Quilian Riano, currently a senior strategic design initiatives specialist for New York City’s Department of Design and Construction, Office of the Chief Architect, has been selected as the new associate director of the Cleveland Urban Design Collaborative (CUDC) at Kent State University in... View full entry
The head of the Vatican’s extensive gardens has announced an initiative, already underway, to totally eliminate the use of chemical pesticides and fertilizers. — Aleteia
The use of chemical substances at the 37-acre Vatican Gardens has fallen by 96-percent since an effort to reduce the use of these toxic substances was started back in 2017. "Under the initiative, the Vatican Gardens has adopted the use of organic products to eliminate destructive insects... View full entry
Research has shown that areas around fast-food restaurants are especially dangerous for pedestrians because drive-throughs require more driveways, which introduce potential points of conflict. Plus, drivers tend to be distracted just before they have ordered their food — and in the moments when they start driving away with it.
A Florida study found that each fast-food restaurant in a low-income block added an average of 0.69 pedestrian crashes every four years.
— Streetsblog
Streetsblog reports that as part of an ambitious comprehensive plan update, Minneapolis has outlawed the creation of new drive-through facilities within the municipality. The forward-looking Minneapolis 2040 plan will also do away with parking requirements and single-family zoning... View full entry
Starting on Monday, cars will be all but banned from one of Manhattan’s main thoroughfares.
The busiest stretch of 14th Street—a major crosstown route for 21,000 vehicles a day that links the East and West Sides—will mostly be off-limits to cars. Drivers will be allowed onto the street for just a block or two to make deliveries and pick up and drop off passengers. Then they will have to turn off.
— The New York Times
Closing a stretch of 14th Street in Manhattan to most car traffic is but the latest step New York City officials has taken in recent years to wrest precious urban space from automobiles. According to The New York Times, since 2008, the City of New York has installed 79 car-free... View full entry
The series served as an introduction to Universal Design, described the social model versus the medical model of Disability, and shared the specific needs and design strategies to accommodate both the Deaf/HoH as well as the Autistic and Neurodivergent communities. This series initiated a conversation reaching across Disabled communities, and demonstrates that while different Disabled communities’ needs may be different, the design solutions are often incredibly similar. — OLIN Labs
With the 30th anniversary of the Americans with Disability Act approaching, discussions that examine where design and accessibility intersect have increased in frequency. In June 2019, for example, OLIN Labs' hosted a lecture series covering a range of topics relating to the interconnected... View full entry
An ardent critic of the federal government who has argued for selling off almost all public lands has been named the Trump administration’s top steward over nearly a quarter-billion federally controlled acres, raising new questions about the administration’s intentions for vast Western ranges and other lands roamed by hunters, hikers and wildlife. — The Salt Lake Tribune
William Perry Pendley, a former mid-level Department of Interior appointee who served in the Ronald Regan administration, has been tapped to oversee the Bureau of Land Management, an organization that oversees nearly 10% of America's land area. According to The Salt Lake Tribune... View full entry
A widespread over-supply of parking in metro Boston residential developments is driving up the cost of housing and may encourage people to own cars who otherwise would not, according to a new study by the Metropolitan Area Planning Council. — CommonWealth
What’s the true cost of parking? In 2014, Sarah Goodyear wrote a piece for CityLab titled "How Parking Spaces are Eating Our Cities Alive" that provides a framework for answering the question. In her article, Goodyear discusses how the average parking space takes up about 300 square feet, or... View full entry
For the first time in its history, the City of Los Angeles will have a single individual dedicated to overseeing, managing, and expanding the city's urban forest. Los Angeles mayor Eric Garcetii recently selected Rachel Malarich as the new "city forest officer," a post housed within the... View full entry
In 2011, the New York Public Library established an official unit for digital experimentation—NYPL Labs. Over the six years that followed, what began as a small research and development outfit for special digital projects grew into a visionary think-and-do tank for making the library’s two centuries of collections digital and usable for the years to come. A hybrid team of technologists, librarians, and designers would start to assemble the building blocks of an urban memory infrastructure. — Urban Omnibus
Shannon Mattern, associate professor of media studies at The New School, and Ben Vershbow, founder of NYPL Labs, discuss the recent digitalization efforts undertaken by the New York Public Library system as it works to turn the library's "vast collections into usable data, connecting maps... View full entry
A year ago, the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals told Boise that it’s unconstitutional to stop the homeless from sleeping in public spaces if there’s not enough shelter available for them. Now Boise wants the U.S. Supreme Court to have a look at that decision. — The Los Angeles Times
A recent Los Angeles Times opinion piece takes a look at the ongoing legal battle regarding whether criminalizing homelessness constitutes "cruel and unusual punishment" under the United States Constitution. Two constitutional lawyers, Theane Evangelis and Theodore B. Olson, discuss the... View full entry
More than 11 billion tons of ice was lost to the oceans by surface melt on Wednesday alone, creating a net mass ice loss of some 217 billion tons from Greenland in July.
The scope of Wednesday’s ice melt is a number difficult to grasp. To understand just how much ice is being lost, a mere 1 billion tons—or 1 gigaton—of ice loss is equivalent to about 400,000 Olympic-sized swimming pools, the Danish Meteorological Institute said.
— The Associated Press
The Associated Press reports that a summer heatwave that recently scorched Europe has moved north to Greenland, where the elevated temperatures have produced record glacial melt. While 82-percent of Greenland is covered in ice, nearly 60-percent of the island's total ice sheet is showing... View full entry
A proposed mixed-use development slated for a site beside the Brooklyn Botanic Garden (BBG) in New York City has BBG officials worried that the shadows created by the project’s twin 39-story towers will deprive the garden’s specimens of vital sunlight. Gothamist reports that the... View full entry
This week, Archinect has selected jobs with firms whose work focuses on creative and imaginative public installations and art exhibitions. Whether permanent or temporary, these spaces allow for experiences outside of people’s daily interactions through art and the built environment... View full entry
Cristiano Toraldo di Francia, co-founder of the radical Italian architecture group Superstudio, has passed away at age 78. Di Francia, born in 1941, started Superstudio in 1966 with Adolfo Natalini; Eventually, the group grew to include Piero Frassinelli, and Alessandro and Roberto... View full entry
For everyone working in the construction industry, meeting the needs of our society without breaching the earth’s ecological boundaries will demand a paradigm shift in our behaviour. Together with our clients, we will need to commission and design buildings, cities and infrastructures as indivisible components of a larger, constantly regenerating and self-sustaining system. — Architects Declare Australia
Australian architects are joining an international declaration recognizing the existence of a global environmental and biodiversity climate emergency. Stating that "the research and technology exist for us to begin that transformation now, but what has been lacking is collective will,"... View full entry
