It is one of the most drastic displays of a concerted government effort to end the dominance of rural life, which for millenniums has been the keystone of Chinese society and politics....All told, 250 million more Chinese may live in cities in the next dozen years. The rush to urbanize comes despite concerns that many rural residents cannot find jobs in the new urban areas or are simply unwilling to leave behind a way of life that many cherish. — New York Times

What if the rubbish was refabricated to become real urban spaces or buildings? If it is plausible to adapt current machinery, how much material is available? At first sight, any sanitary landfill may be viewed as an ample supply of building materials. Heavy industrial technologies crush cars or to automatically sort out garbage are readily available. 3-D printing has exhausting capabilities if adjusted to larger scales. — bbc.com

The director of the Madrid heritage department, Jaime Ignacio Muñoz of the Popular Party, explained to EL PAÍS that Apple had been instructed to change the flooring of the basement so as to “symbolically” trace the outline of these newly discovered walls.

The walls themselves will then be covered up again so the floor of the new store can be placed on top. The actual original foundations of the hospital will not be visible. — elpais.com

SCAPE and Rogers Marvel will shape one of the most dynamic destinations on the Mississippi River, the Minneapolis Parks Foundation and Minneapolis Park & Recreation Board announced today. The team was selected to create a schematic design for Water Works, a Minneapolis Park Board-owned riverfront district including the former Fuji Ya restaurant site and centered on St. Anthony Falls, the only true waterfall on the Mississippi River – “America’s fourth coast.” — mplsparksfoundation.org

Behind that hyperrational menu of engineering options is a technocrat’s love letter to the maritime city. The charts and recommendations amount to a statement of faith that the waterfront is the city’s future as well as its past...But even if he did not have his legacy on the line, Bloomberg grasps an essential truth: This is a city built not just near the water, but over, under, and in it. — NY Magazine

Pan and several colleagues argue that the underlying force that drives super-linear productivity in cities is the density with which we're able to form social ties. The larger your city, in other words, the more people you’re likely to come into contact with.

"If you think about productivity, it’s all about ideas, information flows, how easily you can access ideas and opportunities," Pan says. "We believe that the interaction mechanism is what drives the productivity of the city." — theatlanticcities.com

Writes New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman: "Las Vegans I spoke with, young and old, complained about not having 'enough authentic places,' which are 'locally owned, one of a kind, less corporate,' as Tyler Jones, a 35-year-old architect-developer of luxury homes and third-generation Las Vegan, put it to me. They wanted a Las Vegas for Las Vegans." — New York Times

Can Atalay, a lawyer for the Chamber of Architects which brought the lawsuit, said the administrative court ruled in early June at the height of the unrest that the plan violated preservation rules and unacceptably changed the square's identity. It was not clear why it had only now been released. — Reuters

Zhang, a Chinese real estate developer, is the seventh richest self-made women in the world, worth $3.6 billion, according to Forbes. She's worth $800 million more than Oprah Winfrey, the world's best known self-made female billionaire.

Not only does Zhang's rags-to-riches story mirror that of China itself, but it is Zhang who has shaped much of the country's modern urban landscape, with the logo of her company SOHO China, on the side of buildings wherever you turn in Beijing. — cnn.com

"We hoped the canals would simply make it easier to move around the city, for civilians and police but the reality is Water Level is one giant port of entry for whoever has the cash."
- Yoko Aramaki, City Planner — Flickr

The solution, or so the city’s traffic planners hope, is to encourage people to cycle for longer distances by creating the cycling equivalent of freeways, which will provide fast, direct routes of up to 22 kilometers into the center. A total of 28 highways are planned, providing 495 kilometers of dedicated bike tracks... Nine routes are under construction and should be completed by 2015 at a cost of 208 million krone, or $36 million, divided equally between central and local government. — nytimes.com

Smart city infrastructure can augment the ability of managers, planners, designers and engineers to define and implement a fundamentally better next generation of buildings, cities, regions — right? Maybe. For that to be a serious proposition, it’s going to have to be normal for planners and designers not only to collaborate productively with engineers, but to do so with the full and competent participation of the only people they mistrust more than each other ... customers. — Places Journal

"The protests in Istanbul indicated one simple thing for architects. We need new definitions for architecture in situations when architecture is removed from architects." -Yelta Köm, the organization founder — #occupygeziarchitecture

"We mustn't let ourselves be imprisoned by a 'heritage vision' of the city," Ms Hidalgo told the news magazine L'Express. "We are working towards a "genero-city" which is to say a city that is open, convivial and in vibration." — BBC News