Syria’s largest city was home to more than two million people before the war. Now most of its residents have left, and the city is divided between pro-government forces and rebels — NYT
Sergio Peçanha and Jeremy White reveal satellite image analysis by Unitar-Unosat, showing vast devastation in 4 cities across Syria from the civil war that started nearly four years ago. View full entry
How much more does it cost the public to build infrastructure and provide services for sprawling development compared to more compact neighborhoods? A lot more, according to this handy summary from the Canadian environmental think tank Sustainable Prosperity.
To create this graphic, the organization synthesized a study by the Halifax Regional Municipality [PDF] in Nova Scotia, and the research is worth a closer look.
— streetsblog.org
For [Hyperloop Transportation Technologies], the Quay Valley test track is a way to test its idea of smaller hyperloop rings that could eventually connect to a bigger loop that runs along I-5. For Quay Valley and Hays, the test track is a wildly futuristic attraction [...]
It follows a narrative pulled from the world of consumer technology, rather than conventional urban planning. Quay Valley isn't really a place with people yet ... it's a collection of technologies that residents will use.
— gizmodo.com
Transit oriented developments, or TODs, are mixed-use urban nodes designed with public transit as their core. The typology emerged from the idea that well-integrated and easy access to transit supports businesses and an active urban life, and that strategic transportation planning can help make... View full entry
It’s not uncommon to live in Los Angeles and still feel like a tourist. The author and seminal California-commentator Carey McWilliams remarked that it took seven years of living in Los Angeles before he no longer felt in exile, and the city has struggled with a history of atomization and... View full entry
Los Angeles is a place that is “conducive to making ideas and forms at the same time,” asserted Michael Maltzan during a talk yesterday at the A+D Architecture and Design Museum in Los Angeles. Part of the museum’s ongoing lecture series inCOLLABORATION, Maltzan’s talk focused on the... View full entry
Julia Ingalls published another edition of Archinect’s UpStarts: featuring Martha Read Architects. Referring to the design for a Marina authorities Building in Porto Montenegro, Olaf Design Ninja_ commented "it's like it's dancing, right Kristofer?...a little twist on the water kind of... View full entry
You can't see it now among the overgrown cart paths and weed-choked lagoons but a championship golf course will soon rise in City Park [...] City Park's long-awaited, oft-delayed $24.5 million golf complex finally broke ground and will one day be a boon for the local golf community. — NOLA.com
Jeff Duncan of The Times-Picayune gushes over the slated-development and its 7,300-yard Rees Jones-designed course. Boasting "a new clubhouse, driving range and practice facility," project-designers hope it will attract the attention of the Zurich Classic. But not everyone is happy about the... View full entry
MVRDV officially got the green light from the City of Paris for their plans to restructure the Vandamme Nord at Gaîté-Montparnasse in Paris' 14th arrondissement. Built in the early 1970s by French architect Pierre Dufau, the mixed-use complex is located on a triangular island bordered by Rue... View full entry
As part of the Vauxhall Nine Elms Battersea Opportunity Area Planning Framework, London's Borough of Wandsworth has its sights on constructing a new pedestrian bridge across the River Thames, between the two very distinct districts of Nine Elms and Pimlico. Quite evidently, the teams currently in... View full entry
The mere utterance of Vanport was known to send shivers down the spines of "well-bred" Portlanders. Not because of any ghost story, or any calamitous disaster—that would come later—but because of raw, unabashed racism. Built in 110 days in 1942, Vanport was always meant to be a temporary housing project, a superficial solution to Portland’s wartime housing shortage. [...] In a few short years, Vanport went from being thought of as a wartime example of American innovation to a crime-laden slum. — smithsonianmag.com
h/t CityLab View full entry
Spirit of Space, in collaboration with Trahan Architects, has created a short film featuring the award-winning design of the Louisiana State Sports Hall of Fame and Regional History Museum in Natchitoches, Louisiana. The museum was recently awarded the prestigious 2015 AIA Institute Honor Award... View full entry
I love the mall as much as I love the urban walking experience, museums and movie theaters. Today the stripmall is not just a part of my everyday life in Los Angeles [...] it is also a memory from my own suburban adolescence growing up in Illinois.
Jon Jerde, the LA architect both celebrated and loathed for his role in spreading shopping malls across US suburbia, died this month. Some might scoff at his life’s achievement. I am not one of them.
— theguardian.com
Previously: Jon Jerde, founder and chairman of The Jerde Partnership, has died View full entry
Times Square runs on spectacle. Bigger and brighter is always better. And though plenty of New Yorkers wear their criticism of Times Square as a badge of local honor [...] one of the most iconic public spaces in the world. In recent years, as stretches of Broadway formerly open to vehicular traffic have been repurposed as pedestrian plazas, opportunities to activate the “crossroads of the world” with events, performances, and public art installations have ballooned. — urbanomnibus.net
To stay in Chelsea and retain his lease, Mr. Kaplan [of Casey Kaplan Gallery] said, would have required paying twice the rent and taking on a much higher share of his building’s escalating tax rate. Instead, he elected to move to a new space in the Flower District, on 27th Street between Sixth and Seventh avenues. It will have double the square footage, he said, for half the cost [...] The Flower District doesn’t draw the same kinds of numbers but is already on the art-world radar. — wsj.com
Another question: why do neighborhoods keep getting branded "the New _______"? View full entry
A new study by Thomas Laidley, a sociology doctoral student at NYU [...], uses satellite images to develop a new and improved “Sprawl Index,” which he links to a wide range of outcome measures.
Perhaps the biggest surprise is that L.A. ranks as the least sprawling metro in the country, ahead of New York and San Francisco.
— citylab.com
Previously:Southern California not so sprawling after allThe U.S. Cities That Sprawled the Most (and Least) Between 2000 and 2010 View full entry