The question “Will a robot take my job?” is never too far from any discussion about the role of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the future economy. The answer to this simple, justified question is anything but clear, and continues to divide experts in economics and business... View full entry
Lately, though, I’ve found myself sitting on a lot of cramped metal benches of the kind that don’t invite you to linger long, or harsh concrete ones that leave you cold. That’s because public seating is becoming an endangered species. If a park bench is not being removed, the backup plan is often to make it uncomfortable. “Hostile architecture” — an urban design strategy intended to impede “antisocial” behavior — is proliferating all over the world. — The New York Times
Cities like San Francisco and Boston have quietly removed seating over the last decade in misguided efforts to curb outdoor sleeping. Interventions like sleep-preventing benches and other forms of cruel deterrents aimed at the homeless population have spilled over into the public sphere. Recently... View full entry
New renderings have been unveiled following the city’s Cultural Affairs Commission approval of the recently announced first slate of sculptural installations set to line the forthcoming Destination Crenshaw development in Los Angeles. The $100 million community redevelopment scheme features a... View full entry
Construction will be an engine of global economic growth in the decade to 2030, with output expected to be 35% higher than in the ten years to 2020, according to a new global forecast. — Global Construction Review
The report, titled Future of Construction, by Oxford Economics and Marsh McLennan subsidiaries March and Guy Carpenter projects that growth in construction output will average 3.6% per year from now until 2030, outpacing that of the manufacturing and services sectors. According to the study, this... View full entry
For instance, by the end of this year, approximately 20,100 units in older buildings (that previously served other purposes) will be starting a new life as apartments — that’s almost double the number of apartments converted in 2020 and 2019 combined. So far, through adaptive reuse alone, this new decade has already created nearly 32,000 apartments, 41% of which are in former office buildings. — RENTCafé
The shift to work-from-home caused by the coronavirus pandemic has also resulted in office spaces becoming one-quarter of the adaptive reuse projects that will make more than 12,000 rental units available by the end of next year. Hospitals, hotels, and even a houseboat are among the disused... View full entry
Several New York state lawmakers are calling on Governor Kathy Hochul to kill the plans for a $2.1 billion AirTrain to LaGuardia Airport. Hochul released a statement Monday calling on the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, an agency she has at least partial control over, to look for alternative options. — Gothamist
“I have asked the Port Authority to thoroughly examine alternative mass transit solutions for reducing car traffic and increasing connectivity to LaGuardia Airport,” said Hochul in a statement. “We must ensure that our transportation projects are bold, visionary, and serve the needs of New... View full entry
The director and speculative architect Liam Young has launched a new project, speculating on the future of urbanism within the context of climate change and urban sprawl. The project, titled Planet City, presents a future world in which urban sprawl is reversed, and humanity retreats to one... View full entry
Cities with the worst exposure to coastal flooding in the coming decades are overwhelmingly located in Asia, according to a comprehensive analysis by leading climate scientists, with port cities in India and China particularly vulnerable. — CNBC
An international team of research scientists from the US OECD and UK’s Tyndall Centre for Climate Change Research, among others, has found that Asian cities are now disproportionately susceptible to flooding owing to migration patterns and a host of other environmental dangers included in... View full entry
A stalled plan that would have added over 3 million square feet of office space to Downtown LA has gotten a second life thanks to a post-pandemic reimagining that seeks to address a statewide shortage of affordable housing. The updated Civic Center Master Development Plan (CCMDP) proposed by... View full entry
But where cities are succeeding, they’re finding that electrifying public transit can solve more than just climate problems. It can clean the air, reduce traffic jams and, ideally, make getting around town easier for ordinary people, which is why some politicians have staked their reputations on revamping transit. In many cases, city governments have been able to take climate action faster than their national governments. — The New York Times
The effort to reduce car traffic mirrors those taking shape in U.S. cities like New York and San Francisco. The cost of doing so has in a way become its own problem, as the infrastructure required to support expansive EV fleets in large metropolitan areas has proven to be a challenge for many of... View full entry
New York’s Metropolitan Transportation Authority, the largest U.S. mass-transit provider, is running on borrowed time, facing budget and revenue challenges as federal aid is set to tap out in 2025, State Comptroller Thomas DiNapoli, said in a report Tuesday. — Bloomberg
The announcement comes on the heels of a rough summer for the MTA, which is only now seeing its ridership climb past 50% of pre-pandemic levels as it weighs a controversial congestion pricing plan that would add $1 billion in revenue a year beginning in 2023. Interim boss Sarah Feinberg... View full entry
After a pair of marathon hearings, the Los Angeles City Planning Commission has amended and approved the draft DTLA 2040 plan, sending the proposed rezoning of the city's Downtown core on to the City Council for consideration next. — Urbanize LA
The area has been particularly beset by the pandemic, which is being seen more and more as a potential hub for housing in the city (and state) whose political landscape is increasingly shaped by affordability issues. Ten new land use designations, proposed under the DTLA 2040 plan for... View full entry
What we think of today as “Red Vienna” was, in many respects, a highly fragile, contingent, and audacious effort; it is little short of a minor miracle that so much decommodified housing was built at a time when reactionary Catholicism and fascist politics were ascendant on the national scale in Austria. — PLATFORM
Penned by Joseph Heathcott for Platform, the article takes a closer look into one of the boldest architectural experiments of the twentieth century that can still be seen in Vienna today. Between 1923 and 1934, the socialist-controlled municipal government constructed over four hundred Hofs... View full entry
A friendly fiberglass feline icon is being used as a catalyst for change in one London neighborhood, thanks to the incredible creativity and vision of one local firm. Image courtesy Ståle Eriksen/Tsuruta Architects Tsuruta Architects, recent winner of the RIBA London Small Project... View full entry
New York City is moving forward with its plan to install the country’s first-ever congestion pricing law that would tax vehicles entering Manhattan south of 60th Street in an effort to raise money and reduce traffic in the heart of a city that’s home to more than 8 million people. ... View full entry
