Masdar City is a project in Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates. Its core is a planned city, which is being built by the Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company, a subsidiary of Mubadala Development Company, with the majority of seed capital provided by the government of Abu Dhabi. Designed by the British architectural firm Foster and Partners, the city will rely entirely on solar energy and other renewable energy sources, with a sustainable, zero-carbon, zero-waste ecology.

The Dutch city of Almere has won the bid for the Floriade 2022 and will host the prestigious world horticultural expo in the year 2022. The exposition takes place once every ten years in the Netherlands and is currently ending in Venlo. The MVRDV-designed plan for Almere seeks to be not a temporary expo site but a lasting green Cité Idéale as an extension to the existing city center. — bustler.net

Smith is one of 20 landscape architects who have helped create a new online guide to the city’s important outdoor spaces, some world famous, others, such as the Civil War memorial at U and Vermont Avenue NW, not as well known. The Web site, The Landscape Architect’s Guide to Washington, D.C., was launched Sept. 13 by the American Society of Landscape Architects, and there is a version for mobile devices. — washingtonpost.com

The long-awaited final section of the High Line broke ground this morning. Mayor Bloomberg and Friends of the High Line kicked off Section 3, a.k.a. "The High Line at the Rail Yards," which will follow the rails from 30th to 34th streets to the north and south and from 10th to 12th Avenues east and west. When completed, the newest section will flow in seamlessly with the rest of the elevated park's design and will feature new benches, tables, and a children's play area. — Inhabitat

As Occupiers posted links, updates, photos and videos on social media sites; as they deliberated in chat rooms and collaborated on crowdmaps; as they took to the streets with smartphones, they tested the parameters of this multiply mediated world. What is the layout of this place? What are its codes and protocols? Who owns it? How does its design condition opportunities for individual and collective action? — Places Journal

The park...was conceived four decades ago. The visionary architect who designed it died in 1974. The site...remained a rubble heap while the project was left for dead. But in a city proud of its own impatience, perseverance sometimes pays off. — New York Times

The red began appearing in the Yangtze, the longest and largest river in China and the third longest river in the world, yesterday near the city of Chongquing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River... and officials have no idea why. — abcnews.go.com

It's common when we discuss the future of maps to reference the Borgesian dream of a 1:1 map of the entire world. It seems like a ridiculous notion that we would need a complete representation of the world when we already have the world itself. But to take scholar Nathan Jurgenson's conception of augmented reality seriously, we would have to believe that every physical space is, in his words, "interpenetrated" with information. All physical spaces already are also informational spaces. — theatlantic.com

Swishing below, all but invisible from the park and motorway above, is the Los Angeles river. A river with water, fish, tadpoles, birds, reeds, banks, a river that flows for 52 miles skirting Burbank, north Hollywood, Silver Lake, downtown and Compton and empties into the Pacific Ocean.. A regular river, except that to most it's a secret. I ask three other people and receive the same blank looks until finally a park ranger confirms that, yes, there is a river at the bottom of a ravine 150' away. — guardian.co.uk

Proposals to reinvigorate the city centre of Aberdeen, Scotland by High Line architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro have been rejected by City Councillors. [...] The Full Council voted 22-20 - with one abstention - to reject the scheme but agreed to retain proposals to refurbish Aberdeen Art Gallery, redevelop the site of the City Council’s former St Nicholas House headquarters and the Upper Denburn area, and to invest in ‘City Circle’ plans to make the city better connected for pedestrians. — World Architecture News

While the park began as a grass-roots endeavor — albeit a well-heeled one — it quickly became a tool for the Bloomberg administration’s creation of a new, upscale, corporatized stretch along the West Side. — NYT

d3 today announced the winners of its Natural Systems competition for 2012. The annual competition promotes investigation of natural systems from microscopic to universal toward determining new architectonic strategies. The competition invited architects, designers, engineers, and students to collectively explore the potential for analyzing, documenting, and deploying nature-based, sustainable influences in urbanism, architecture, interiors, and designed objects. — bustler.net

Dawson City spent more than $600,000 last year dealing with damage to roads and pipes caused by melting permafrost.

A recently-published report says the shifting ground, a result of climate change, can do a lot of damage to infrastructure such as water and sewer systems. — cbc.ca