Many cities have sought to remake their image when hosting global events like the Olympics. Beijing is polishing off one of the world’s most expensive makeovers with a whitewash...To hide neighborhoods leveled for redevelopment in recent years or anything else the government considers... View full entry
The Utopian community of Auroville in India started 40 years ago. However well planned, it has failed in retrospective, asserts one critic. elseplace View full entry
At a time when the siheyuans, some of them centuries old, have been disappearing at an alarming rate, these renovators, including Westerners and some newly moneyed Chinese, are emerging as the city’s best hope for holding on to what’s left of the old hutongs.NYT related View full entry
Walkscore.com , which uses an algorithm to identify those neighborhoods boasting the most amenities per person, published its ranking on Thursday and deemed San Francisco the most walkable city, with a "Walk Score" of 86 out of 100. Type an address, and the Walkscore site generates a map showing... View full entry
from NYC's "Improv Everywhere" View full entry
In a surprising reshaping of the urban landscape, the city is creating a public esplanade along a portion of one of its most prominent streets, Broadway in Midtown, setting aside the east side of the roadway for a bicycle lane and a pedestrian walkway with cafe tables, chairs, umbrellas and... View full entry
In a March Atlantic article, Christopher B. Leinberger, a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of urban planning, contended that yesterday's new suburbs will become "the slums" of tomorrow because high gas prices and the housing meltdown will force Americans back to the... View full entry
Los Angeles wants to go green and limit the lot coverage on residential projects considerably. New ordinance goes effective this Monday, limiting the coverage to 25% of the lot and you get additional 20% with a LEED certification. ord. 179883(pdf) View full entry
Neighborhoods of ethnic communities are attracting professionals who are tired of homogeneity, and are looking for something more "authentic." Problem is, lattes, renovations and higher rents aren't far behind. DW View full entry
In a few weeks' time, Channel 4 Television in the U.K.will screen a series of TV programs that have followed every twist and turn of the urban renewal of a town. The series has been made across six years. It will feature a generation of young architectural All Stars - but was founded upon the... View full entry
Wait, what? David Harvey's lessons on Capital, Volume I, will be periodically posted online. view View full entry
Up to now, one could be forgiven for knowing next to nothing about the ancient Spanish city of Zaragoza, capital of Aragon and the country’s fifth largest metropolis. For some reason, it’s never had the same mystique as, say, Granada, Salamanca or Toledo. But that seems likely to... View full entry
Shenzhen and Dubai may have outstripped Paris and New York as civic models. But can an instant city ever feel like the real thing? NY Times View full entry
The buildings constructed in Athens for the Olympic Games four years ago are fly blown, closed to the public and covered in graffiti, a forewarning of the possible aftermath of the London Games in 2012. Telegraph | very related...Of the 22 venues in the city, 21 are in a state of disrepair and... View full entry
The suburbs are changing. Perhaps none ever quite resembled the colourless domestic enclaves popularised by 1970s television programmes such as “The Brady Bunch”; now, they look nothing at all like them. America's suburbs are ethnically and demographically mixed—sometimes more... View full entry