A confluence of forces - a cleaner river, empty lots created by vanished factories, a housing boom, the proliferation of suburban developers, a willingness by local officials to embrace a new source of tax revenues, and a crystallizing Hudson Valley consciousness - have come together in recent... View full entry
With new cities popping up literally over night, and an estimated 200 million peasants leaving the countryside to live in urban areas in the past decade, China is exploring plans to abolish certain "legal distinctions between urban residents and peasants in 11 provinces." By allowing peasants to... View full entry
Metropolis cooks up twenty (some half-baked) ideas for a new New Orleans. I still want the twenty-five questions answered first. View full entry
In car-loving Pasadena, "[f]rustration with ever worsening traffic is stimulating new interest in denser, more urban patterns of development, a trend reflected by new mixed-use complexes near - or right on top of - transit stations." Find out more in The New York Times. View full entry
The CIA has been operating a "covert global prison system that has included sites in eight countries and was set up after the September 11, 2001, attacks." Reuters. This "hidden global internment network is a central element in the CIA's unconventional war on terrorism. It depends on the... View full entry
The SFGate is running a seven-part series on the Golden Gate Bridge, the world's No. 1 magnet for suicides. The iconic gateway has seen approximately 1,218 since it was built, lacing the fog-cloaked allure that has drawn people's destinies from all over the world for decades with a haunting urban... View full entry
Los Angeles resident urban farmers are vow to fight eviction from a 14-acre plot called the South Central Community Garden. TMN View full entry
Dubai: The Hippest City in the World: "Sixteen percent of all the building cranes in the world are in Dubai right now" foxnews Also, Transfer: nyc's chronicler of architecture. "Dubai embarks on a Massive Simulacra; simulating nothing but The Massiveness of its own self." read View full entry
The future of pollution lies in China, where airborne particulates and other chemicals "could more than quadruple within 15 years if the country does not curb its rapid growth in energy consumption and automobile use." And, yes, "China is already the world's second-biggest producer of greenhouse... View full entry
New York dims lights to aid birds. BBC View full entry
More scoopage on worldwide 'military urbanism,' the surveillatopia, squatter displacement, border cities, (un)natural disasters, the politics of territorial reconstruction and settlement, emergent land use, refugees, and an ambiance of war...[enter] MILITARY URBANism"Open Source War" Hits the... View full entry
Mike Davis takes on New Urbanism, the GOP, FEMA, and what he calls "ethnic cleansing" via New Orleans' impending gentrification. Something for the caffeinated, at ZNet. And see earlier. View full entry
At this month's post-Katrina "Mississippi Renewal Forum," architects, planners, and locals all discussed "various design concepts - including rezoning hard-hit areas to encourage pedestrian-friendly communities, building a trolley system between Biloxi and Gulfport and relocating a freight... View full entry
The colorful New Urbanist enclave of Prospect, CO, gets a write-up in the Denver Post: "Welcome to a little experiment in living, where houses are painted like carousel horses, the park provides biodegradable dog-poop pickup bags, and streets bear curious names... Quaint and quirky Prospect is... View full entry
Dubai via Archinect, Los Angeles Times and The New Yorker: or, Post-Oil Middle-East, Part III: Pruned View full entry
