. By defining what is entirely public and, then by stages, defining a kind of access filter, you build up a language that can be read instinctively. The importanc

Date: January 5, 2015 By Nehal El-Sherif It rarely rains in Cairo. In the last days of November, it rained for less than 30 minutes for the first time after a very hot summer. While many enjoyed the cooler weather, complaints began flooding the social media as rapidly as water began flooding the streets. The roadways filled with water and aggravated the normal traffic jams, a problem that has long been connected to the Egyptian capital. Many people had to spend up to four hou

This is not Hallstadt am See in Austria. It is Hallstadt See, the Chinese rip off of the Austrian village. A true copy in southern China without any agreement with the original. Like the real village, it is an attractive place and with so much identity, that there are constantly crowds of couples being photographed in these surroundings. Of course the falsity of this endeavour is disturbing. A copied identity of a foreign culture is without intrinsic value. It is fundamentall