Housing has instead become one of the primary drivers of global capitalism, through commodification and financialization, making its function as real estate more important than its use as lived, space. It is the result of spatial developments being market-driven. Madden and Marcuse: “housing is not produced and distributed for dwelling at all,” but “as a commodity to enrich the few.” — Failed Architecture
The German documentary City for Sale that came out last year and the recently released book In Defense of Housing are the perfect match for anyone who wants to learn about the broken nature of housing markets, the crisis currently happening in all big cities worldwide. City for Sale consists of... View full entry
First, given their robust physical characteristics, like, reinforced concrete, between 18-30 feet high, the concrete border wall prototypes are designed to deter illegal crossings in the area in which they are constructed.
Second, the concrete border wall prototypes will allow CBP to evaluate the potential for new wall and barrier designs that could complement the wall and barrier designs we have used along the border over the last several years.
— U.S. Customs and Border Protection
On Thursday, CBP announced that it had awarded contracts to build several 30-foot-high concrete wall prototypes, which are supposed to inform future design standards and will likely continue to evolve to meet the U.S. Border Patrol’s requirements. The four companies that will build the... View full entry
A former beer factory in the Royal Docks is set to become London’s newest creative workspace hub, which will open later this year. The Silver Building, from SODA and Nick Hartwright, will be one of the first elements of the Royal Docks’ regeneration, which will continue throughout the next... View full entry
With an expected completion date of March 2019, the 18-story, 80-meter-tall-plus building in Brumunddal, Norway known as the Mjøsa Tower will soon become the world's tallest wooden structure, a coveted title among those designers who favor wood over more traditional tall building materials... View full entry
But what if there were a way to see gentrification long before the coffee shops, condos and Whole Foods appear? What if city planners and neighborhoods had an early warning system that could sniff out the changes just as they begin?
[...] neighborhood advocates would have the opportunity to implement policies ranging from reserving affordable housing units to educating residents of their renting rights to helping small businesses negotiate long-term lease extensions.
— NPR
In his NPR piece, astrophysics professor Adam Frank explains how various big data sets, like housing prices, eviction records, census data, or social media usage, can be utilized for "predictive analytics" to detect early onsets of gentrification for specific neighborhoods at an increasingly high... View full entry
Houston calls itself “the city with no limits” to convey the promise of boundless opportunity. But it also is the largest U.S. city to have no zoning laws, part of a hands-off approach to urban planning that may have contributed to catastrophic flooding from Hurricane Harvey and left thousands of residents in harm’s way. — The Washington Post
Hurricane Harvey is drawing renewed scrutiny to Houston's 'Wild West' approach to planning and its unusual system for managing floodwater that, according to environmentalists, greatly diminishes land's natural ability to absorb water. While local officials have defended the city's take on... View full entry
Over the past decade of South Korea's rapid urbanization high-density apartment development has become the most popular type of housing in the country, producing a myriad of identical, close-set, utilitarian blocks. When in 2012 the Hyundai Development Company invited UNStudio to design an... View full entry
In a moment when the powers at be can't even fund the country’s shambling roads and bridges, the 2,000 organizers and volunteers who run Burning Man put together—and then take apart—a 70,000-person city in the space of two months. — Wired
As Burning Man is taking it's 31st annual round, Wired takes a look at how the famed festival occupies the land of the Black Rock Desert. While temporary and free of the bounding presence of permanent residents and buildings, it nevertheless bares some resemblance to a city. Springing out of... View full entry
For the past few years, the site Streetsblog has been shedding light on some of America's most dreadful public transit systems with their competition for the "Sorriest Bus Stop in America." The tournament takes user submissions for uncomfortable, inaccessible, and sometimes, outright dangerous... View full entry
Trulia isolated the markets in which building permits for residential construction are being issued at rates above historical averages, which have been calculated by looking at the number of permits issued each year between 1980 and 2016. The study also shows that Austin, Dallas and Houston, issued over 10% of all permits in the nation in 2017.These cities are projected to add about 130,000 new homes by the end of the year, their growth driven by abundant jobs and rising incomes and home prices. — The New York Times
According to the real estate website Trulia, the number of homes available for sale decreased 8.9 percent in the second quarter of 2017 compared to a year earlier, which follows decreases every quarter for the two past years. The projected number of new building permits in 2017 grew the most in... View full entry
Residents of the outer suburbs tend to travel much longer distances between home, work and the services they need daily. Getting around necessarily defaults to the car, which has serious long-term implications for health. Driving is particularly associated with extended sitting in a confined space and, as a result, not getting enough exercise each day.
When poorer communities are located in areas of lesser amenity due to lower housing costs, this exacerbates their health problems.
— Economist Times
The close correlation between socioeconomic status and health has long been out of question. The built environment and the environmental context serve as direct social determinants of health. Due to lower housing costs, poorer communities are often restricted to residing in areas of lesser... View full entry
Rain continues to fall in Houston, Texas, a city which may see up to 50 inches of precipitation over a span of five days thanks to the aftereffects of Hurricane Harvey. Unfortunately, the continued flooding has been exacerbated due to some decades-long, head-in-the-sand urban planning, the history... View full entry
Megacities—those urban centers crammed with more than 10 million people—would be well served to double down on their arboreal assets, according to a new paper in the upcoming issue of the journal Ecological Modeling.
A team of researchers led by Theodore Endreny of SUNY’s College of Environmental Studies and Forestry sought to quantify how leafy infrastructure pays dividends in 10 chock-full cities—and the extent to which those benefits could compound if those urban areas planted more trees.
— Citylab
You can check out the research paper here, as well as this 2015 report about the health benefits of more greenspace in urban centers. View full entry
If New York City has 8 million stories, than at least 4,650 are referenced in the book, which will serve as an invaluable resource to future scholars of the city. As its narrative moves north through Manhattan, visiting neighborhoods that have been gutted in recent decades—the Bowery, the Meatpacking District, Times Square, Harlem—it is interspersed with deeper considerations of how we got here as a society. — Curbed NY
Vanishing New York: How a Great City Lost Its Soul is a chronicle of New York City's hyper-gentrification of the past decade, which serves as a further development of the author's blog, Jeremiah’s Vanishing New York, that has extensively tracked the 'murdering' of the city's character... View full entry
What if new technology further exacerbates urban inequality, especially among those on the wrong side of the digital divide? [Geographer Federico Caprotti of the University of Exeter] sees the world heading toward a notion of a “new urban citizen”, one that continually provides data, which may leave out those who are unable or unwilling to contribute. — Citiscope
Citiscope interviews geographer and smart-city researcher Federico Caprotti, who co-wrote an academic paper in response to the U.N.'s approval of the New Urban Agenda last year. Caprotti shares his thoughts on the rise of the “new urban citizen”, as well as the hidden inequalities that... View full entry
