Could Los Angeles grow to become a “real city” like New York or London? Last year, LA gained at least 50,000 people, according to a recent report from the California Department of Finance, pushing the population to more than 4 million people for the first time in the city’s history. — Vice

In May 2015, the citizen platform Barcelona en Comú (Barcelona in Common) catapulted Ada Colau into power as the city’s first female mayor. Ten months earlier, the group didn’t even exist.

With no money and little experience, just how did they wrest the city from the entrenched political caste that had been running it for the past 40 years? Not surprisingly, Barcelona en Comú has since been inundated with requests for an answer... — the Guardian

If Mr. Ratti’s projections are correct, and self-driving cars can radically reduce traffic without cannibalizing existing mass transit—the hypotheticals pile up—it is possible that self-driving cars will make many cities livable in a way they aren’t now. Imagine if every U.S. city had a hybrid public-private mass-transit system on par with those in New York City or Washington, D.C., comprised entirely of self-driving vehicles. — wsj.com

Brookfield is to build a new 700,000 ft2, 37-storey tower in the City of London - and work could begin as early as 2018.

Designed by architect Make the plans for the proposed office tower at 1 Leadenhall feature a 9,600 ft2 public terrace with winter garden overlooking the historic Leadenhall Market.

The tower will provide 538,000 ft2 of office space plus 51,500 ft2 of retail space on the first three floors. — building.co.uk

River LA is less interested in giving a clear picture of what Gehry’s plan eventually may include than in tamping down charges that it has been born of secrecy — and worries that it may operate as a Trojan horse, a kind of high-design architectural cover, for rampant real-estate speculation [...]

A central goal of this master plan... will be to strike an effective balance between maintaining flood-control measures while opening up the river to new kinds of public access.

Elevators are [the] transportation breakthrough that made steel frame construction genuinely useful... tall apartment buildings make it possible for there to be plenty of housing for everyone even where land is scarce.

If elevators were more widely used, they could unleash not just a boom of new construction in America's most expensive areas but an important secondary boom of higher wages for workers at all skill levels. — vox.com

When is a garden bridge not a garden bridge? When it’s a bridge garden, according to Allies and Morrison, the Southwark-based architects who have come up with a cheap and cheerful alternative to the eye-wateringly expensive, contractually dubious proposal by Thomas Heatherwick and Joanna Lumley for a floating forest across the Thames. — theguardian.com

The diversity of landscapes is fascinating. The northern edge is a meadow with wild grass, nut trees, poplars and elms, but venture deeper into the park, towards the three interconnected lakes at its heart, and the vegetation becomes denser and more characteristic of wetlands: various types of willow, Johnson grass and water lilies. — the guardian

Although the game was simulating an environment from 1989, urban planners these days still run into problems trying to get officials to think about their city in the long run. Climate change and sea level rise is a very crystalline example of the way city officials get in their own way and set themselves up for larger obstacles later on [...]

Playing SimCity 2000 nowadays is a strange but wonderful way to realize what defines a city is not what it currently is, but what it could be. — inverse.com

As rents spiral in London, one company is proposing a solution. The Collective is a new block of apartments that acts like a giant shared house: small private bedrooms with communal laundry, kitchens, spa, cinema and workspaces … and some covert matchmaking by the managers. Our series on the global revolution in urban living goes inside the modern-day boarding house — theguardian.com

Where should you travel if you want killer views of the stars unblemished by artificial light?Certainly not the U.S. or Europe, where nearly 100 percent of the population endures some form of light pollution...Italy’s [ISTIL], NOAA, the National Park Service, and elsewhere built one of the most comprehensive atlases of global light pollution to date. They hope their work will set a benchmark for future generations struggling with day blending into night. — CityLab

Smithfield market will be the museum’s new home, but which architectural vision should shape its future: the eye-catching one, the ghostly one, the corporate one … or the one that rings alarm bells?

Little detail has been revealed about the shortlisted schemes, which will go on public exhibition from 10 June to 5 August with a winner chosen by an expert panel later this summer. — theguardian.com

The school collapsed on Tuesday after a heavy rainfall that took over most part of the Lagos including Makoko, a slum and highly populated part of the state [...]

“So as far as that floating school is concerned, it was erected without the permission of the state government.

“The simple answer to the floating school is that it is an illegal structure and it shouldn’t be there.” — naij.com

Juxtaposed by modern architecture on the western side of the street, the circa 1842 working class terrace facades on the eastern side have been retained and restored in line with strict heritage conditions.

“Kensington Street’s integration with the Central Park precinct was of great consideration. We wanted to celebrate its difference in vernacular to the rest of the contemporary precinct but wanted to integrate it with quality landscaping and other infrastructure. — Hospitality Magazine

Last month, the journal Science published a special issue examining the challenges and opportunities of an urbanizing world. Titled “Urban Planet” and featuring an image of clouds wafting across skyscrapers in Dubai, the issue opened with an eye-catching statistic: “More than half of the world’s people now live in cities.”

Of course, that number would be even more impressive if it were actually true. — UNDark