If San Franciscans like to describe their city as “49 square miles surrounded by reality,” the visionary ideas that were too grandiose for even San Franciscans to consider remain some of the most fantastic designs for any city in the world. Imagine a grand casino on Alcatraz, the city wrapped in freeways and a subdivision covering flattened hills north of the Golden Gate Bridge. — Architecture and the City Festival
San Francisco is a small yet fierce city; its 7x7 mile girth is home to a rich history of social activism, tech start-ups, foodies, artists, composting programs and absurdist housing rates. Given its compact and hilly terrain, any addition or subtraction would drastically impact the city’s... View full entry
[My Ideal City] is an instrument where all people in Bogota help to create their city by interacting in proposals made for their Downtown in crowd sourcing, thus impacting design through real time interaction and direct feedback. Once the different initiatives are defined, the process is completed by the population crowd funding its own initiatives. — Aedes
Winka Dubbeldam (Archi-Tectonics) and Rodrigo Nino (Prodigy Network) have developed Downtown Bogotá // My Ideal City, an online platform for the citizens of Bogotá to influence their local city-planning proposals. Recognizing that middle-class population growth across Latin America... View full entry
“We have beaten the odds and the obstructionists over and over again,” the mayor triumphantly declared in his State of the City address in March. He chose an appropriate venue: the Barclays Center, the new home of the Brooklyn Nets, which was a lightning rod for his all-out development policy. A vigorous opposition was beaten in the courts and the City Council in much the same way he often steamrolled opposition to his comprehensive rethinking of development. — nytimes.com
While Mayor Bloomberg has attracted media attention recently for his contentious opinions on "stop and frisk" policing and city-wide bans on soda, it's hard to argue with the New York Times' interactive infographic on Bloomberg's twelve-year mayoral run, highlighting his... View full entry
From the air, the hills of Silver Lake, peppered with bungalows, must look like a leafy game of Snakes and Ladders. Roads insinuate their way up and around the mountain slopes and connecting them all from the lowest to the highest are dozens of vertiginous stone staircases. These are the historic Los Angeles Stairs, hidden and unknown to most of the city's residents and visitors. — bbc.co.uk
In a post yesterday, we already featured one of the ten submissions which emerged as Stage One Nominees in the Rebuild by Design competition. Here's now also the complete list of the shortlisted design teams as recently announced by the Hurricane Sandy Rebuilding Task Force. — bustler.net
Office of Metropolitan Architecture with Royal Haskoning DHV; Balmori Associaties; R/GA; and HR&A Advisors. Bjarke Ingels Group with One Architecture; Starr Whitehouse; James Lima Planning & Development; Green Shield Ecology; Buro Happold; AEA Consulting; and Project Projects. Sasaki... View full entry
Officials from the U.S. Department of Transportation announced the start of the aptly named "Park Over the Highway" plan in St. Louis, Missouri earlier this month. The plan's objective is to connect the iconic Gateway Arch grounds and Downtown St. Louis by building a... View full entry
As a society slowly urbanizes over time, its psychology and culture change, too... If American culture and psychology grew more individualistic as the country urbanized, wouldn't that transformation be clear in the words from American books (and the concepts that lie behind them)? — The Atlantic Cities
Urban and rural environments impact personal psychology differently, according to research published by UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield in Psychological Science. While observational evidence may draw a clear line between current city- and country-mindsets, Greenfield's source material... View full entry
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE FAÇADE IMPROVEMENT TO INVIGORATE HALF BLOCK OF LONG BEACH Long Beach, CA, August 12, 2013 The City of Long Beach is revitalizing a half-block in need of an upgrade at the corner of Long Beach Blvd. and Anaheim Street across from the Blue Line. Gwynne Pugh Urban Studio... View full entry
Hyperloop is a new mode of transport that seeks to change this [transit] paradigm by being both fast and inexpensive for people and goods. Hyperloop is also unique in that it is an open design concept, similar to Linux. Feedback is desired from the community that can help advance the Hyperloop design and bring it from concept to reality. — Tesla Motors
CEO of Tesla Motors, Elon Musk, posted on the Tesla blog his proposal for an alternative to the California High-Speed Rail plan, the Hyperloop. The solar-powered transportation system is proposed to function somewhat like a pneumatic tube, where capsules of up to 28 passengers on air-bearings are... View full entry
The Brooklyn Tech Triangle could become the next Silicon Valley -- if the strategic plan to bolster the emerging tech hub comes to full fruition. The plan was developed over a six-month period by a multidisciplinary team led by WXY Architecture + Urban Design and the Brooklyn Tech Triangle... View full entry
Premier Dennis Napthine announced HASSEL + Herzog & de Meuron as the winners of the state government's competition for the redesign of the iconic station, but the plan for the redevelopment itself has been met with a degree of skepticism from some. On top of the $1.6m spent on the competition, Napthine estimates that the realisation of the plans would cost $1 to $1.5b and would take over a decade to be built. The state government has not yet committed to its completion. — au.artshub.com
Previously: HASSELL + Herzog & de Meuron Win Flinders Street Station Competition Big Names on Flinders Street Station Shortlist - Public Voting Now View full entry
It is, first and foremost, a visual and sound buffer placed between residents and the diesel trucks rumbling along the 103 Freeway to and from the Port of Long Beach.
But the wall, two fences stuffed with mulch generated from Long Beach tree trimmings, is also environmentally friendly; it will eventually be seeded with trees and shrubs that will leech vehicle exhaust from the air and transform the pollution into oxygen.
— presstelegram.com
"Thanks to Data Driven Detroit, there is now an interactive map of the city's demo activity, covering both planned demolitions and those that have taken place since 2010." — Curbed: Detroit
The schadenfreude of Detroit is now interactive! Come one and all to experience the most fascinating cartographic advancement since the invention of Google street view. It is not altogether the best month for Detroit with the recent claim of bankruptcy now making its way through the courts... View full entry
That’s a nice photo of Paris, isn’t it? Nope! That’s not Paris and no, it’s not Disney World or even the Las Vegas Strip; it’s a replica Paris in China. What makes this clone of Paris even more weird is that it’s a ghost town. Only about 2,000 people live there, which means that those giant skyscrapers, with 700+ units tend to only have around 30 people living in each of them. This city has become a place to take wedding photos for Chinese citizens who can’t afford to travel to the real Paris... — mydesignstories.com
The Beijing Cultural Heritage Protection Center (CHP) is a philanthropic body, dedicated to preserving local culture. It recently wrote to RIBA after the architectural body awarded Zaha Hadid Architects' Galaxy Soho complex a 2013 International Award for architectural excellence, chastising RIBA's choice of winner. — phaidon.com