What is “micro public space”?...To date, Atelier Bow-Wow have presented, in exhibition settings, numerous installations featuring small structures, furniture and so on...More than just small buildings, these works are devices supporting the interaction and activities of all sorts of people, and while compact in size, create places open to a diverse audience". — The Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art

In 2011, the Howard Hughes Corporation offered to collaborate with Mr. LaValva. He turned them down. “Hughes suggested we be part of the Pier 17 renovation,” Mr. LaValva said. “But we wanted to preserve the market.” — NYT

If we want to know how to make a better city, the place to start is at ground level, using observation and measurement ... to build a psychologically grounded view of the relationship between the physical design of a city and what happens there. [...]

How do we develop an experimental science of urban design? In the research laboratory for immersive virtual environments (Relive) at the University of Waterloo, we have turned to simulation methods to help build such a science. — theguardian.com

What a National Register [of Historic Places] listing really means is a 20% federal tax credit for structural investing, along with any state tax incentives, but that's often not enough to make preservation a more appealing option over razing and starting over. [...]

Listing on the National Register certainly gives something of an economic incentive for preservation, as well as a national profile for these sites [...]

However, what historic sites ultimately need is sustainable funding. — Atlas Obscura

Our cities are damaging our health – that's the conclusion of a new report by the Royal Institute of British Architects which looks at the impact of the built environment on obesity and life expectancy. It found that the urban conurbations with the healthiest populations [...] had half the density of housing and a fifth more green spaces than the places where people were the most unfit, such as Liverpool (the highest rate of diabetes) and Birmingham (the lowest proportion of active adults). — independent.co.uk

The Taubman College of Architecture and Urban Planning received a $1.3m grant Monday from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. The gift will fund architecture and humanities research on metropolitan issues in cities like Detroit, Mexico City and Rio de Janeiro for the next four-and-half years. The Mellon Foundation delivered the “Architecture, Urbanism, and the Humanities” grant to the University, which supports scholarship and higher education at the intersection of architecture and the humanities. — record.umich.edu

The Winter Olympics in Sochi are just a few days away. Russia has spent $50 billion on everything from construction to security, making these the most expensive games in history. [...]

"I think one of the knee-jerk reactions has been ... 'will we be left with a load of white elephants?' " he adds.

The answer from most economists who study the Olympics is: Yes, you will. — npr.org

The face of London is about to change.

[...] The development surge, fueled by wealthy foreigners looking for a safe place to invest, has spawned concern that the city is sacrificing its heritage for the sake of luxury homes.

"London is in danger of becoming a sort of Abu Dhabi, a sort of Hong Kong," warned Nigel Barker of English Heritage, a body devoted to protecting the nation's inheritance. — npr.org

By intervening in the local planning process, the mayor of London is creating a more exclusive, divided city of private enclaves, designed only for the needs of the rich. [...]

While the Mount Pleasant case might be dismissed as the usual cast of nimbys set against the inevitable steamroller of market forces, it in fact reveals some disturbing truths about how the mayor's planning machine is actively working to make the city a more divided, exclusive place. — theguardian.com

A third of the mansions on the most expensive stretch of London's "Billionaires Row" are standing empty, including several huge houses that have fallen into ruin after standing almost completely vacant for a quarter of a century. — Guardian

Last January, Tallinn, the capital city of Estonia, did something that no other city its size had done before: It made all public transit in the city free for residents. [...]

One year later, this city of 430,000 people has firmly established itself as the leader of a budding international free-transit movement. [...]

What’s less clear on the first anniversary of free transit in Tallinn is whether it has actually changed commuting behavior all that much. — Citiscope

"All great public squares have a monument with a statue, right? ... Everyone in town can agree about that. But whenever we discuss which historical figure should go up on that column, it turns into a fight. We can’t come to a consensus. So we’ve decided to leave it empty. One day, this person will come. And when they do, we will have a place waiting for their statue. This will bring great pride to Anse-à-Pitres.” — Places Journal