We were participating in a little experiment trying to answer the question, “How does the brain respond to the city?” The headsets were recording second-by-second readings of our brain waves via Bluetooth to an app on the iPod. The resulting gigabyte of data, gathered from about 50 participants, will be aggregated into a visualization to be presented May 13 at Issue Project Room in Brooklyn. It’s part of the Van Alen Institute’s multiyear “Elsewhere: Escape and the Urban Landscape” project. — theatlanticcities.com

[Santa Monica will] be able to offer its residents real net neutrality, which the [FCC] is working on rolling back for just about everyone else in the US. [...]

Santa Monica has cleverly and quietly been installing its own network of city-owned fiber-optic cables for years, and they intend to keep the net neutral. [...]

Santa Monica has also made about $5 million providing internet service and leasing out the cables to other providers, and their competition has driven down rates. — la.curbed.com

For more than a century, [Helsinki] has funded its own statistics bureaus to keep data on the population, businesses, building permits, and most other things you can think of. [...]

Helsinki and three of its neighboring cities are now banding together... Through an entity called Helsinki Region Infoshare, they are bringing together their data so that a fuller picture of the metro area can come into view. — citiscope.org

Hong Kong's Kowloon Walled City was the densest place on the planet before it was torn down 20 years ago. In this Wall Street Journal interactive, you can take a trip through the city, explore its history and hear from the people who lived there.

When all stages are completed, the 65,000 people daily who pass through the Hudson Yards’ office towers, residences, shops, restaurants, hotel, public school, and public open space will contribute to a massive stream of data intended to help answer the big questions about how cities of the future should be managed. [...]

“It really started from the question: If we could know anything about the city, what would we want to know and how could we do a better job at measuring the pace of life?” — fastcoexist.com

The vehicle's early life was confined almost entirely to California highways. Hundreds of thousands of test miles later, the car more or less has mastered the art — rather, the computer science — of staying in its lane and keeping its speed. So about a year and a half ago, Google's team shifted focus from the predictable sweep of freeways to the unpredictable maze of city streets. I was invited along as the first journalist to witness how the car is handling its new urban lifestyle. — theatlanticcities.com

Our technology-first approach has failed the city of the future. So-called “smart cities,” powered by technology, carry the promise of responding to the great pressures of our time, such as urban population growth, climate instability, and fiscal uncertainty. But by focusing on the cutting-edge technologies themselves and relying on private companies to move forward, we have lost sight of what we even want our cities to achieve with all that tech. — wired.com

Forty-seven miles of the 400-mile California Aqueduct could have their flow reversed this summer to bring water to dry Central California districts with dangerously low supplies, reports KQED. As this megadrought's persisted and worsened, it's come to light that many water districts, especially the smaller ones, haven't had the chance (read: the money) to stockpile water as we do here in SoCal. — la.curbed.com

Silicon Valley is a meticulously researched show [...] and the work spaces that appear on screen are no exception. Production designer Richard Toyon, the man responsible for the visual storytelling, called up friends all over Silicon Valley to get a peek inside the offices of Facebook, Google, Zynga, and others. Security often prevented Toyon from taking pictures inside the buildings, so he made due with mental notes. — fastcodesign.com

What is said to be the largest private real estate development in US history is set to become the country’s first “quantified community” as well. Hudson Yards, a 17 million-square foot [...] development on the far west side of Manhattan, will be embedded with technology to monitor environmental conditions, energy production and usage, and traffic flows among its soon to rise towers. The developers are partnering with New York University’s Center for Urban Science and Progress (CUSP) [...]. — urbanomnibus.net

This year's Designs of the Year jury have chosen their crème de la crème of the world's most cutting-edge design. Since London's Design Museum announced the 76 nominees in February, the competition has narrowed down to seven category winners. In the final step of the competition, one of these category winners will be announced as the overall winner by June 30 at an event hosted by St. Martins Lane London. — bustler.net

Chinese companies have been known to build major real-estate projects very quickly. Now, one company is taking it to a new extreme.

Suzhou-based construction-materials firm Winsun New Materials says it has built 10 200-square-meter homes using a gigantic 3-D printer that it spent 20 million yuan ($3.2 million) and 12 years developing. — blogs.wsj.com