Urban Planet is a daily roundup of blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
French public housing, as in many other locales, has had mixed success. Low-income high rise communities are characterized by high unemployment and more recently, unrest. Like many American cities, the conventional approach to these planning failures was to destroy these buildings and start from scratch. But an innovative request from Paris Habitat, the office for public housing, to renovate one such building has yielded interesting results. La Tour Bois-le-Prêtre was retrofited by architects Frédéric Druot, Anne Lacaton and Jean-Philippe Vassal – adding more light and square footage to the dark apartments for less than the cost of demolition. (New York Times)
Image from The New York Times
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