Nature is poised to reconquer Madrid. Faced with rising summer temperatures, Spain’s capital has announced plans, reported in today’s El Pais, to seam the city so thoroughly with new green patches that its face could be quite transformed.

City parks will be expanded and restored, and 22 new urban gardens created. Vacant public land will be freed up to create community gardens while the banks of the city’s scrappy Manzanares River will be thickly planted with trees... — City Lab

"Small houses can tell big stories," read the apt white words on the pamphlet's blue cover.

The shotgun house's Ocean Park neighborhood had once been full of such modest dwellings. It was a working-class place — home to carpenters and painters and people who washed other people's laundry.

But that kind of history most often is erased over time, as little houses make way for bigger ones. Ordinary people often don't chronicle their lives — and when they leave, their stories do too. — LA Times

Is there no architecture that can bare its soul without simultaneously crushing you with its ego, that stirs, moves, troubles, provokes, inspires? [...]

A glimmer of an alternative is suggested by Mavericks: Breaking the Mould of British Architecture, an installation opening next week [...]

The installation is designed by the architect Alex Scott-Whitby, previously best known for proposing that the spires of City of London churches be adapted to make creative workspaces. — theguardian.com

The biggest names impacting New York’s skyline come together to discuss the projects that now epitomize the city, the ever-evolving real estate market and what’s next for New York’s neighborhoods. — 92Y

LHB has become one of the nation’s first design firms to incorporate virtual reality, or VR, across the sweep of its in-house teams [...]

“With VR, you can inhabit the space in full scale...You get a far more physical sense of what that space is going to be.” [...]

Virtual reality also has potential to be “the great equalizer,” LHB’s Fischer noted. A middle-school maintenance worker can put on a VR headset and notice design flaws that might go unnoticed by project managers. — startribune.com

As an architectural historian, Ms. Clark, 30, has studied buildings throughout New York City in pursuit of her doctorate. [...]

Working for JDS, Ms. Clark felt she could have more than a theoretical effect on architectural history. “I think real estate in many ways is the story of New York, how the city grows and changes,” she said. [...]

As soon as JDS considers acquiring a property, Ms. Clark heads to the archives ... to start developing a case for or against the project. — nytimes.com

As of the 2010 census, the vast majority of Shanghai’s population lived in suburban areas. Between 2000 and 2010, suburban areas grew by 50 percent or more, compared to the city’s central districts, which grew slower or in some cases even shrank [...]

The villagers who join the urban economy, then, don’t go downtown, but to the settlements that dot the fringes of the city. The industries that really help China to grow are here, too — citylab.com

[Through a national competition by the Department of Housing and Urban Development,] The money would be used to help fortify a stretch of shoreline from Montgomery Street on the Lower East Side to the northern tip of Battery Park City. Specific measures have not yet been determined, but could include adding sea walls and temporary flood walls that could be deployed before a storm, and building grass berms that could double as recreational areas. — The New York Times

Eventually, Saint Kjelds will be able to withstand — and even welcome — heavy rainfall and flooding. [...]

More parks like it are being built to purposefully turn into small ponds during heavy rains, allowing them to capture and retain water on site until the drainage system has capacity to handle it. — citiscope.org

The more period commentary on these spaces you read...the more you see the hotel's owners are falling into the very trap the interiors were engineered to escape: banality, anywhere-ness, the flimsiness of changing fashion...Are the current going to rip out the mirror and replace it with barn wood and mason jars? Just wait. Stop the unpermitted demolition. Landmark this interior and, in doing so, remind people of its undated and undateable wonder. — ny.curbed.com

King tides—a type of perigean spring tide (there’s your science jargon)—occur when extra-high tides line up with some other meteorological anomalies. They’re not a huge deal: The water flowing over the seawall is part novelty, part nuisance. But these rare days hint at a new normal, when sea level rise will render current coastlines obsolete [...]

On January 21 and 22, the king tide will bring San Francisco’s shoreline about a foot higher than average high tide. — Wired

Scott Slater has a plan. It is not a popular plan, but he wants to pump 814bn gallons of water from under the Mojave desert to Los Angeles and other drought-stricken communities in southern California, and make more than $2bn doing so...In addition to environmental concerns, others object to a private company being able to make billions from water. Slater says they do not understand the law, which in California states no entity can own water but they can buy, sell and trade the right to use it. — The Guardian