rural urbanism: Nanaimo

On Site review 27: rural urbanism. Spring 2012

On Site review 27: rural urbanism had a mid-nineteenth century plan for Nanaimo, most of which was built, and an aerial of it today, on the cover.  The premise of the issue was that planning orthodoxy privileges cities, and small cities, such as Nanaimo, haven’t access to the urban conditions on which such orthodoxies are based and as a consequence their expansion out of their very small town core is left to market forces, local councils and real estate developers. Rural urbanism is potentially a different way to frame small town development, starting with smallness, not largeness scaled down.