"Apple's state-of-the art campus brings at least $100 million dollars in investment to California and generates no additional greenhouse gas emissions," Brown said in a statement to this newspaper, listing two of the requirements Apple had met to qualify under the law. "On-site fuel cells and 650,000 square feet of solar panels will provide clean, renewable energy for more than 12,000 Apple employees on the new campus." — siliconvalley.com

... the buyer will be contractually obligated to shell out over $10 million to execute a detailed, 80-page list of renovations, ranging from a handful of new peepholes to a sweeping overhaul of the buildings’ bathtubs. On top of that, the buyer must deposit just over $2.5 million into an escrow account that HUD can access in the event that repairs are not on schedule, as evidenced in the illustrated quarterly progress reports the buyer will be required to send. — artinfo.com

The proposal for a bike path system for Venezuela's capitol Caracas, designed by architects Andrea Hernández and Cruz Criollo, has won the first prize in the competition Metropolitan Transportation System, Caracas to Pedal. The best and most innovative proposals of this competition, which seeks to promote cycling in the city, were recently awarded by the Metropolitan Mayor of Caracas. — bustler.net

One afternoon, three mellow residents — Anita Inglese, 86, Marilyn Amdur, 85, and Joan Ruberti, 81, all widows — talked about the offerings of the alley. “It’s nice for us,” Ms. Inglese said. “We need places to walk to."...“I’ve been in all the places,” Ms. Amdur said. “One thing that’s good is they put in this long bench. You need to rest sometimes.”...Ms. Ruberti said, “I love it because everything is brand new.” — NYT

The exhibition’s curators...argue that during these two centuries, transformations took place in three major public arenas, “gathering places where people mixed for business, leisure and worship”: church, the theater and the market. And that those changes created an “open city.” — NYT

The Los Angeles County Metropolitan Transportation Authority (Metro) Board of Directors today approved LA-based Gruen Associates, in association with London's Grimshaw Architects, as the consultant team for the creation of a master plan for the historic Union Station and its surrounding 40 acres. Metro CEO Art Leahy was authorized by the board to execute a firm fixed price contract not to exceed $4,150,000. — bustler.net

Foreclosed is controversial because it suggests that the state, or the public sector — conceived along with civil society in terms of multiple, overlapping, virtual and actual publics — might play a more active, direct and enlightened role in the provision of housing and, by extension, of education, health care and other infrastructures of daily life in the United States.... Simply put, can we no longer imagine architecture without developers? — Places Journal

"Despite potential increases in new construction, most of the houses that seniors will release in coming years were built when energy was inexpensive, nuclear families were the rule, incomes were increasing for most Americans, and mortgages were generally predictable and easy to obtain. …the next 20 to 30 years to depart from this historic picture, with more expensive energy, growing diversity in race, ethnicity and in household structure, and more intense international economic competition." — scribd.com

What people said concerned them the most was a growing sense of isolation and disconnection. They said we live increasingly in silos, separated by ethnicity, culture, language, income, age and even geography. They lamented what they saw as a deepening civic malaise that has resulted in more people retreating from community activities. They said this corrosion of caring and social isolation hurts them personally and hurts their community. — Vancouver Foundation

Yes, it's still a bus shelter, but the idea is to make it both more useful and more of a social space. People may come here for a range of things other than catching the bus, so that social interaction and the life of the street intermix with waiting to produce a more vibrant, interesting, and safe environment. — humantransit.org

We have received another entry for the city center redevelopment competition in Klaksvík, Faroe Islands: the proposal "RE-CONNECT, RE-INVENT, RE-INVEST KLAKSVIK" by Swiss firm Group8 received the 2nd prize in this open, international competition. — bustler.net

It seems to me Aberdeen thinks in terms of a consumerist society, where the solution is: "Well, put more shops in and get more business." I think it's a mistake; the same mistake they made back in the 60s. — Guardian

For generations, government policies have been geared toward creating endless landscapes of strip malls... In the process we have gutted our traditional downtowns. We have eaten up farmland and forest. We have, as Nate Berg reported this week, endangered the lives of our senior citizens. We have engineered a world where children cannot walk or bike to school without risking their lives. We have created countless places devoid of any real social value. — theatlanticcities.com

Looking at the city through the lens of landscape architecture allows us a clear view of the situation. There is just one course of action available to us: if we are to resolve the world’s ecological problems we first need to resolve the problems facing our cities. And the only way we can reach these solutions is by naming and researching them in terms of the metabolism of the city. — IABR

The High Line in New York succeeds because it unites neighborhoods and gets people outside, building a community in a space that was planned to be demolished: it brought life from rehabilitation. As we all know, Los Angeles has many places that need rehabilitating and that could serve as a point of unification. The problem though is that unlike the High Line we don’t have an area that stretches between neighborhoods without feeling forced or unantural. — laimyours.com