The L.A.-Waze partnership is, at least in theory, an initial step toward allowing the city’s planners and engineers to regain a healthier role in mediating the kinds of longstanding cross-town conflicts that Waze has renewed and amplified. Whether the deal will help to resolve fundamental long-term issues related to the city’s growth and inadequate infrastructure is another matter. — newyorker.com
Turner Impact Multifamily Fund will target opportunities to acquire housing for workers making up to 80 percent of the area’s median income. The goal is to provide housing for those who earn too much to qualify for subsidized housing, but too little to afford a home or luxury apartment near their workplace [...]
“Workforce housing is an overlooked segment of the real estate market with a significant mismatch in supply and demand that we believe offers a compelling investment opportunity”
— labusinessjournal.com
...The Collectivity Project is about more than just play. Eliasson conceived of the project as a way to bring people together and allow them to create a utopian society, if only in miniature form. The idea, which is up until September 30, is at home at the 10th Avenue and West 30th Street section of the High Line, where the sounds of construction buzz in the background. — Art Net
The project, which has previously had iterations in Norway and Albania, comprises a station set up on the High Line with piles of white lego pieces. The public is invited to collaborate on creating a miniature city. To kick off the fun, the High Line invited ten of the city's best-known firms –... View full entry
As we move through our cities each day, we make dozens of small decisions, based on dozens of small reasons. [...]
The choices we make while navigating cities are influenced by subconscious factors that planners, architects and designers are beginning to mine and leverage. Some are wielding that insider knowledge to create places that will play mind tricks — to get us to make healthier decisions.
— NextCity
The bicycle makes sense in cities. With rising urbanization, our cities need modern mobility solutions, and moving around on two wheels proves time and again that it can offer results [...]
With each edition, the Copenhagenize Design Company’s Index of the most bike-friendly cities in the world evolves...This year, we considered cities with a regional population over 600,000 (with a few exceptions because of their political and regional importance, and to keep things interesting).
— Wired Magazine
Copenhagenize is a design consultancy based in Copenhagen, Zurich, Brussels and Amsterdam that advises cities on how to become more bike-friendly, often through implementing strategies developed in the Danish capital (which consistently tops the list). These strategies are both infrastructural... View full entry
Google already had building rights for a fifth site overlooking Charleston Park, just east of the current Googleplex [...]
A 2007 lease agreement allows Google to build up to 595,000 square feet of office and commercial space there. [...]
The new plans feature the same futuristic designs by European architects Bjarke Ingels and Thomas Heatherwick that were part of the larger plan debated by the city this year.
— mercurynews.com
For some background on the Googleplex expansion plans: Google loses to LinkedIn in Silicon Valley HQ pitchCritical response to Googleplex expansion focuses on suburban development, not architectureGoogle Unveils BIG + Heatherwick Studios Collaboration for New Campus Master Plan View full entry
In other words, the landscapes and cityscapes hung up on the wall of the mayor speak to you. City planners and administrators ought to listen to their cities. — BBC News
Peter Day spoke with Medellin's mayor, Anibal Gaviria, about how his city has changed since the Escobar years. Specifically, about the importance of "social urbanisation" and the role of urban infrastructure projects. View full entry
UAE-based X-Architects has won a competition to design a new masterplan for Makkah, Saudi Arabia - the holiest city in the world for Muslims. [...]
“We proposed a complex network of pedestrian routes on different levels to enhance the movement during the “Nafrah” [...]
“The surrounding roads have either been bridged or tunneled so as to strengthen the pedestrian tissue. This will solve the current situation of the constant crash between people and vehicles.”
— constructionweekonline.com
All images via X-Architects' website. Learn more about the proposal here.In case you were looking for royal floors and helipads, you may get lucky over here: World's largest hotel under construction in Mecca — and it's worse than you thought. View full entry
At the end of May, Metro will debut its FORWARD plan: a fully reconfigured bus network that emphasizes more frequency, better night and weekend service, direct lines through high-ridership corridors, and grid-style access to many parts of the city. The top five routes will now all get 15-minute peak service... Rather than lobby for more taxpayer funding or jack up fares, Metro looked for more efficient ways to use its existing resources. — CityLab
Understanding the nuances of city stories, and tracing those tensions, requires immersion and patience. Whether we are writing about police work, protests, squatting, free parties, banking or parkour, the best socially engaged journalism – like the best university research – is rooted in participation, spiked with empathy, and resists being reduced to spectacle fodder.
As any war correspondent will tell you, immersion can also be dangerous...
— the Guardian
Bradley Garrett recounts his own infiltration into urbex (urban exploration) communities, and provides a list of the "five most influential 'gonzo' ethnographies." If you aren't familiar with Garrett's work, be sure to check it out. In particular, Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City is a... View full entry
A new law recently passed in France mandates that all new buildings that are built in commercial zones in France must be partially covered in either plants or solar panels.
Green roofs, as they are called, have an isolating effect which helps to reduce the amount of energy needed to heat a building during the winter or cool it in the summer. They are capable of retaining rainwater and reducing problems with runoff, and also offer birds a place to call home in the urban jungle.
— CS Globe
The effort to save Norms comes at a time when historic preservationists say postwar buildings — especially on a smaller scale — face an increased threat from development pressure. — L.A. Times
Anyone who has ever grabbed a post-Largo meal or 2 a.m. existential coffee at Los Angeles restaurant Norms will be delighted to hear that The Los Angeles City Council has deemed the Googie-style building a cultural and historic landmark. Although this demarcation doesn't guarantee that it will... View full entry
[Barclay's] plan, to fabricate a “master-planned community” for nearly 100,000 people on what is today a field of sand dunes, is called Santolina. If fully populated, the development would be about the size of New Mexico’s current second-largest city, Las Cruces, and bigger than Santa Fe [...]
Columbia University’s Earth Institute points to 2050 as a time when the drought will begin to worsen dramatically, right around when Santolina planners predict the development could approach full capacity
— theguardian.com
Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition! View full entry
It's insane. Each city in the North is too small to fight against that. We can only drag some of that investment northwards if we work together — BBC News - Magazine
In England efforts have begun to corral the North's population of 15 million into a collective force that could begin to rival that of London and the South East. A minister for the Northern Powerhouse has been appointed and the initial/low hanging fruit would include, devolution of some fiscal... View full entry
Still, when Mayor Bill de Blasio today unveiled his plan for New York’s troubled housing authority, NYCHA, dismantling these aging towers was not a piece of it. The plan calls for charging more for parking, redeploying staff to other agencies to save costs and leasing land within the housing complexes to private developers to save money. [...]
So why does New York City still have so many high-rise housing projects?
— theatlantic.com
