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In 2021, the Google Research Africa team launched Open Buildings, an open-source dataset of building footprints across the Global South produced using AI and high-resolution satellite imagery. The team had a simple vision: to fill a major gap in data for population and density in the developing world. Now in its third version, their dataset contains polygons for 1.8 billion buildings over an area of 58 million km² in Africa, South and Southeast Asia, Latin America and the Caribbean. — Google
The data is useful in determining population size and other factors to solve urban density problems. Google's Research product manager Olivia Graham says: "About 2.5 billion more people could move to cities by 2050, most of them in the Global South — this could be a real step... View full entry
A new study funded by the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD) using climate data to predict the cost of maintenance for military facilities threatened by extreme weather events has outlined new approaches for estimating condition loss and reduction of services. The findings, which can be applied to... View full entry
Gensler Principal Steven Paynter shares an update announcing important statistical findings related to his firm’s work surrounding the adaptive reuse and conversion of office buildings worldwide. The data report has been updated to reflect changes in office conversions. The firm shares that an... View full entry
Archinect's Lexicon focuses on newly invented or adopted vocabulary within the architectural community. For this installment, we're featuring a term relevant to the both recent wave of generative AI tools released for public use in the AEC sector and beyond, and the software tools... View full entry
Data centers will increasingly be built farther from some of the traditional locations and will move closer to the clients they serve, according to research by Gartner, an I.T. consultancy. But the search for land is not always easy. [...]
And as major players in the data industry strive to become greener in the next decade, the pressure is on.
— The New York Times
The crunch for new data infrastructure is straining local utility companies in areas such as Northern Virginia owing to a requirement for "inhaling massive amounts of energy," a reality that leads to concerns that local residents will be asked to foot the bill in the end. Water use is also... View full entry
In the last two years, apartment conversions jumped by 25% compared to two years prior. More precisely, this increasingly popular real estate niche brought a total of 28,000 new rentals in 2020-2021, well above the pre-pandemic years of 2018-2019 when 22,300 apartments were brought to life through adaptive reuse. — RentCafe.com
The new data set from real estate researchers Yardi Matrix gives some additional context to the information in yesterday’s 2022 AIA Firm Survey, which said that almost half (48%) of all projects currently being pursued by U.S. firms involve the renovation, rehabilitation, extension, or... View full entry
It’s the first time in the 20 years the AIA has collected this data that renovations have breached 50%. In 2005, toward the end of a pre-recession building boom, renovations made up approximately one-third of billings. That share has been increasing steadily since 2017, when it was 44.4%, up to 52% this year. Kermit Baker, the AIA’s chief economist, says that the last time the market for design services was so heavily weighted toward renovations was likely during the Great Depression. — Bloomberg
According to Baker, about 25% of renovation projects constitute interior remodels, while adaptive reuse schemes make up another quarter of those registered with the AIA. Just 3.8% are done in the interest of improved building energy performance, with a scant 1.6% being resiliency projects. The... View full entry
Harvard University has today announced its first-ever cohort for the brand new Climate Justice Design Fellowship, recognizing young leaders across the country in the fields of environmental justice advocacy, law, and climate organizing. The first class of fellows consists of seven... View full entry
The total number of short-term rentals of entire homes in the city’s five boroughs -- those listed on Airbnb Inc. and Expedia Group Inc.’s Vrbo -- is more than 13,000, according to third-party data tracker AirDNA. Meanwhile, rental inventory in Manhattan, Brooklyn and a portion of Queens hovers just over 7,500.
The vacancy rate in Manhattan sat at just over 1.5% last month, the second-lowest level on record, according to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc.
— Bloomberg
Adding to the all-too-familiar notion that short-term rentals have the ability to destroy the livability of a place in its entirety, new data from Douglas Elliman and AirDNA making the rounds today indicate a record-setting shift in the dynamics of urban life as the number of hosted retreats in... View full entry
The U.S. Census Bureau has changed its definition of an urban area, which will cause hundreds of existing urban areas to be reclassified as rural. The change is centered on a new methodology for how urban areas are calculated, with the number of housing units being used as the key metric, rather... View full entry
A digital record of earth’s man-made demise is about to begin thanks to an intervention in Australia called Earth's Black Box. A remote part of Tasmania is the home of the ominous new steel box that’s meant to capture and record climate data such as oceanic acidification, atmospheric carbon... View full entry
In my opinion, remembering what it was like before social media and high-speed internet access is a gift. The early days of social media barely resemble the landscape of how impressionable and profit-driven it is today. Data privacy wasn't considered "a thing," and promoting a product or... View full entry
Researchers at the MIT Senseable City Lab have unveiled their latest project, which seeks to understand human mobility in cities. Titled Wanderlust, the project uses large-scale cellphone data to understand the movement of people in the metro areas of Boston, Abidjan, Braga, Lisbon, Porto, Dakar... View full entry
Satellite images dating back to 1975 allow researchers to map how millions of cul-de-sacs and dead-ends have proliferated in street networks worldwide. [...]
A new study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences charts a worrying global shift towards more-sprawling and less-hooked-up street networks over time.
— CityLab
The study's authors, Christopher Barrington-Leigh at McGill University and Adam Millard-Ball at UC Santa Cruz, were able to identify the global trend toward urban street-network sprawl by analyzing high-resolution data from OpenStreetMap and satellite imagery of urbanization since 1975 and then... View full entry
For nations and cities across the world, 2020 was set to be a milestone year in their fight against climate change. It’s the first in a series of globally earmarked emission-reduction waypoints—2020, 2030, 2050—with 2020 planned as an initial benchmarking moment, a time to see progress towards meeting targets aimed at limiting global warming.
Now, the year is nearly here, and early signs of overall progress should signal concern.
— Quartz
Quartz looked at the environmental data of selected cities that had set emission reduction targets for 2020 and analyzed the progress made thus far. According to the outlet, "only 20% of those targets have completed or are more than half-way towards their goal." Among the high-achieving cities... View full entry
