In many of our bigger cities, the drinking fountain disappeared along with police boxes, mile stones and horse troughs. However, a new initiative is attempting to revive this public utility, with the help of some of London’s best design talent.

Six of the city’s leading architectural firms have designed a series of new drinking fountains, as part of the Kiosk Challenge. — phaidon.com

The long and varied history of waste and its removal in New York from the 18th century onwards is the subject of Elizabeth Royte’s 2005 book Garbage Land and of the Urban Omnibus City of Systems video she narrates. In the video, Royte describes how her research into where exactly her trash was going after she threw it out has led her to become a more ecological citizen, with “a systems view” of our interconnected processes of manufacturing, transportation, disposal and re-use. — Urban Omnibus

Gowanus has become the most obvious touchstone for fears surrounding the rapid evolution that has overwhelmed so much of Brooklyn in recent years. It is also a test case for how democratically an area once colonized by industry might evolve into something like a modern Jane Jacobs vision. Dumbo is both a point of reference here and in one view, the representation of a nightmare outcome, given the area’s distinction as a nexus of multimillion-dollar lofts and budding tech empires. — nytimes.com

Rio de Janeiro is set to host the 2016 Summer Olympic Games and there are two starkly different visions of what that will mean for the "marvelous city," as it is known[...]

"Instead of creating a space of conviviality, a space of shared culture, of community, of conversation, you are going to have this very isolated element where after 5 o'clock in the afternoon, it's going to be dead. You are creating banks, parking lots, Trump towers," Gaffney said. "It's been rezoned for 50-story buildings." — npr.org

Over the next few years, two professional sports teams are in a position to radically reshape much of the fringe of Atlanta's downtown core. [...]

Neither stadium deal has been the public relations coup that Atlanta Mayor Kasim Reed surely hoped for. [...]

There's an inherent messiness to these dual, competing narratives – one of downtown reinvestment, the other a triumph of the suburbs. — theatlanticcities.com

The idea of wrapping a house in giant graphic stickers, like the ones used for ads on city buses, appealed to Eric Chu the moment his architect suggested it. [...]

Applying colorful, blown-up photos to the exterior glass walls — allowing daytime views out, but not in — was the unconventional solution proposed by Mr. Chu’s architect, Whitney Sander, who runs Sander Architects with his wife, Catherine Holliss. — nytimes.com

Last night, nearly 500 New Yorkers gathered at the New York Public Library’s main branch for a forum on the wave of skyscrapers that are rising along the Southern edge of Central Park. Skyscrapers that will, depending on whom you ask, either transform Central Park into a gloomy airshaft or create shadows as fleeting and insubstantial as a cloud moving across the sun. Concerns were raised, grievances aired and oligarchs denigrated. — observer.com

With Jack Evans and Vince Gray headed to New York and Muriel Bowser and Andy Shallal otherwise occupied, the small candidate crowd at last night's architecture debate must have left the hosts feeling as lonely as sad architect archetype Ted Mosby. The lack of candidates at the District Architecture Center brought about a similar lack of political tension, but that didn't keep the candidates who did show up from having ideas about buildings. — washingtoncitypaper.com

Los Angeles may be known for its celebrities, glitz and glam, but the city's mayor, Eric Garcetti, is focused on something decidedly less flashy: infrastructure. [...]

"We destroyed our public transit system from the '30s and '40s and '50s, and so we're in the process of rebuilding it," Garcetti says. "A bigger program than anywhere in the U.S., but a long way to go." — npr.org

What have we learned so far about how cities function — and how they don’t? What is the role of that most symbolic of city features, the skyscraper? And is it possible to “break” a city? Five experts offered their perspectives on the use of data to solve urban problems, the ways in which the skyscraper is venerated and misused, and their best guesses on what the cities of the future might look like. — nytimes.com

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) reported the January ABI score was 50.4, up from a mark of 48.5 in December. This score reflects an increase in design services (any score above 50 indicates an increase in billings). The new projects inquiry index was 58.5, down a bit from the reading of 59.2 the previous month. — calculatedriskblog.com

What they wanted to do was a building which you could prefabricate. It wouldn't weigh much, it would be quick, distinctly hi-tech...Nick Grimshaw in particular became a kind of brand ambassador for Britain. — BBC News Magazine