Grand Avenue’s Music Center Plaza is about to get a major renovation for the first time since it opened to the public in 1964.

Often overshadowed (literally) by the prominent Downtown venues that stand above it, the plaza is a gathering place and event space in its own right. Thus, a major part of the plan would increase event capacity from 1,500 to 2,500.

[LA County] has already given $2 million to plan the project, with $25 million of funding expected down the road. — la.curbed.com

The world heritage site status of Liverpool’s waterfront is in jeopardy after the city’s mayor, Joe Anderson, rejected a plea by UN cultural chiefs to halt development in the city [...]

Anderson said he would be writing to the UN body informing it that the city would not be complying with its request [...]

Heritage campaigners recently went to court in a fight to stop the demolition of 10 historic buildings near Liverpool Lime Street station in the buffer zone. — The Guardian

The thousands of new old houses in New Orleans reveal the ethos of a people in a place nearly destroyed. New Orleanians have embraced their city’s architectural heritage as they’ve rebuilt for an uncertain future. — Places Journal

Block a highway, and you upend the economic life of a city, as well as the spatial logic that has long allowed people to pass through them without encountering their poverty or problems. Block a highway, and you command a lot more attention than would a rally outside a church or city hall — from traffic helicopters, immobile commuters, alarmed officials. — the Washington Post

Debates are rubbish. We've all been there: a panel of similar people with similar views taking it in turns to talk at length about their similar work - too polite, too deferential, too dull. At best they are lukewarm love-ins, critically impotent, elitist and stuffy. Turncoats is a shot in the arm. — Turncoats statement

A mass shooting scenario changes the function of every object in the built environment. [...]

The buildings themselves, the fabric of the city, ends up not mattering so much. In fact, sometimes it becomes a kind of enemy. [...]

Americans aren’t going to rebuild their cities to accommodate the possibility of violence. The people who protect the people in those cities will just have to learn to see them differently. — wired.com

The future of London’s proposed garden bridge has been called into further question after the city’s new mayor, Sadiq Khan, halted preparatory work on the structure over fears this could involve more public money being spent.

The Garden Bridge Trust says the bridge from South Bank to Temple, featuring 270 trees and thousands of plants, will be a “tiara” for London, being both an iconic landmark and a vital pedestrian bridge. — The Guardian

[...] during a visit some months before the Brexit vote, I armed myself with a detailed map and trolled all over South and Southeast London — a conglomeration of formerly independent villages, boroughs, towns and green spaces that have long since been incorporated into London

[...] the neighborhoods that make up the great London patchwork quilt are ephemeral, especially now, as the immigrant communities of London wonder what the post-Brexit future will bring. — The New York Times

Bowie hated it. Peep Show besmirched it. The London suburb may get a bad rap in popular culture, but now there is the chance to see a different side. [...]

Watson is helping to organise tours of Croydon taking in architectural highlights such as NLA House (now No 1 Croydon), sometimes known as the ‘threepenny bit’; [...]

The National Trust is turning to Croydon after its successful tours of London’s brutalist concrete buildings, places it argues should be cherished as much as Croydon’s towers. — The Guardian

To most people, zoning and land-use regulations might conjure up little more than images of late-night City Council meetings full of gadflies and minutiae. But these laws go a long way toward determining some fundamental aspects of life: what American neighborhoods look like, who gets to live where and what schools their children attend.

And when zoning laws get out of hand, economists say, the damage to the American economy and society can be profound. — the New York Times

What we’ve done is change the software of the city...We’ve changed how it behaves. We’ve changed how it responds to people who want to try things, do things, and run their own experiments...We don’t build anything, we don’t buy anything, we don’t own anything.” Renew’s annual budget barely cracks six figures — New Republic

Sorry, I’m not able to send this directly through SnapFace since your iPhone 6 doesn’t support neural chat. Old-fashioned text pixels will have to do. Remember the movie “Her”? That’s what Los Angeles is like in 2056. L.A. is the densest city in the U.S., with a population that’s about a third larger than it was in 2016. Taller buildings are everywhere, including New DTLA — a corridor of super-talls that runs the length of Wilshire all the way to Santa Monica. — Los Angeles Times