As gentrification continues to sweep London, another of the city’s artist studio spaces is facing redevelopment. There are plans to demolish the Cockpit Arts building in Camden, north London, although the local council intends to relocate all artists and designers to a new building on the same site. “Camden is anxious not to lose them as they are big local employers,” says Michael Pountney, the vice-chairman of the Holborn Library Users Group. — theartnewspaper.com

“Village” may not seem like the right term for a cluster of tenement-style walkups that can house more than 100,000 people. Chengzhongcun hang onto the name partly because of the familiarity evoked by the traditions and small-scale businesses that thrive among their migrant populations, and partly because when modern Shenzhen began growing, these places really were just villages in the middle of the city. — foreignpolicy.com

Los Angeles-based developer CIM Group has agreed to buy Tribune Tower for up to $240 million, marking the end of media ownership for the historic North Michigan Avenue building and the beginning of a new chapter, likely as part of a mixed-use redevelopment. [...]

Tribune Media unveiled conceptual plans last year to redevelop the parcel, adding several buildings to maximize the space with residential, retail and hotel components. — chicagotribune.com

Portsmouth City Council has given Planning and Listed Building Consent for the repair and redevelopment of the former HMP Kingston in Portsmouth.
FCBStudios will now commence the post-planning stages for the 230-unit residential scheme – a combination of re-modelled existing prison cell wings, chapel and infirmary, and new-build apartment buildings, including a landscape masterplan by Grant Associates. — Feilden Clegg Bradley

A Vancouver developer buying the storied Los Angeles Times building plans to demolish portions of the 750,000-square-foot complex to make way for a residential and retail development [...]

[The developer] intends to build apartments in place of a 1970s-era chunk of the building at Broadway and First Street, according to sources familiar with its plan. The stone-clad segments from 1935 and 1948, along Spring Street, would undergo renovations to house offices and retailers. — LA Business Journal

A group of developers on the short list to buy Tribune Tower want to convert the Gothic Michigan Avenue landmark into condominiums, apartments and even a hotel [...]

The property also comes with something all developers love: land for new buildings. A buyer could build one or two more towers on the parking lot next door and on space created by demolishing some of the existing Tribune building that is not landmarked. [...] — Crain's Chicago Business

We’re growing faster than any other metropolitan area in the country, and we have been for the last five years...And the challenges are, with all the growth that we’re having, we’re going to stop being the city that we imagine that we are, that we remember being. We have to grow to be the city that we still recognize. So those challenges are not optional challenges for us to deal with, they’re the challenges for us to deal with. — Metropolis Magazine

The only context in which [Times Square] is routinely praised is a historical one, and then usually in a misguided glorification of its former grittiness. Nostalgia clouds the ugliness of the past and conceals the vibrancy of the present, but perhaps worst of all, it offers a pass for looking at Times Square as it really is and as it should be. [...]

if you’re trying to fight your way through the crowds of Times Square, you’re missing the point—the point is the crowd. — observer.com

When we finally see this river restored to its natural beauty, it’ll be thanks to the work of thousands of people over decades.

The work that Frank Gehry is doing builds upon this—looking at how we can stitch together these 88 cities of LA County, including the 15 different jurisdictions along the river’s 51 miles—some of the most diverse and interesting communities that we’ve ever known. [...]

people have put aside their differences and said: This is an opportunity to move forward. — planningreport.com

'Why can’t communities simply be communities and develop in the organic way that we allow other communities to develop?'...'They are inspirational in that people have developed them themselves, without government and real estate types pushing them around. Without a doubt, they still have problems. But they are stabilising themselves and, over time, knitting themselves into the fabric of their cities. This is a true marvel of global urbanism.' — The Guardian

Some of Detroit's most famous vacant sites finally may see new construction getting under way in 2016, turning some of the city's longest-running symbols of distress into emblems of renewal.

The Hudson's site on Woodward, the old Tiger Stadium site at Michigan and Trumbull, and the State Fairgrounds near Woodward Avenue and 8 Mile all seem likely to see redevelopment progress in 2016 after in some cases decades of disuse. — freep.com

Amid contentious debate on rezonings across the city, the late 2013 hubbub around an upzoning proposal for East Midtown has, for the moment, abated — but hasn’t disappeared. In a bid to spur significant new development for the first time in decades, the de Blasio administration is currently retooling the Bloomberg-era plan to allow developers to construct much larger buildings [...]

Whether this rezoning eventually occurs or not, the buildings in Manhattan’s core aren’t getting any younger. — urbanomnibus.net

In Detroit, there were 3,500 sales of single-family homes in 2014. Only 462 of them received a mortgage. That means that nearly 87 percent of sales were in cash — and that doesn’t include homes sold in foreclosure auction. Comparatively, the overall metro area saw only 53 percent in cash sales the same year. Nationwide, it was 43 percent.

“The number one issue that we, in the end, identified in Detroit is that it’s incredibly hard for homebuyers to get a mortgage right now,” say Svenja Gudell.. — Next City

Heading east along I-94 from Detroit’s resurgent Midtown area, two massive structures loom on the horizon. For passing drivers, they’re awe-inducing symbols of both the city’s former industrial might and the dismaying scale of its post-industrial challenges. [...]

At the Center for Community Progress’ May Reclaiming Vacant Properties conference, planners and developers discussed examples from around the world of cities that are finding opportunity in derelict industrial properties. — nextcity.org