Tainted water runs beneath Nevada desert. The state faces a water crisis and population boom, but radioactive waste from the Nevada Test Site has polluted aquifers. L.A. Times | Photos

When cities reach their breaking point, life must be moved beneath the surface. China's subterranean-development expert speaks in the recent issue of Triple Canopy.

In what amounts to be a total disrespect for the creative editorial rights, German architecture magazine Arch+ for its November issue on Istanbul, unilaterally contaminated the writers' work by changing the feature's title to "Istanbul is becoming Green" which contradicts the writers' ideas. Arch+ went ahead with the publication regardless the Turkish editors' protests. Read the editors' statement here. + full entry...

"Cities have always been global nodes where people, cultures and goods
intersect. More than any other of the Urban Age cities, Istanbul has
performed this function for several thousand years: a global ‘hinge’
city that connects civilisations and continents.
While it may not be growing at the dizzying pace of Mumbai or Shanghai,
nor suffering from the widening social inequality and violence of São Paulo,
Mexico City or Johannesburg, Istanbul faces many of the same challenges
confronted by all Urban Age cities including London, Berlin and New York:
economic stability, social cohesion and climate change." Urban Age Istanbul Newspaper (PDF)

Iran's rulers are considering plans to relocate the country's capital. They say Tehran is in danger of being struck by a major earthquake. So how easy is it to move a capital out of a city, and where might Iran's go? -- BBC

Nicolai Ouroussoff reviews the exhibition "Intersections: The Grand Concourse Beyond 100" which opened at the Bronx Museum of Arts on Sunday.
What does he find?
When you step back out onto the Grand Concourse after visiting the Bronx Museum show, you see the neighborhood with fresh eyes and a clearer understanding of its history and how it could be revived. If you linger there long enough, you are apt to be overtaken by sadness at lost opportunities and public inertia. And at how many of our cities’ grandest achievements exist in a sort of perpetual limbo — half-dead, half-alive. NYT

In September the UN Environment Programme warned that damage to the underground aquifer - due to the Israeli and Egyptian blockade, conflict, and years of overuse and underinvestment - could take centuries to reverse if it is not halted now. BBCNews

Like the Catalan capital, Rio is determined to parcel together much-needed city projects with its infrastructure work for the games, as part of an overall games budget of $15bn (£9bn). "The city of Rio's masterplan is the games' masterplan, and the games' masterplan is the city's masterplan," insists Mayor Eduardo Paes, surrounded by a retinue of city officials at the Global Sports Industry Congress in London. BBCNews

Are the standard “progressive” cities (IE: Portland, Austin etc) diverse enough? Perhaps not progressiveness but whiteness is the defining characteristic of the group. New Geography Via Ta-Nehisi Coates

Conceived to address the potential effects of rising water levels and apocalyptic storms on the city, the program [Rising Currents: Projects for New York’s Waterfront] is modeled on the principles of “soft infrastructure,” which proposes flexible ecological systems as an alternative to “hard” solutions like concrete dams and storm barriers. - Nicolai Ouroussoff for the NYT

"On May 13, 1985, police dropped a bomb on a west Philadelphia row house in an attempt to evict members of a radical organization known as MOVE. Eleven people were killed, 61 homes were destroyed, and around 250 people were left homeless.
One of the most fascinating aspects of the MOVE conflict is that it was marked by a concrete, physical spatiality," writes architect Johanna Saleh Dickson in 'Pamphlet Architecture 23: Move: Sites of Trauma' + 8 part video documentary of the conflict on YouTube + full entry...

Adam Greenfield over at Speedbird posts a provisional reading list entitled
The City Is Here For You To Use: read and related

NYC-based graphic designer Mike Joyce demands "more Jane Jacobs, less Marc Jacobs". Vanishing New York talks to him about this self-initiated guerrilla campaign. Read

The city's administrative body has decided that there are too many small urban garden plots and plans to make some reductions. Should it get its way, more than one-fifth of the city's total space devoted to small gardens will disappear. Der Spiegel

The voice gets increasingly emotional toward the end... elseplace

more @ Futurama 2 obvious

In 1964, the World Fair returned to New York, about twenty years after the first event. Taking the opportunity, GM once again marked its presence with its pavilion where it revisited the future with the Futurama II exhibit, in an up-to-date and improved version. This time, though, its forecast didn't have the same twenty-year reach, nor did it limit itself to cities and roads: the future that was idealized was located at a sixty-year distance, in 2024, and the imagined world also included space conquest, in which the Americans deposited all their strength and enthusiasm.
Just like in the first edition, the exhibit was located in a building whose futuristic and aerodynamic lines resembled the Enterprise spaceship, from the StarTrek series. The visiting ritual remained the same, with the public touring the space sitting in chairs that moved over a railway line, from which the model cities and the diaporamas could be seen. There were simulations of underwater cities, cities in Antarctica and on the Moon, even. Even though it was devoid of any kind of ecological conscience, they proudly showed vast areas of deforestation in the Amazon jungle to build roads and cities, as well as crops in the desert.
Over 26 million people visited this unique exposition and, like in the first edition, they went home with a I saw the future badge. And, most likely, those who saw the future in 1964 won't survive to see the future in 2024; those who get there, though, will no longer expect a wonderful and perfect world, promised by the optimistic view of Futurama.