The question to be addressed by confronting these different types of ‘enclaves’, is of the role of architect and the scarce influence of the architectural practice to affect the social realm. The intangible architectures that emerge from these urban ecologies create a wider system; an archipelago of enclaves can be found from one place to another, from one epoch to the next one — dpr-barcelona

The same is happening in other UK cities, which have decided that signal junctions are better for traffic flow and safer for cyclists. [...]

After a century of resistance, US cities are finally learning to love the roundabout – the Bronx just got its first – believing them to be safer and better for traffic flow. [...]

“Traffic lights are so fascist and dictatorial, telling you when to stop and go,” says Beresford. “Roundabouts are quintessentially English and democratic in their etiquette.” — theguardian.com

Cities are everywhere. Billions of us live in them, and many of us think we could do a better job than the planners. But for the past 26 years dating back to the original SimCity, we've mostly been proving that idea false. [...]

And now, here, I'm going to take you on a whirlwind tour through the history of the city-building genre—from its antecedents to the hot new thing. — arstechnica.com

With Frick and her book [Remaking the San Francisco-Oakland Bay Bridge] as guide, CityLab tracked bridge expenses over time to get some sense of how the project that Herbert Hoover once called “the greatest bridge yet constructed in the world” became yet another example of a major public works project in which the cost ended outrageously higher than it began—and some ideas for what to do about it. — CityLab

This is important for Africa, where despite high urbanisation rates the development focus has been primarily rural. Consider Ghana. The country’s urban population has grown from four million in 1984 to more than 14 million today. Fifty one percent of Ghanaians now live in cities. While urbanisation rates vary across Africa, Ghana reflects an overall global trend towards a predominantly urban future.

Ghana demonstrates how cities can be highly productive in Africa. — qz.com

Late in the day on Friday [Governor Jerry Brown] signed Assembly Bill 744, which allows affordable housing developers to build less parking than many local zoning regulations currently permit.

The bill is a victory for affordable housing advocates, who have been saying for a number of years that the burden of building more parking than tenants use has made affordable housing too expensive to build. — cal.streetsblog.org

A proposal under consideration here called the Flussbad (“river pool”) would clean up a filthy canal, part of the River Spree, that flows around the tourist-mobbed Museum Island. The plan would add new wetlands and some place the public can literally dive into.

Despite detractors who picture Berlin’s cultural center being upstaged by the equivalent of one long, riotous water-filled bouncy castle, the idea, which has been around for a while, is gaining momentum. — NY Times

The future of urban roads may be one where motorists, pedestrians and cyclists act as one. Spaces where these usually segregated members of the population live -- or move -- by the same rules. Most importantly, these rules would be social, not formal, to befit the increasingly popular trend of 'shared space'.

"Shared space breaks the principle of segregation," says Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a street designer who [...] brought these spaces to the U.K., which now hosts more than any other country. — cnn.com

Milton Keynes is currently the host city for a set of driverless car trials funded indirectly by the U.K. government — the most ambitious testing yet staged in the world.

If all goes as planned, by 2018, Milton Keynes’ downtown will be served by an on-demand, publicly run system of 30 to 40 driverless two-seater pod cars, which will allow residents to travel between any two points in the city’s downtown without navigating or reacting to obstacles themselves. — nextcity.org

What's interesting about these 27 categories that Wheeler has defined, covering the full range of development patterns in two dozen metropolitan regions he has studied worldwide, is that most of them are new. [..]

"We have had an explosion of different types of built landscapes in the last century," says Wheeler, who is working on a book about these patterns. — washingtonpost.com

Developer Greenland Group has submitted plans for a 67-storey tower that would provide 869 new homes on West India Quay. If approved, the building will be western Europe’s tallest residential building at 241m. — The Wharf

A micro apartment is typically less than 350 square feet, but the term “micro” is getting an expansion (figuratively and literally) in Long Island City. A new rental complex will offer 57 two- and three-bedroom units ranging from 490 to 735 square feet, according to the Wall Street Journal. The project at 37-10 Crescent Street is being developed by Ranger Properties. — 6sqft.com

Planners have panned a rocket-shaped tower proposed for a site in Southwark by Russian practice Studio 44, saying it would be a ‘wilfully insensitive insertion on the skyline’ — Architects Journal UK