But, with all this push to quantize and characterize, there are dangers. Cities clearly are more than a new kind of physics problem. They are also creations of the human imagination and, as such, they live or die by the quality of the imagination we bring to them.

Thats why no discussion of the health of cities can be complete without thinking about the role of art — public art. — npr.org

Concrete was the building material beloved by councils as they embarked on post-World War Two development.

But it is fair to say many people were never quite as taken with grey skyscrapers and suspended walkways.

Now several of the cities defined by concrete - Birmingham, Coventry, Hull and Portsmouth - are undergoing multimillion-pound makeovers.

But what are they losing in their quest to be the "modern cities" of the 21st - rather than the 20th - Century? — bbc.com

Frank Gehry once said that if we didn’t have starchitects, architects (and architecture) wouldn’t be in the media at all. But this kind of coverage, even when positive, we don’t need. It perpetuates a Howard Roarkian image that makes most of us architects cringe — not the least because of the uber-capitalist, Ayn Rand alignment — and also deflates a more productive optimism within the profession that sees these arrogant acts as old school. — mobile.nytimes.com

Outline plans for the project were approved by the North Devon Council this week. The village will officially be known by the surprisingly prosaic name Southern Extension, and will include shops, a primary school, a sports pitch and woodlands. [...]

The project will include 75 affordable homes, and will be built over the next 10 to 15 years. Renderings show an extremely typical suburban town filled with identical houses and strolling pedestrians. — nextcity.org

With so many crossovers in private operations, public data, and private uses, our future transit agency would blur the line between public and private sectors in a way we haven’t yet pioneered. The challenge is one of governance, bureaucratic turf, organizational development, planning, and public policy, not simply one of technology. Technology is just a tool, and our human institutions can either make use of it or try to ignore it. — urbanomnibus.net

Enter the UltraRope, a new kind of lift cable developed by Finnish elevator company Kone. Eschewing woven steel cable in favour of carbon fibre, the UltraRope is described as “lift-hoisting technology” [...]. Strong and lightweight, the UltraRope will supposedly allow lifts to travel up to 1km in a single run, double what’s currently possible with a steel cable. The UltraRope is 90% lighter than the equivalent steel cable, thereby reducing the load and enabling far taller continuous runs. — theguardian.com

Suffering in its third year of drought, more than 58 percent of the state is currently in "exceptional drought" stage [...] Exceptional drought, the most extreme category, indicates widespread crop and pasture losses and shortages of water in reservoirs, streams and wells [...] If the state continues on this path, there may have to be thoughts about moving people out, said Lynn Wilson, academic chair at Kaplan University and who serves on the climate change delegation in the United Nations. — CNBC

Sprinkling city parks with recycled water may create a breeding ground for hard-to-treat microbes [...] Even after the recycled water is treated in a sewage plant, it may carry microbes, drug-resistance genes and antibiotics that had washed down the drain. Sprayed into the environment, that water can spread microbes that could cause difficult-to-treat infections, the researchers say. — Science News

Quantitative Analysis of NYC Open Data: Every data set that the city releases tells a story. This blog is all about telling those stories, one data set at a time.   — iquantny.tumblr.com

Sharif El-Gamal, CEO of real estate developer Soho Properties, announced today that his company acquired 49-51 Park Place from Consolidated Edison for $10.7 million. He also revealed that none other than Pritzker Prize-winning starchitect Jean Nouvel will be designing the site’s three-story Islam museum and prayer space. — 6sqft

This week came the news that the Federal Bureau of Investigation is leaving its home in Washington, D.C. [...]

Most importantly, from the perspective of thousands of D.C. residents, the District will finally be rid of the FBI's dark architecture. I will be sad to see the building go, as the city will almost certainly demand. Not only could it still potentially be put to good use, but whatever replaces the FBI Building will be regular, orderly, safe, and worse. — citylab.com

"Of course these so-called 'poor doors' are shocking, but they are a symptom, not the problem," says Michael Edwards, senior lecturer at the Bartlett school of planning at UCL. "We've simply stopped building proper social housing, and until that's addressed then fiddling around with front-door arrangements is like rearranging deck chairs on the Titanic." — theguardian.com

For the developers of the world's sixth tallest building near Seoul, a mysteriously shrinking lake and the appearance of small sinkholes in residential neighborhoods couldn't have come at a more inopportune time [...]
With about 70 of its 123 floors completed, the Lotte World Tower is now undergoing a review by experts and has put on hold the opening of adjacent low-rise buildings that form part of its complex. — Associated Press

As we speak, pinhole cameras are being placed in secret locations all over Berlin. Each will each take a single photograph with a 100-year exposure. Volunteers will place the cameras in neighborhoods throughout the city, keeping the location a closely guarded secret until they grow old or ill, at which time they will pass the information on to someone in the next generation. In 2114, the people they’ve told will retrieve the cameras from their hiding spots — nextcity.org