California will soon be home to the world’s two largest solar towers through an ambitious project known as The Palen Solar Electrical Generating System.
The announcement was made shortly after the US Department of Interior announced the country was to add 1.1 gigawatts to its clean energy capacity. California has also committed to have a third of their power must be derived from renewable sources by the year 2030.
— DesignBuild Source
The wizards at Electronic Arts seem to understand cities as market-driven algorithms. Input people, rules, and resources, and the results are stability, growth, and wealth...SimCity’s engineers have repeated the same mistake made by countless potentates, forgetting that cities are forged both by master builders and the people who hack their grand plans. — NY Magazine
When Electronic Arts released the newest version of SimCity Justin Davidson decided to take the plunge and explore what the game could teach about urban planning and running a city. The effort helped him to identify three guiding principles for creating a successful SimCity ; 1) Money... View full entry
Soundscrapers could soon turn urban noise pollution into usable energy to power cities.
An honourable mention-winning entry in the 2013 eVolo Skyscraper Competition, dubbed Soundscraper, looked into ways to convert the ambient noise in urban centres into a renewable energy form.
Noise pollution is currently a negative element of urban life but it could soon be valued and put to good use.
— DesignBuild Source
Klaus Wowereit, Berlin's mayor since 2001, has watched his city become one of world's coolest artistic meccas. But under his guidance, the city has devolved into a backward-looking architectural wasteland in which urban planning only favors the rich. — Der Spiegel
Complete breakdown of the City with all the usual suspects, 'Couldn't-Care-Less Architectural Vision' 'Forward into the Past' 'Historicism and Capitalism' 'Russification' 'A City Enthralled by Developers' and 'Hopeful signs of change...' View full entry
The April 3, 1988, magazine's cover illustration showed bubble-shaped cars traveling in "electro lanes" on a double-decked, high-rise-lined 1st Street in downtown's Civic Center area. The cover's headline was "L.A. 2013: Techno-Comforts and Urban Stresses — Fast Forward to One Day in the Life of a Future Family." — latimes.com
To read the 1988 Los Angeles Times Magazine's future prediction, DOCUMENT: 1988 'L.A. 2013' essay, click here. View full entry
and I watch everybody, every move. It's nerve-wracking, your blood pressure goes up ten points going through the door... - Jim Fahey (Assistant Chief in the Operation Control Center) — Charlie Rose
On March 1st, in celebration of it's centennial, Charlie Rose hosted a discussion on Grand Central Terminal. Gathered for the discussion were: Peter Stangl former president of Metro-North railroad; Kenneth Jackson of Columbia University; Sam Roberts of The New York Times and architect James... View full entry
Our friends at eVolo Magazine just announced the winners of the 2013 Skyscraper Competition. The annual award, established in 2006, recognizes design visions that rethink the conventions of vertical living and the use of technology, materials, programs, aesthetics, and spatial organizations. [...]
The winners were selected for their creativity, ingenuity, and understanding of dynamic and adaptive vertical communities.
— bustler.net
To commemorate the award, eVolo published a collector’s edition of its highly acclaimed book eVolo Skyscrapers. The book is a two-volume, 1300-page set with the best 300 projects received since 2006. Only 150 copies are available worldwide. View full entry
How does one apply 21st century green design to a city with sites and structures dating from the 17th to 19th centuries? That was exactly the challenge for teams in the Infill Philadelphia: Soak It Up design competition, and on March 7, 2013, nine finalist teams presented proposals to address the need for affordable green design within Philadelphia at the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University. — bustler.net
To also see the PowerPoint presentations of the three Soak It Up winners, head over to the Bustler article. View full entry
New York City leaders have announced the winning prototypes from the Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge which launched last December. [...] The competition had invited architects, students, urban designers, planners, technologists, and policy experts to create physical and virtual prototypes that imagine the future of NYC’s approximately 11,000 public pay telephones. — bustler.net
Related: NYC Reinvent Payphones Design Challenge Entry by FXFOWLE View full entry
The link between this New Urbanist development and a mall REIT is significant. It points to a danger raised by city planner Ann Satterthwaite: that post-mall neighborhoods will simply become outdoor malls, as controlled and sterile – and state subsidized – as indoor shopping centers. — The International
Robbie Moore reviews the current state of thought, among urban planners, academics and real estate analysts, studying the future structure of regional towns and suburbs – and the future of public space, after "the mall" has gone. Concepts/terminology include; "Dead Malls, Grayfields... View full entry
In 2012, filmmaker Leon Gerskovic chronicled the journey of 16 design/buildLAB students as they conceived and realized the Masonic Amphitheatre. The project, a charitable undertaking, consisted of the complete redevelopment of a post-industrial brownfield into a public park and performance space. Reality Check is their inspirational story. — design/buildLAB
"Reality Check" a 45-minute documentary about the conception and realization of the Masonic Amphitheatre by the students in Virginia Tech's design/buildLAB will premiere on March 28th at 7PM at VT's Hancock Auditorium. The screening will be followed by a question-and-answer session with filmmaker... View full entry
The City of New York invited students, urban planners, designers, technologists and creators to build physical and virtual prototypes imagining the payphone of the future. Judges selected the top six designs, now you get to decide which design will receive the Popular Choice Award. — NYC Gov Facebook
You can participate in the voting for the city's future of payphones on Facebook. View full entry
Four finalist entries have been unveiled in the Christchurch, New Zealand urban design competition, Breathe - The New Urban Village Project. The brief called for innovative medium-density housing development designs from collaborative groups containing a designer and a property developer. — bustler.net
UPDATE: Winner of the Christchurch “Breathe - The New Urban Village Project” competition View full entry
The Lagos state commissioner for housing, Adedeji Olatubosun Jeje, provided a different version of events.
“It’s a regeneration of a slum,” he said. “We gave enough notification. The government intends to develop 1,008 housing units. What we removed was just shanties.
— NYT
Adam Nossiter covers recent slum clearance efforts led by the governor of Lagos, Babatunde Fashola. As Lagos aims to become a premier business center, the city’s poor and homeless are becoming the government’s enemy. Last week, parts of Badia East (with perhaps... View full entry
In recent years developers putting up a forest of residential towers have been accused of turning the Brooklyn and Queens waterfront into Miami-on-the-East-River. With his new plan for the 11-acre Domino Sugar refinery in Williamsburg officially unveiled on Sunday, Jed Walentas has crafted something that might better be described as Dubai-on-the-East-River. — Crain's
Audacious new waterfront development designed by SHoP unveiled in Brooklyn. Transforms derelict Domino Sugar refinery into 24/7 community with designs the likes of which New York has never seen. View full entry
