Common Edge
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Common Edge is a nonprofit organization dedicated to reconnecting architecture and design with the public that it’s meant to serve. To get there we will need more authentic public engagement and the rediscovery of some timeless design resources.
Our mission is to advocate and report on public engagement in the planning and design of the built environment, with an emphasis on some important questions that some younger designers and architects are asking, like: How can planning and design better express the wants and needs of everyday people? How can we make the process of creating and designing more democratic? How can we tell the public’s stories in more meaningful ways? How do we accomplish all that in the context of climate change, the most profound challenge facing us? Source
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| Scope | International |
|---|---|
| Language | English |
| Country | N/A |
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Recent Articles
Search ArticlesThe Fractured State of Architecture Journalism and Criticism
We’ve just spent a good part of the summer listening to play-by-play announcers and color commentators covering the FIFA World Cup. Because Americans know so little about that kind of football, we raptly listened to every word, trusting that the announcers and analysts were incisive and accurate. Compare that to how we listen to American football. Avid fans deride play- by-play announcers for missed or erroneous calls.
When Authentic Public Engagement, Political Will, and Good Design Come Together
MCP: Martin C. Pedersen BF: Billy Fleming MCP: What’s the origin story of the book? BF: In some ways, this book grew out of a frustration with the planning, design, and climate policy professions’ tendency to look in all the wrong places for exemplary models of what it takes to build a more just, abundant, and decarbonized world. So much of what passes for sustainable, resilient, or climate-positive in professional design often amounts to little more than a branding exercise.
Rome vs. Japan: Two Civilizations, Two Philosophies of Architectural Permanence
At Ise Jingū, Japan’s most sacred Shinto shrine, the main buildings are torn down and rebuilt from scratch every 20 years. And they have been for more than 1,300 years. The old timber is felled, the joinery cut by hand, the thatch laid fresh, and the previous structure dismantled and dispersed—some parts sent to shrines elsewhere in the country, some composted back into the forest that will eventually supply the next rebuilding. The shrine standing today is, materially, only two decades old.
Local Economies, Fiscal Imagination and Economic Justice in New York City
Several weeks ago, the author was asked to present his research in front of a leading economic policy organization. Here’s what he said: I’ve taught history for more than 20 years: at CUNY, at NYU, and right now at Bard College’s Prison Initiative. Whenever I start a history class, I put this quote on the board: “Those who control the present control the past.
How AI Can Make Design Work Appear Prematurely Resolved
An architecture student can now walk into a review with more images than understanding. This sounds harsher than I mean it, but in some ways, it’s extraordinary. A young designer can study a site, generate alternatives, test massing, produce renderings, summarize precedents, diagram environmental factors, and assemble a presentation with a speed that would have been unimaginable not long ago. The work can look full and polished, like it has already passed through several layers of thought.
Can Circularity Break the Cycle of Architectural Waste?
Single-use plastic bags are the urban tumbleweed of many cities around the world. They clog storm drains, whirl in the wind, and get caught in branches like dystopian ornaments. On Amazon, $20 buys you a thousand (or one for every year it takes a plastic bag to decompose). Until then, they endure in massive garbage dumps like the infamous Stung Meanchey landfill in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, which I’ve visited.
NYC Needs a Different Public Engagement Model: Can Mamdani Make It Happen?
The auditorium at the CUNY School of Law was packed. More than 100 Long Island City residents—concerned with public school capacity and playground space, with pedestrian safety, artist and small business displacement, and ghastly chronic flooding—had turned up on a Wednesday night to hold government accountable.
Why Better Streets Make Better Cities
When I began writing for Common Edge almost a decade ago, I resolved to let readers know when a significant book appeared that might change their view of architecture, urbanism, and landscape. I missed the publication of one book that I have subsequently used in my practice, and believe to be one of the best handbooks, histories, and teaching texts written in the present century. This year, a revised edition of Street Design: The Secret to Great Cities and Towns (John Wiley & Sons) was released.
Letter From Biddeford: ICE Threatens Small Town America
When you live in a small town, you never expect its name to pop up in national news—nor, to be honest, do you ever really want it to. Anonymity can be a comfort, especially for Mainers. The Pine Tree State has long been a beacon for people from all walks who, while not exactly recluses, simply want to be left alone. Maine lends itself to such tendencies. Just look at a map: we live beyond where the sidewalk ends.
Can Cities Plan and Design for Spontaneity?
A classic joke has a lost tourist in a sportscar, seeking directions from a Maine old-timer on a porch. “You can’t get there from here,” the native keeps saying, until the tourist barks that the local doesn’t seem very bright. “I ain’t lost,” the old-timer replies. Among other things the tourist misses, consider the genius of the place. Let’s assume some filigree on the Mainer’s rocker or some Shaker detailing on the porch passed him by.