On any given day, there are 80,000 U.S. prisoners in solitary confinement...has led some prisoners into a profound level of what might be called ‘ontological insecurity' — NYT

Welcome to the wonderful world of governing urban regions, where between fragmentation and amalgamation no one actually knows what the right-sized box for local government is or how to change it [...]

Municipal fragmentation has been criticised for decades... amalgamation – bringing fragmented government regions together – comes with downsides of its own. Of course, you can put people in the same governmental box, but that won’t necessarily create common ground — theguardian.com

Colonialism found in the Modernist project a powerful and willing partner for the shaping of conquered territories in the southern hemisphere. Today, amid a new wave of colonial activity based on subtler and less easily identifiable strategies, little is done to understand its effects on the way people live and give form to their shelters. Neo-colonialism is an urgent issue but one which most of the profession is ill-prepared to interrogate. — Architectural Review

We need to talk! We at MONU think that the time has come to talk with you about "participation" in architecture and urbanism and re-evaluate and re-examine developments around this topic in recent years and what the future might hold.

(Bernd Upmeyer, Editor-in-Chief, May 2015) — http://www.monu-magazine.com/news.htm

The forest of elevator cores sprouting up around town tells us that we’re living in a once-a-century moment—a sugar rush of development unseen here since our parents’ parents’ time. But the dirty little secret behind Boston’s building boom is that it’s profoundly banal—designed without any imagination, straight out of the box, built to please banks rather than people. — bostonmagazine.com

But supplementing that aesthetic of “the future” sketched in imaginary edifice, the full SF vision of the future city is a mosaic, constructed from fragments of the cities that we recognize, including symbols that are decidedly from the past. [...]

If SF functions by taking the world we know and altering it with a constructed future fantasy, the Statue of Liberty serves as the junction point, the axis where the speculative fantasy begins and ends. — motherboard.vice.com

Governor Edmund G. Brown Jr. today issued an executive order to establish a California greenhouse gas reduction target of 40 percent below 1990 levels by 2030 - the most aggressive benchmark enacted by any government in North America to reduce dangerous carbon emissions over the next decade and a half. "With this order, California sets a very high bar for itself and other states and nations, but it's one that must be reached - for this generation and generations to come," said Governor Brown. — gov.ca.gov

James Biber can see Russia from his roof. Mr. Biber, the architect of the USA Pavilion at Expo Milano 2015, the world’s fair that is racing to meet its opening date on Friday, also has a good view of Kuwait next door and Iran across the street.

“It’s really a kind of identity parade,” Mr. Biber, 62, said about the jumble. [...] “It’s every nation attempting to express itself in a building. It is the very best and very worst of design you’re going to see in its concentrated form.” — nytimes.com

Most buildings in the country today use the minimum structural safety standards that the government has prescribed, say building safety experts and structural engineers.

"Our codes offer the lowest level of earthquake safety protection. We are designing for one-fifth the intensity that might hit a particular earthquake zone," says Sangeeta Waj, technical director at global design firm AECOM.

Experts however point out that there is no separate code in India for high rise buildings. — The Economic Times

There are ways to bring elegance to 5 over 1 structures, but it requires a high degree of skill and commitment. Only a very talented designer can take such a limited palette of materials and make the resulting building interesting, if not elegant. But developers must be willing to hire those skilled designers. Many are simply not interested. [...] Hence, the wildly uneven — and often uninspiring — architecture in Seattle today. — crosscut.com

After claiming he saw his friends injured in pothole-related bike accidents, one anonymous resident has taken matters into his own hands.

He goes by Wanksy. And using what appears to be an industrial level chalk, he draws penises around the potholes, creating moments of visual terrorism that the city can’t ignore. [...]

within 48 hours of Wanksy’s efforts, many of Manchester’s problematic potholes, which had been a nuisance for years, were filled. Within a week, even more were fixed. — fastcodesign.com