San Francisco is practically the reductio ad absurdum of gentrification: It’s already land limited on three sides by water, and the massive rise of the tech industry over the last few decades has dramatically increased both the population of the area and its wealth. [...]

But the blame shouldn’t go to the tech companies or their employees moving to San Francisco, however despicable some might be. Blame San Francisco for being pleasant, and its policymakers for being foolish — Quartz

Before the buses became a symbol for San Francisco’s gentrification woes, they were just a fleet of several hundred private coaches that whisked some seventeen thousand workers around San Francisco and to and from the Silicon Valley campuses of such companies as Apple, Google, and Genentech. [...]

San Francisco is deep into a second tech boom—and, with it, many less affluent workers are getting priced out of the city. — newyorker.com

Microsoft researchers have enabled elevators in a company building to detect the likelihood that a person walking by will want to board it. The camera in a Microsoft Kinect — positioned in the ceiling — tracked for months the behaviors of people who got on the elevators vs. those who bypassed the elevators on their way to a nearby cafeteria. That data fed an artificial intelligence system, which taught itself to identify the behaviors indicating who wanted to board an elevator and who didn’t. — washingtonpost.com

Several readers are reporting that a snowblower has accidentally knocked into and shattered one of the large glass panels at Apple’s iconic 5th avenue Apple Store. That’s one of 15 panels, and those large slices of glass were installed a couple of years ago. — 9to5mac.com

The particular danger of TEDification to the design disciplines, I think, is its core message that the chief obstacle to our discovering grand solutions to global problems — to achieving the grand design, to "making a comprehensive entity," as that reviewer of Big History applauded — is our lack of sufficient connection. What we need, we're told, is a seamless web of ideas, capital, products and data. — Places Journal

Late in 2011, [Zappos CEO] Hsieh became even more legendary by announcing almost larkishly that he’d be leading a $350 million effort to rejuvenate a blighted stretch of Las Vegas’ downtown […]

His plan was to spend much of his own personal fortune to transform this lifeless area about a mile north of the neon blitz of the Strip into an entrepreneurial tech nirvana. [...]

Doubters have no place in the ecosystem. Pragmatists stand little chance. A love of hyperbole prevails. — Wired

[...] developer Ben Miller says, until now, it’s been impossible for local people to invest in development right across the street.

“Who owns your environment? You don’t know,” he says. “Who’s building your environment, who’s building your city? Not you.”

Miller is co-founder of the group Fundrise, which has started selling shares of private real estate projects to the public online. [...]

First they bought 1351 H Street with private capital, then crowdfunded about a third of it. — marketplace.org

Stand your ground, the U.S. debut of the "Considering the Quake: Seismic Design on the Edge" exhibition will be on Feb. 13, 2014 at the AIA's Center for Architecture in New York.

Based on resilient-design research gathered by the exhibition's curators Professor Ghyslaine McClure and Dr. Effie Bouras, it highlights not only the artistic aspect of seismic design, but also its more hidden — and crucial — scientific side. — bustler.net

In doing press for the film, Jonze has repeatedly credited New York architects Elizabeth Diller and Ricardo Scofidio, AIA, founding principals of Diller Scofidio + Renfro, with helping him devise the feel of his settings. Diller took time to chat with ARCHITECT about the film, as well as the uncanny qualities of the near-future and why she generally prefers murder stories to sci-fi. — architectmagazine.com

Texas has seen the future of the public library, and it looks a lot like an Apple Store [...].

Even the librarians imitate Apple’s dress code, wearing matching shirts and that standard-bearer of geek-chic, the hoodie. But this $2.3 million library might be most notable for what it does not have — any actual books.

That makes Bexar County’s BiblioTech the nation’s only bookless public library. — washingtonpost.com

For a few years I’ve thought about how one might design a game where the architecture was the central character. I’m particularly fond of temples, palaces, mosques, monasteries and other buildings which combine exquisite artistry with a potential for exploration and mystery. The main problem was how to make an interactive experience out of this. — thefoxisblack.com