Cities can’t win. When they do well, people resent them as citadels of inequality; when they do badly, they are cesspools of hopelessness. In the seventies and eighties, the seemingly permanent urban crisis became the verdict that American civilization had passed on itself. Forty years later, cities mostly thrive, crime has been in vertiginous decline, the young cluster together in old neighborhoods [...] —and so big cities turn into hateful centers of self-absorbed privilege. — newyorker.com

Islamic State militants in northern Syria have blown up another monument in the ancient city of Palmyra, officials and local sources say.

The Arch of Triumph was "pulverised" by the militants who control the city, a Palmyra activist told AFP news agency.

It is thought to have been built about 2,000 years ago.

IS fighters have already destroyed two ancient temples at the site, described by Unesco as one of the most important cultural centres of the ancient world. — bbc.com

A New Zealand man has set out to document and photograph former Pizza Hut locations across the planet, specifically looking for the pizza chain’s dine-in locations with the familiar red roof. [...]

“The strangest thing may be the funeral homes or mortuaries. It's probably the last thing you'd expect to see a Pizza Hut become but there are several dotted around” — chron.com

at least some part of architectural practice needs to move on from having buildings as the only output. The answer to every urban question cannot always be a building, clearly. Whilst buildings may be part of some solutions, there are broader, deeper questions in play—good architects see this, but the practice (from education up) is still not exploring this implied question broadly enough. — cityofsound

Paris’s car-free day was not without controversy, not least because it wasn’t a totally carless day and was limited to only around one-third of the city. After a standoff with police, authorities were only able to make car-free certain parts of the city centre, stretching between Bastille and the Champs Elysées, and the outer Bois de Boulogne and Bois de Vincennes, and only between 11am and 6pm. In the rest of the city, cars were allowed but at 20km an hour. — The Guardian

Researchers estimate that driverless cars could, by midcentury, reduce traffic fatalities by up to 90 percent. Which means that, using the number of fatalities in 2013 as a baseline, self-driving cars could save 29,447 lives a year. In the United States alone, that's nearly 300,000 fatalities prevented over the course of a decade, and 1.5 million lives saved in a half-century. — CityLab

[...] Team China beat out Team Kazakhstan to host the games. Zhangjiakou, a city of 4 million people in the mountains of Hebei province, will host the games alongside Beijing. [...]

They're worried I'll talk to people like Lu Wanku, who will be forced to move to make way for the region’s investment boom. Lu herds cattle and has lived in his tiny brick home for more than 20 years. His home is now in the way of a Four Seasons Town Dream Resort ski run. [...] Lu has two weeks to move out. — marketplace.org

“My growing interest in how cultural districts can shape cities led me to this new, exciting opportunity in New York City.” — New Cities Foundation, NY Times

My philosophy is based on: I think everyone deserves a soupçon of glamour in every bit of their home. [...]

When people look back on early 21st-century design, they will remember: the chaos produced by the technological revolution, a chaos that can be interpreted as either depressingly meaningless or excitingly free. — wsj.com

Adolf Hitler was an extreme anti-Semite, convicted traitor, and leader of a violent paramilitary force. In a remarkable press campaign, the Nazis reinvented him as a genial Bavarian gentleman. — Places Journal