The American government’s relaxation of its 56-year embargo against Cuba and the inauguration of direct flights from China has triggered a race to invest in the island’s tourist infrastructure [...]

There are reports that China’s Suntime International Economic Trading Company will go ahead with a luxury hotel in Havana, in a joint venture Cuba’s state tourism agency, Cubanacán. The size of the hotel is reported variously at 600 to 650 rooms, with Suntime investing up to $150m — Global Construction Review

Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump dominated another round of primaries last night...further securing his position as the party’s frontrunner. His polemical campaign continues to provoke criticism from both his own party and from Democrats, as concern over his inflammatory, xenophobic and sexist rhetoric transforms into panic. The debate breached into architecture after a competition was announced last week for design responses to Trump’s call for a wall along the US/Mexico border. — Bustler

A purple pedestrian bridge between two terminals that link Tijuana International Airport and San Diego over the U.S.-Mexico border opened to passengers Wednesday morning.

The Cross Border Xpress is the first project to join a site in the U.S. with a foreign airport terminal. [...]

The $120-million private venture aims to serve about 2.4 million fliers each year who usually would have to queue up in busy border crossings at San Ysidro and Otay Mesa on the California side. — latimes.com

The United States Olympic Committee said Monday that it was withdrawing Boston as its proposed bid city because resistance among residents was too great to overcome in the short time that remained before the committee had to formally propose a bid city by Sept. 15. [...]

U.S.O.C. intended to move quickly to prepare a bid from another city. While he did not mention Los Angeles by name, many people involved in the Olympics expect Los Angeles to enter the competition. — nytimes.com

Eight out of every 10 lawyers are white. Social scientists and architects are probably in need of some diversity too. — theatlantic.com

There are roughly 11,000 Starbucks locations in the United States, and about 14,000 McDonald's restaurants. But combined, the two chains don't come close to the number of museums in the U.S., which stands at a whopping 35,000.

So says the latest data release from the Institute of Museum and Library Services, an independent government agency that tallies the number and type of museums in this country. [...] the 35,000 active museums represent a doubling from the number estimated in the 1990s. — washingtonpost.com

In testimony before the House Appropriations Committee, Joseph P. Clancy, the director of the Secret Service, on Tuesday urged lawmakers to give him money to build a detailed replica of the White House to aid in training officers and agents to protect the real thing. Beltsville, about 20 miles from the real White House at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, is the location of a 500-acre Secret Service training site in the verdant terrain of southern Maryland. — NY Times

The aftermath of a deadly winter storm paralyzed much of the eastern United States on Tuesday and forecasters warned of the worst cold in two decades from another arctic front this week. — Reuters

It’s easy enough to blame economic forces for the postwar destruction of slave markets, but not for the persistent concealment of their history. One hundred and fifty years after the Civil War, the South has no shortage of memorials to the Lost Cause, while memorials to the slave trade remain few and far between. [...]

After the Civil War, Johnson says, “the price of moving forward for the white United States was the forgetting of slavery.” — citylab.com

Rents continue to outpace incomes. In fact, Zillow just released data showing U.S. renters spent a combined $441 billion on housing in 2014.

Perhaps surprisingly, the New York-Northern New Jersey metro didn’t top the list. San Jose was the highest, with renters paying on average $1,807 per month. Meanwhile, the 20th most expensive metro for renters was Minneapolis-St. Paul, where the average monthly payment in 2014 was $927. — zillow.com

Styled after American corporate identity throughout the 20th century, our next featured 2014 Venice Biennale pavilion is "OfficeUS" representing the U.S. of A. Organized by NYC's Storefront for Art and Architecture in collaboration with PRAXIS Journal, the two-part exhibition will showcase and critically reinterpret the global influence of American architecture in the last century...For each week of the Biennale, OfficeUS will also address 25 issues relevant to its project archive. — bustler.net

[The American shopping mall] has its own traceable lineage, from the earliest planned shopping centers to the first regional hubs for shoppers traveling by car, to the novel post-war enclosed malls of Victor Gruen [...]

Malls, in short, have spread across the American landscape -- and defined it -- with remarkable success, adapting to our changing tastes along the way. — washingtonpost.com

China’s economic boom has enriched many of the country’s largest real estate entrepreneurs.[...]

Yet China’s building surge in recent years has also helped overseas architects to prosper in the world’s most populous nation. One U.S. firm to find success is Altoon Partners of Los Angeles. Although relatively small compared with the largest global architecture firms, Altoon was “unfazed by the muscle of (its) competitors” when it entered the market, and has focused tightly on its strengths[...] — forbes.com