'There is no one size fits all approach — every region is completely different...' Hurricane Sandy underlined the urgency by ruthlessly exposing New York's structural weaknesses...California also suffered as historic droughts settled in, and the 2014 wave of winter storms terrorized the North, emphasizing that extreme conditions were here to stay and could strike anywhere. This bought the U.S. into line with the global situation. — CNN

In 2007, [São Paulo] Mayor Gilberto Kassab implemented the Clean City Law, labelling outdoor adverts a form of “visual pollution”. In a single year, the city removed 15,000 billboards and 300,000 oversized storefront signs. [...]

The ubiquity of outdoor advertising means that we have come to take it for granted; accepting both its presence and its purpose as natural features of the urban environment. — theguardian.com

‘"It’s hard to think about ways to drain the swamp when alligators are biting your ass.’” — Placemakers.com

Danziger addressed the issues of perception: How does a patient with a shifted perception experience space? He focused on color, the distribution of light, material, and shape. — NPR Berlin

Burglary is a spatial crime: its very definition requires architecture...Indeed, burglary's architectural interest comes not from its ubiquity, but from its unexpected, often surprisingly subtle misuse of the built environment. Burglars approach buildings differently, often seeking modes of entry other than doors and approaching buildings—whole cites—as if they're puzzles waiting to be solved or beaten. — BLDGBLOG

Archive (“Architecture for Health in Vulnerable Environments”) proposes “bringing attention to the built environment and how it is a transmission vehicle for the spread and control of a respiratory illness like TB” [...]

Archive is starting small, with an as-yet-uninitiated project on respiratory health and indoor pollutants in Ethiopia and projects on TB awareness in London. — nextcity.org

Gornja Siga has come, over the last few months, to assume an outsize role in the imagination of many — not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East and in the United States...What novel society might be accomplished in a place like this, with no national claim or tenant? Such were the thoughts that had for some time inflamed the spirit of Vit Jedlicka, a 31-year-old Czech politician who traveled to the land earlier this year and, in broad daylight, planted a new flag in its unstable soil. — NY Times

The recent debate between Uber and New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio over whether the ride-for-hire company was exacerbating Manhattan congestion was fueled by incomplete, misleading data. There was no way of knowing exactly where Uber cars and taxis pick up passengers, and so the city agreed to a study of Uber’s effects last month as part of its detente with the company.

Now, thanks in part to a Freedom of Information Law request, we have data. A lot of data... — FiveThirtyEight

Slapped in the face is exactly how many Venetians are feeling by the tidal wave of new money. And the local tech boom, prompting 'Silicon Beach' references around town, is just one source of it — The Washington Post

As Los Angeles moves closer to bidding for the 2024 Summer Olympics, officials said they can host the massive 17-day sporting event for $4.1 billion and offered to guarantee that the city will cover any cost overruns. [...]

Garcetti and his team have proposed to spend $500 million less than what Boston had planned and expect to finish with a $150-million surplus by generating billions in broadcast and sponsorship revenue. — latimes.com

After a boom in construction and investment in real estate projects in recent years, work is drying up amid a slowdown in the world’s second largest economy. Property developers are cutting back on new projects, and with construction starts down 16% in the first half this year from a year ago, many firms are cutting salaries or letting staff go. [...]

“We are adjusting to a slower pace of urbanization in China with a recovery of the American and Middle East markets” — blogs.wsj.com

Would-be investors would face other obstacles even if the embargo were lifted... Cuba is still tightly controlled by its Communist government. [...]

In any case, most architectural work in Cuba today focuses on the restoration of Havana’s immense historic building stock—two-thirds of which is in disrepair—and on bringing Havana into the 21st century without imperiling its heritage. — architectmagazine.com

Gehry insists that he isn't interested in the river as the site for new landmarks. He says he told the Revitalization Corp. board members who first visited his office last year that he would take on the job only if he could look at the river primarily in terms of hydrology. [...]

"I told them I'm not a landscape guy. I said I would only do it on the condition that they approached it as a water-reclamation project, to deal with all the water issues first." — latimes.com

The river that runs through America's 10th-largest city has dried up, shriveling a source of civic pride that had welcomed back trout, salmon, beavers and other wildlife after years of restoration efforts. Over the past two months, large sections of the Guadalupe have become miles of cracked, arid gray riverbed. Fish and other wildlife are either missing or dead, casualties of California's relentless drought. — mercurynews.com