There has long been a subculture of so-called “urban explorers” who have made a game of accessing off-limits places. [...] Urban explorers take photos mainly to document that they’ve been there, while for Deas the image is the whole point. The outlaw Instagrammers have more in common with graffiti artists, another subculture of underground creatives who make their work in the cracks of the urban landscape. — nymag.com

A team of researchers at Michigan State University has developed a new type of solar concentrator that when placed over a window creates solar energy while allowing people to actually see through the window.

It is called a transparent luminescent solar concentrator and can be used on buildings, cell phones and any other device that has a clear surface. — msutoday.msu.edu

“Anyone who has been going to Burning Man for the last five years is now seeing things on a level of expense or flash that didn't exist before,” said Brian Doherty, author of the book “This Is Burning Man.” “It does have this feeling that, ‘Oh, look, the rich people have moved into my neighborhood.’ It’s gentrifying.” — NYT

In a paper published this month, the researchers describe how they very simply and very quickly seized control of an entire system of almost 100 intersections in an unnamed Michigan city from a single ingress point. The exercise was conducted on actual stoplights deployed at live intersections [...] As is typical in large urban areas, the traffic lights in the subject city are networked ... allowing them to pass information to and receive instruction from a central management point. — Ars Technica

Tilikum Crossing is the nation's first multi-modal bridge that will be off-limits to private automobiles. It will carry MAX light rail trains (the impetus for construction) as well as Portland's streetcar line and city buses, and of course pedestrian and bike lanes on both sides—but no cars. [...]

"Transit has a huge impact on urban planning. I mean, if you look at our city, it was designed around streetcars. On some level, it has to be part of their DNA." — citylab.com

A new pipeline called the Rockaway Delivery Lateral Project is under construction in the Rockaways. It will deliver 647,000 dekatherms of natural gas to New York City each day — enough to power 2.5 million homes. Activists ... say the project is inherently dangerous and is just the latest sign of a broken approval and monitoring process for the United States’ energy infrastructure. — Al Jazeera

Fleets of self-driving lorries could be tested on UK roads as soon as next year, according to reports. [...]

The initiative would cut fuel consumption, backers said.

However, the plan has been criticised by motoring groups which said such a fleet would be "intimidating" to other road users. — bbc.com

Most American cities paved over their streetcar tracks decades ago, deeming the services slow, rickety and inconvenient. Commuters have long preferred cars and buses. But streetcars—sometimes known as trolleys or trams—are making a comeback. Services are rolling out in at least 16 American cities, with dozens more in the works [...] The relationship between streetcars and development is not clear, say researchers funded by the Federal Transit Administration (FTA). — the Economist

As a report from the Obama administration warns that one in four bridges in the United States needs significant repair or cannot handle automobile traffic, engineers are employing wireless sensors and flying robots that could have the potential to help authorities monitor the condition of bridges in real time. — ScienceDaily

Samsung is making a big push into being the center of the smart home today with its acquisition of SmartThings, which allows people to sync up their connected gadgets onto a single smartphone app and hardware hub. — forbes.com

Two months ago, after much lobbying by the biggest satellite company in North America, DigitalGlobe, the US government relaxed restrictions to allow for commercially available satellite imagery up to 25 cm resolution—twice as detailed as the previous limit of 50 cm [...] The extra sharp images from Worldview-3 will greatly increase the maps' level of detail to the point where it can make out 10-inch objects, which means Google will soon be able to see “manholes and mailboxes” [...] — Motherboard

Ridescout, the “Kayak of ground transportation” that aggregates over 300 rideshare services, announced today that it will integrate carpooling into its app. This move comes on the heels of recent announcements from Uber and Lyft, which on the same day earlier this month revealed they would gradually begin to allow their users to carpool. While ridesharing has up to this point been a mostly single-user service, Ridescout’s announcement reinforces a general trend toward multi-user integration. — urbanful.org

From buckling sidewalks to potholed thoroughfares to storm drains that can’t handle a little rain, the infrastructure that holds [Los Angeles] together is suffering from years of deferred maintenance. Bringing pipes that deliver water to 3.9 million people up to snuff could cost $4 billion [...] The bill for repaving streets will be almost that much, according to estimates from a city consultant, and patching or replacing cracked sidewalks will require $640 million. — Bloomberg BusinessWeek

"SolarLeaf" has been described as the world's first bioreactive façade that can help further research into algae as a potential renewable energy source. Designed by ARUP, SSC Strategic Science Consult, and Colt International, the façade was recently selected as one of 15 nominees for the prestigious Zumtobel Group Award 2014 in the award program's newest category, "Applied Innovations". — bustler.net