What will be the impact of the COVID-19 crisis on the built environment? Of course, anything can happen and we should be skeptical of anyone offering predictions for what even tomorrow might bring, but that has not stopped architectural thinkers from positing the world as it might come to... View full entry
Eleven years ago, Bill Moyers brought me on his show and presented me as the last socialist in America. Now there are millions of young people who prefer socialism to capitalism.” -Mike Davis — New Yorker
Dana Goodyear of New Yorker had a conversation with Mike Davis on the occasion of his upcoming new book "Set the Night on Fire: L.A. in the Sixties." The article, particularly summing up Davis' own "being there" through the social and political upheavals of Southern California... View full entry
As we're all becoming more fluent in connecting with others online during this time of quarantine, online events offer a fantastic opportunity to connect with others, while continuing to learn, network and stay inspired. The only problem is that there hasn't been a clear way to track and vet... View full entry
With construction deemed essential during the citywide "Safer at Home," order, work has continued at many building sites across Los Angeles - though with new regulations to account for the outbreak of coronavirus...
Faced with a deluge of complaints about noise and vibration from Angelenos sheltering in place, 5th District Councilmember Paul Koretz has proposed temporary limits on construction hours during the COVID-19 emergency.
— Urbanize Los Angeles
According to Urbanize LA, Councilmember Koretz proposed a motion to shift construction hours in residential and multi-family residential zones from 7 am to 9 pm on Monday through Friday to 9 am to 9 pm during the week, from 8 am to 6 pm on Saturdays, and on holidays to 9 am to 6 pm, giving... View full entry
After much listening, discussion, and careful consideration, we have made the difficult decision not to build Black Rock City in 2020. Given the painful reality of COVID-19, one of the greatest global challenges of our lifetimes, we believe this is the right thing to do. — Burning Man Journal
Burning Man is the latest physical event casualty resulting from the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic. The event organizers announced that they will be canceling the physical build-out of Black Rock City this year, for the safety of the participants and community, and will be building the city virtually... View full entry
This post is brought to you by the Van Alen Institute In light of the widespread disruption caused by the COVID-19 crisis, we have extended the submission deadline for Reimagining Brooklyn Bridge by two weeks. The new deadline is Sunday, April 19 by 11:59 pm ET. There is no requirement... View full entry
John LaPlante, a longtime city employee who served as the first commissioner of the Chicago Department of Transportation, died Saturday at 80 after testing positive for the novel coronavirus less than two weeks earlier.
The son of a Cook County judge and the head librarian for the Chicago Public Schools, Mr. LaPlante was a “municipally minded” Roseland native who cared deeply about his city and its government, according to his daughter Leslie.
— Chicago Sun-Times
LaPlante worked for the City of Chicago for over 30 years, starting as an intern in the 1960s for what was then the city’s department of public works. He served as chief traffic engineer in the 1980s and as the city’s Transportation Commissioner in 1992. John LaPlante. Image courtesy of... View full entry
Ridership declines across all of the MTA’s trains and buses is becoming “more severe” by the day, the agency’s latest statistics revealed, causing $87 million in weekly revenue losses and raising the specter of more debt and drastic cuts to much-needed long-term repairs. — Streetsblog NYC
Already dealing with financial pressure, New York's Metropolitan Transportation Authority is being hit especially hard by the coronavirus pandemic, as new ridership data in the latest Annual Disclosure Statement reveals. "Recent substantial declines in ridership and traffic in response to the... View full entry
The General Manager of the Los Angeles Housing and Community Investment Department (HCIDLA), Rushmore Cervantes, has announced plans to step down from his position at the end of the month. Cervantes has led the department for over a decade and has presided over a turbulent era in the city... View full entry
Architects are no longer builders but healers. They have to get off their computers and out of their cars to heal the social, physical and environmental aspects of our landscape. What architects build is not a finished product but a part of a city’s changing eco-system. — WOODBURY UNIVERSITY
James Rojas as an urbanist with close ties to his home, from its community values, feel, art to neighborhood stories and legends. All materializing in his inimitable urban visioning. His brand of Latino Urbanism via his beloved East LA neighborhood are series of performances, installations... View full entry
Boston continues to hold the dubious distinction of having the worst traffic in the United States, fending off the likes of Los Angeles, New York and Chicago to top traffic data analyst INRIX’s list of congested cities for the second year in a row. [...]
Chicago, Philadelphia, New York and Washington, D.C., round out the worst five U.S. cities for congestion. Wichita, Kansas, tops the study for least congestion.
— Boston Herald
The latest annual Global Traffic Scorecard published by transportation analytics company INRIX calculated that the average Boston commuter lost 149 hours — that's more than six days — per year due to traffic congestion, amounting to $2,205 per driver in time lost. Boston ranked as the... View full entry
The Indonesian government is involving three international consulting firms in developing the masterplan of the country’s new capital city, which is to be located in East Kalimantan.
[...] American engineering company AECOM, consulting firm McKinsey & Company and Japanese architectural and engineering firm Nikken Sekkei would design the city, which is to feature the latest technology and be environmentally friendly at the same time.
— The Jakarta Post
In August 2019, Indonesian President Joko Widodo had announced the selection of a 450,000-acre site in East Kalimantan province on Borneo Island where the nation's new capital would be relocated to. Jakarta, the current capital on Java Island, is traffic-choked, increasingly prone to floods, and... View full entry
The architecture world has been abuzz lately over the recent public opening of Countryside, The Future, the new exhibition taking place at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City by the Office of Metropolitan Architecture (OMA). Let's take a look at some of the... View full entry
Michael Hertz, whose design firm produced one of the most consulted maps in human history, the curvy-lined chart that New York City subway riders peer at over one another’s shoulders to figure out which stop they want, died on Feb. 18 in East Meadow, N.Y. He was 87. — The New York Times
In an effort to boost ridership, the Metropolitan Transportation Authority, North America's largest public transportation network, formed a committee under the leadership of John Tauranac in the mid-1970s to create a new, more appealing map for the New York City subway system and replace the... View full entry
Welcome to “Countryside, the Future”: This is what you might get if you asked a celebrated European philosopher-architect to reinvent the Iowa State Fair. No mess, no smells, just acres of color printouts, cryptic homilies about nature, and a couple of pesticide-spraying drones. Did you know that agriculture is increasingly computerized? — New York Magazine
New York Magazine's architecture critic, Justin Davidson, takes a no-holds-barred look at the Countryside, The Future exhibition at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York City. The exhibition, developed by a research and exhibition team led by OMA/AMO and Rem... View full entry
