It’s an ongoing debate in American society whether class or race is a stronger bond. A new study from the US2010 Project shows that race is still more determinant than class when it comes to where you live. The study found that in almost every measurement, the affluent black or Hispanic American in a household earning more than $75,000 lives in a poorer neighborhood than the average white or Asian American living in a household earning under $40,000. — scpr.org

Councilwoman Diaz said she heard about the Cal Poly student's proposal accidentally during a chance encounter on a plane flight to the Bay Area. — North County Times

Six winning designs have been announced in the Gowanus Lowline: Connections competition, hosted by Gowanus by Design. [...] Gowanus Connections is GbD's inaugural international ideas competition, inviting speculation on the value of urban development of postindustrial urban lands, and the possibility of dynamic, pedestrian-oriented architecture that engages with the Gowanus Canal and the surrounding watershed. — bustler.net

Architects in 2009 described Istanbul’s downtown neighborhood of Tarlabaşı as an unsafe place for children -- a district whose destruction and reconstruction would be in the interest of its residents.
Few dispute that Tarlabaşı is run-down and that many of its residents live below the poverty line. But the congested neighborhood is also one of the few remaining places in the city center where there is affordable housing for the urban poor. — eurasianet.org

If it were possible to soar on the wings of angels, or even on those of the lowly pigeons that haunt the five boroughs, we would be able, perhaps, to appreciate the pristine geometric beauty of the George Washington Bridge Bus Terminal. Unfortunately, we remain earthbound, and at street level, the afore-mentioned terminal is one ugly monster of a building. But that is about to change with a nearly $200 million renovation. — therealdeal.com

The resolutions required a tower of similar design proportions. How much the new design resembles the old one, just shorter, is not immediately clear. Initially, Hines said it had filed no new plans, but when The Observer pointed to a notice on the City Planning website, spokesman George Lancaster admitted that the project was back on and imminent. “We DID file revised plans with City Planning for the shorter tower adjacent to MoMA,” he wrote in an email. — Observer

Galleries of Life boldly opens a space for more studies of the wide and porous continuum of housing practices in Mumbai, which include chawls, flats, wadis, slums, and coastal villages (see Housing Typo­logies in Mumbai). If urban housing has subjectivity, then a genealogy of chawls has as much to tell us about social mobility and spatial practices. — Economic&Political Weekly

Bing's citywide plan calls for dividing Detroit into three categories based on a neighborhood's health — steady, transitional and distressed — and then concentrating certain services in those areas. — The Detroit News

For years debate about cities has focused on the economic side — steps they are urged to take to attract capital, recruit new businesses, lure creative professionals.
But what about justice? — Citiwire.net

Architect Booth Hansen and developers just revealed plans to turn the underutilized area just east of Willis (Sears) Tower into a retail center capped with 120 story twin towers and a 20 acre rooftop park. Planned in three phases, the $3.5 billion dollar project is anchored by a renovation of the historic post office. The next two phases will increase the square footage to 16.1 million square feet — Inahbaitat

In short we will research the relationship between man and their living environment, the city, with the bicycle as the discovering function. This will partially be done by interviews with architects, city planners and people in control at the local government while on the other hand the people who create the urban bike culture; the cyclist in these cities. — genredevie.com

Admittedly, commercial real estate signs are not a particularly literary sort of fiction, but this sub-genre does have its own traditions and mores. Its practitioners exercise what we might consider a tentative form of realism: After all, their stories should be plausible enough to, ideally, attract capital. Thus certain rules and strictures — relating to commercial potential, practical materials and the laws of physics — must be observed. — Places

Agricultural researchers believe that building indoor farms in the middle of cities could help solve the world's hunger problem. Experts say that vertical farming could feed up to 10 billion people and make agriculture independent of the weather and the need for land. There's only one snag: The urban farms need huge amounts of energy. — spiegel.de

Panaroma is a public art which criticize the lack of public space and the confused function of the few open/green spaces in İstanbul.
Art Project by Andreas Fogarasi. Project architect & construction supervision by Alper Derinboğaz. — Salon2

Alfred Ely Beach is best known for his invention of New York City's first concept for a subway: the Beach Pneumatic Transit, which would move people rapidly from one place to another in "cars" propelled along long tubes by compressed air. — io9.com