[...] has ordered a review of the procurement process for London’s garden bridge design after the Architects’ Journal revealed apparent irregularities in the tendering process. [...]

Heatherwick’s £173,000 fee was more than three times more expensive than the £49,939 offer by Wilkinson Eyre, and more than 11 times that of the £15,125 offer by Marks Barfield.

[...] cost of the project could fund 30 new London parks or 30 times the amount of open space the bridge would provide. — theguardian.com

The people of Nijmegen aren’t taking their good luck for granted. With climate change expected to bring more intense storms like the one in 1995 (and a previous one in 1993), the city is embarking on a massive flood-control project. That may be expected in the Netherlands, a low-lying country where most homes are built behind protective dikes [...]. But even here, the approach underway in Nijmegen is unusual, and filled with ideas that river cities anywhere can learn from. — citiscope.org

If Los Angeles aims to add more housing, it should look at the neighborhoods lining its long-maligned river to do it. [...]

The city could make a big dent in Mayor Eric Garcetti's goal of adding 100,000 housing units by 2021 if it streamlines permitting and creates incentive zones in places along the river [...].

The report comes in the wake of a billion-dollar plan by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers to revamp 11 miles of the L.A. River north of downtown [...]. — latimes.com

Campaigners opposed to the planned Garden Bridge over the River Thames in London have won the right to challenge a council's approval for it.

The judicial review of Lambeth Council's decision to give planning permission for the £175m bridge will be heard in June.

Questions were raised about bridge's funding and its impact on views across the river of St Paul's Cathedral. — bbc.com

A legal challenge is being launched in the High Court against plans to build a garden bridge over the River Thames in central London.

A south London resident claims Lambeth Council unlawfully granted planning permission for the £175m bridge.

Michael Ball, from Tulse Hill in Lambeth, fears its impact will be "devastating".

Lambeth Council said the bridge would potentially benefit "both the local and wider London economy". — bbc.com

[...] the bridge will be closed at night, won't allow entry to cyclists or groups of 8 or more without prior booking, and will ocassionally be closed off for fundraising events. Right. So less a public bridge than a privately-managed tourist attraction, then. [...]

The east of London, on the other hand, could actually use another crossing, with or without limits to access — citymetric.com

The jury is in and the Los Angeles River's future seems to be bright. After more than six months of intense lobbying by the city, the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (Army Corps) has announced that it will be recommending a more ambitious $1-billion plan to restore an 11-mile stretch of the Los Angeles River from downtown through Elysian Park. — kcet.org

The Minneapolis Parks Foundation has announced a shortlist of three award-winning design teams for the schematic design project Water Works: A Next Generation Park on Minneapolis’ Central Riverfront. The teams are Gustafson Guthrie Nicol with VJAA and Interboro (Seattle/Minneapolis/New York); SCAPE with Rogers Marvel (New York); and Team West 8 (Rotterdam/New York). — bustler.net

Warming Huts: An Art + Architecture Competition on Ice has unveiled the five winning projects of its 2013 edition. Like in previous winters, the selected huts will be built in early January on site and placed on the Assiniboine Credit Union River Trail in Winnipeg, Canada - the longest naturally frozen skating trail in the world. — bustler.net

The multidisciplinary design team led by Michael Van Valkenburgh Associates and Thomas Phifer & Associates was recently named winner of Design Waller Creek: A Competition. Organized by the Austin, TX-based Waller Creek Conservancy, this international design competition called for ideas to revitalize a 7-mile stretch of Waller Creek, a neglected Austin urban ecosystem, and thus turning a "currently fragmented and undervalued section of the city into a vibrant, livable, and workable district." — bustler.net

The red began appearing in the Yangtze, the longest and largest river in China and the third longest river in the world, yesterday near the city of Chongquing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River... and officials have no idea why. — abcnews.go.com

In our last post, we published the winning designs of the [AC-CA]-hosted Amsterdam Iconic Pedestrian Bridge competition. Here's another proposal that didn't quite make the cut with the jurors, but we are happy to publish it. The author is Yaohua Wang, who – in past articles – managed to polarize the opinions like nobody else. — bustler.net

Three outstanding bridge designs have recently been selected as winners in the Amsterdam Iconic Pedestrian Bridge competition. Hosted by [AC-CA], this open international competition called for proposals that would reflect contemporary design tendencies and also take into consideration the "urban insertion and impact geared towards creating a new architectural symbol for an European capital city." — bustler.net

A few days ago, we published BudCud's finalist entry to the Kiev Islands Master Plan Competition. Here is now also the winner of the First Prize, the concept THE BLUE LINE by Romanian team Wolf House Productions and Gabriel Pascariu. — bustler.net

Krakow-based architects BudCud have shared with us their finalist entry for the international Kiev Islands Master Plan Competition. The proposal suggests the development of a network of existing islands and artificial mirco islands along the Dnieper river, right outside of Kiev, Ukraine, for recreation and nature exploration. — bustler.net