Vienna has once more been named the city with the best quality of life for business professionals by Mercer Consulting, the world’s biggest human resources company.  

It headed a top 10 dominated by neighbouring cities in Germany and Switzerland, together with Auckland (3), Vancouver (5) and Sydney (10).  

The survey is intended to give multinational companies a reference point when deciding how to compensate staff for postings. — globalconstructionreview.com

Odile Decq has won the Jane Drew Prize and Julia Peyton-Jones has been awarded the Ada Louise Huxtable Prize in the annual Women in Architecture Awards.

The judges described Odile Decq as ‘a creative powerhouse, spirited breaker of rules and advocate of equality’. [...]

The judges celebrated Julia Peyton-Jones’ ‘incredible global impact achieved with limited resources – and as someone who has done so much to nurture architectural vision and make architecture available to many people’. — architectural-review.com

In 1980, for instance, fewer than 12 percent of American workers commuted for 45 minutes or more one way, according to the Census.

The Census didn't even bother separating out 60- and 90-minute commuters in 1980, since it was relatively rare. But they began tracking these mega-commuters in 1990. That year, 1.6 percent of workers commuted 90 minutes or more one way. In 2014, 2.62 percent of workers were commuting this long, an increase of 64 percent over the prevalence in 1990. — Washington Post

“What I realized is that they have very little power,” Mr. Viet, 28, said of his fellow urban planners. “The fates of the buildings were being decided by someone else.”

[...] when Ho Chi Minh City’s property market perked up after a slump that followed the 2008 financial crisis, dozens of prewar buildings — spanning the colonial to modernist eras — were razed to make room for new ones. As the city’s modest skyline grows, residents are watching with a mixture of awe and trepidation. — nytimes.com

The average crow takes less than two hours to travel from Sing Sing maximum-security prison to the Whitney Museum of American Art, institutions separated by just 32 miles of land along New York’s Hudson river. Yet few humans journey between them – museums and prison are at opposite ends of our society’s self-imaginings, and their populations tend not to intersect. — The Guardian

Escalating their battle to stamp out an unprecedented spread of street encampments, city officials have begun seizing tiny houses from homeless people living on freeway overpasses in South Los Angeles.

Three of the gaily painted wooden houses, which come with solar-powered lights and American flags, were confiscated earlier this month and seven more are planned for impound Thursday, a Bureau of Sanitation spokeswoman said. — The Los Angeles Times

It's hard to remember that just a few decades ago it was difficult, if not impossible, for a woman alone to take out a mortgage. Federal legislation changed that.

And yet, it's still surprising to learn how dominant single women have become in the housing market today: Their share is second only to married couples, and twice that of single men. — npr.org

Metro is negotiating an agreement with Lyft aimed at learning more about ride-share trips that begin and end at key Metro stations [...]

The relationship would last at least a year and would give Metro a rare peek at data typically kept private. The deal, one of the first of its kind in the United States, would shed light on the role that ride-sharing plays in ... the so-called "first mile, last mile" gap [...]

In exchange for Lyft's data, Metro would advertise the service to its riders — latimes.com

Most modern Chinatowns are serving less as a singular manifestation of Chinese-American life than as a central gathering place for people to experience Chinese culture...And indeed, Chinatowns themselves were often built on the ground of former ethnic enclaves that had organically dissolved...But as Chicago’s Chinatown demonstrates, this is not a predictable story. More than a hundred years after its founding, the neighborhood has a dynamism that can’t be neatly scripted. — Next City

Masdar City, when it was first conceived a decade ago, was intended to revolutionise thinking about cities and the built environment.

Now the world’s first planned sustainable city – the marquee project of the United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) plan to diversify the economy from fossil fuels - could well be the world’s first green ghost town.

As of this year [...] managers have given up on the original goal of building the world’s first planned zero-carbon city. — theguardian.com

A directive issued on Sunday by the State Council, China’s cabinet, and the Communist Party’s Central Committee says no to architecture that is “oversized, xenocentric, weird” and devoid of cultural tradition. Instead, buildings should be “suitable, economic, green and pleasing to the eye.” The directive also calls for an end to gated communities.

The guidelines come two months after a high-level meeting to address some of the problems that have arisen as a result of China’s rapid urbanization. — nytimes.com