The Windy City has begun installing what sounds and looks a whole lot like a Fitbit that can measure the vitals of a bustling metropolis.
Chicago, which partnered on the project with researchers at the University of Chicago and Argonne National Laboratory and several corporations, last week installed the first two of 500 modular sensor boxes. The devices will eventually allow the city and public to instantly get block-by-block data on air quality, noise levels, as well as [...] traffic.
— USA Today
The project, the first such initiative in the country, is called 'the Array of Things'. Affixed to light poles, the devices are equipped with sensors that monitor air and surface temperature, carbon monoxide levels, ambient sound intensity, and barometric pressure, as well as other input. A total... View full entry
Airbus appears to be serious about its "Vahana" project, aimed at creating an autonomous passenger drone network, and thinks testing can begin as early as 2017. [...]
Airbus is also working on a drone delivery service [...] and plans to start testing it at a Singapore university by mid-2017. The cargo-laden vehicles fly automated routes in "aerial corridors," then drop them off and send delivery notifications to customers.
— Engadget
Airbus engineers are dreaming up no small endeavor as laid out in the company's Future of Urban Mobility vision: "Imagine landing at a major international airport after a long flight in an A380. Instead of suffering through a 90-minute taxi ride in the megacity’s gridlocked traffic, you hop into... View full entry
This isn't your grandfather's urbanization: population figures in major U.S. cities, which on the whole are on the uptick after declining in the 1960s, are adding residents not to their already built urban cores but rather in the form greenfield sprawl, which makes use of farmland and lightly... View full entry
Mike Ford, a lead architect for the Universal Hip Hop Museum, has studied and written about the relationship between disastrous urban planning/architecture and the rise of hip hop. Essentially, Ford's argument is that the ghettoization of African Americans in the 20th century via ill-conceived... View full entry
"it performs the functions of a great city, in terms of size, cosmopolitan style, creative energy, international influence, distinctive way of life, and corporate personality [proves that] all the most admired theorists of the present century, from the Futurists and Le Corbusier to Jane Jacobs and Sibyl Moholy-Nagy, have been wrong.” — the guardian
"In the 1960s, British architectural critic Reyner Banham declared his love for the city that his fellow intellectuals hated. What Banham wrote about Los Angeles redefined how the world perceived it – but what would he think of LA today?"With a nod to Glen Small's Biomorphic Biosphere is... View full entry
Los Angeles, where homes sell for a median price of $475,000, has an overall Walk Score of 66.3. Each additional walkability point adds an average of $3,948, or a 0.83% bump, to the sale price. [...]
Pedestrian access adds the most proportional value to homes in cities such as Atlanta, where the overall score is 48.4 and revitalization efforts are starting to open up more community gathering hubs. A single-point upgrade to an Atlanta home’s Walk Score boosts the sale price 1.69% on average.
— latimes.com
More on the relationship between pedestrianism and the market:Jan Gehl: "Never ask what the city can do for your building, always ask what your building can do for the city."Locals welcome The 606, a.k.a. Chicago's "High Line", but anxiety for its future remainsStockholm's Vision Zero offers... View full entry
Los Angeles wants to rethink its river. [...] And LA isn’t the only metropolis looking to reclaim its once-mocked waterway. Cities around the world are realizing that water can be a cultural and recreational asset, not something to hide or pillage, and it seems no waterway will be wasted for long. — wired.com
Related stories in the Archinect news:Gruen Associates, Mia Lehrer, Oyler Wu appointed to design L.A. River Greenway in San Fernando ValleyWhat's happening with Frank Gehry's masterplan for the LA River?A plan to clean up the River Spree around Museum Island in Berlin View full entry
The true impact of air pollution has been obscured by the failure to consider people’s exposure as they move around during the day...
The research cites air pollution as “the world’s single largest environment and human health threat” but laments that the problem has not previously been “considered spatially and temporally”, with most studies basing a person’s pollution exposure on where they live.
— the Guardian
Interested in urban initiatives to combat air pollution? Follow these links:Barcelona's bold new plan to get cars off the roadSmog-choked Beijing plans "ventilation corridors" to provide much-needed fresh airNew Delhi mandates odd-even car rationing to fight world's worst air... View full entry
Whether or not New Yorkers are paying attention, their digital connectivity can sometimes rely on the finer points of a mess of paint on the street.
Some of the markings are orange, others yellow or red. Arrows, lines and letters combine to create a cryptic language of symbols and codes.
“It’s kind of scrawly and intense,” said the artist and writer Ingrid Burrington. “Living in New York, you’re trained not to look down, so it’s funny how rich and dense these markings can get..."
— Wall Street Journal
Ingrid Burrington is the author of a new handbook to the physical infrastructure of the internet in New York, Networks of New York: An Illustrated Field Guide to Urban Internet Infrastructure.For related content, follow these links:The Whistleblower Architects: surveillance, infrastructure... View full entry
Up to 12 million people are “urbanising” every year in India, a rate surpassed only by China. It means the country will need a sustained building spree that would see more than 75 million people employed in construction by 2022.
As it races to build 110 million extra homes needed, plus necessary transport infrastructure, by 2025 the size of India’s construction market would reach $1 trillion, the third largest in the world, according to KPMG.
— globalconstructionreview.com
Related on Archinect:Poverty, corruption and crime: how India's 'gully rap' tells story of real lifeIndia on the brink: what's in store for the country's architectural futureWorld's first Slum Museum is coming to MumbaiNew Delhi mandates odd-even car rationing to fight world's worst air pollution View full entry
Since August of 2015, Germany has become home to more than 1.1 million refugees, migrants, and asylum seekers. This influx has German architects and urban planners asking the question: “Do we have a refugee crisis on our hands? Or a housing crisis combined with huge challenges to the ability of cities, job markets, and schools to integrate the newcomers?” — the Atlantic
[Doug Saunders] cautions that arrival cities are “where the new creative and commercial class will be born, or where the next wave of tension and violence will erupt.” The difference, he adds “depends on how we approach these districts both organizationally and politically, and, crucially... View full entry
Radicalism in Architecture is not a simple choice and it’s not dominated by the lack of reason, an important idea now that Architecture has become, due to the new technologies and trending fashions, easily reproducible. — AA.LABAUT ARCHITECTS
Adrian Labaut Hernandez states, "Architecture does not need to say anything, it doesn’t need to talk, doesn’t need to express anything specific, and it doesn’t need, overall, to be needlessly “Radical”. Architecture always has a meaning when it is created based on strong conceptual... View full entry
The term "zoning" recently celebrated its 100-year anniversary in the U.S.'s city planning parlance, and many of our News postings recently have had to do with its fraught, wonky legacy. From racial segregation to housing discrimination to Pokémon Go trespassers, we dip into the debate around... View full entry
The long-awaited people-moving system at Los Angeles International Airport is actually on its way and it's enough to make any Angeleño misty-eyed. LAX, the second busiest airport in the US, is desperately lacking an adequate public transit connection. Currently, visitors must rely on shuttles... View full entry
Gasoline-powered cars may soon be a thing of the past. But the Netherlands wants to get there quicker.
The Dutch government is debating the possibility of banning new gas and diesel cars from 2025. The initial proposal, which was brought forward by the Labor Party, called for an outright ban of all petrol and diesel cars, but was eventually modified so the ban only affected the sale of new petrol and diesel cars. Traditional cars already in use will still run on the streets.
— Quartz
The proposal has since passed in the lower house of the Netherlands’ parliament. It now needs to pass through the Dutch senate.In related news:Faraday Future holds groundbreaking ceremony for $1B Nevada factoryThe "Impossible" Car – Faraday Future's lead designer, Richard... View full entry
