Committee on the Environment

 View Only

Community HTML

ALBION DISTRICT LIBRARY BY PERKINS + WILL IS A 2018 COTE TOP TEN RECIPIENT. IMAGE: DOUBLESPACE PHOTOGRAPHY

Quick Links

Who we are

The Committee on the Environment (COTE®) is an AIA Knowledge Community working for architects, allied professionals, and the public to achieve climate action and climate justice through design. We believe that design excellence is the foundation of a healthy, sustainable, and equitable future. Our work promotes design strategies that empower all AIA members to realize the best social and environmental outcomes with the clients and the communities they serve.

Enjoy our latest on COTE news (and follow us on X and LinkedIn). 

To learn about the Framework for Design Excellence (formerly the COTE Top Ten Measures), click here.

Check out COTE's history and timeline. 

Starting a local COTE or sustainability group and need some guidance? Check out the AIA COTE Network Resources here.

A big thank you to our 2024 sponsors: 
Founding sponsors: Building Green
Premier sponsors: Sherwin-Williams
Sustaining sponsors: GAF Roofing, Milliken, Andersen Windows,
BlueScope Buildings
Green sponsors: EPIC Metals
Allied sponsors: TLC Engineering, Sierra Pacific Windows

Where Rusk went wrong: The problem of cities isn't inelasticity

  • 1.  Where Rusk went wrong: The problem of cities isn't inelasticity

    Posted 06-29-2016 12:11 PM

    In 1995, renowned urban scholar and expert David Rusk wrote Baltimore Unbound, a booklet in which he declared Baltimore to be "beyond a point of no return" (along with 33 other American cities).  His assessment was based on the same theory as his book Cities without Suburbs, namely that cities that can't grow and expand through annexation are doomed.  Baltimore's last annexation happened in 1918 and ever since it was an inelastic city. So there you go: surrounded by affluent and growing suburbs the city in the center is suffocating, the public housing project of the burbs. Rusk wrote in 1993 in the Baltimore SUN:....

    For complete article click here

    Rusk book 1995
    Forty percent of America's cities are programmed to fail. Gary, Camden, East St. Louis are already clinically dead. Bridgeport, Newark, Hartford, Cleveland, Detroit are on life-support systems. New York, Baltimore, Chicago, St. Louis, Philadelphia are sinking. Though seemingly healthy, Boston, Minneapolis, Atlanta are already infected.

    Community Architect: Where David Rusk Went Wrong: The Real Challenge for Cities isn't Elasticity

    Archplanbaltimore remove preview
    Community Architect: Where David Rusk Went Wrong: The Real Challenge for Cities isn't Elasticity
     
    View this on Archplanbaltimore >
    ------------------------------
    Nikolaus Philipsen FAIA
    Archplan Inc. Philipsen Architects
    Baltimore MD
    ------------------------------