The Los Angeles region once again topped the list of areas with the worst traffic congestion for the sixth year in a row, according to a report by INRIX, a company that specializes in car services and transportation analytics.

Drivers in and around Los Angeles spent 102 hours battling traffic congestion during peak hours in 2017, INRIX's said. By contrast, New York City motorists spent 91 hours battling peak-hour congestion. New York was No. 3 on the INRIX list. No. 2 was Moscow. — Los Angeles Times

Researchers from the Urban Displacement project, a joint UCLA and UC Berkeley effort, recently released a gentrification map of Los Angeles.

They examined the city from 1990 to 2000 and up to 2015, focusing on neighborhoods near transit stops. The goal was to see if these areas saw higher rents and more displacement than other areas.

The answer? Yes — with some exceptions. — scpr.org

The introduction of ride-sharing services such as Uber and Lyft hasn't had any impact on the number of fatalities related to drunken driving, a newly published study finds.

Researchers at the University of Southern California and Oxford University looked at the 100 most populated metropolitan areas, analyzing data from before and after the introduction of Uber and its competitors, and found that access to ride-sharing apps had no effect on traffic fatalities related to drinking alcohol. — npr.org

In the early 1960s, [Penn State's] international studies were confined mainly to books and photos — until George Ehringer and his classmates organized a semester in London, the department’s first official study abroad trip. Ehringer, who earned his bachelor of science in architecture from Penn State in 1964, recently made a $25,000 gift to create the George D. Ehringer, Class of 1964, Award for Study Abroad in the Department Architecture... — Penn State News

A study commissioned by the developer indicated that total economic output of the companies projected to occupy Hudson Yards will contribute $18.9 billion to the city's gross domestic product. [...]

Many projections in the report are also contingent on a host of economic indicators in the city, including demand for Class A office space. Out of the 10.4 million square feet Related will have to lease up, so far it has locked in commitments from tenants for 4 million square feet. — crainsnewyork.com

A new study has, for the first time, estimated the total volume of groundwater present on the Earth. The results show that we're using up the water supply quicker than it can be naturally replaced, while future research will seek to determine exactly how long it will be until modern groundwater runs dry.

Groundwater is an extremely precious resource, being a key source of sustenance for humanity and the ecosystems we inhabit. — gizmag.com

For those who assume Los Angeles has the worst traffic in the United States: Not so fast.

Drivers in Southern California spent a whopping 80 hours sitting in traffic in 2014, according to a new report by the Texas A&M Transportation Institute and the traffic data company Inrix.

But the city with the dubious distinction of most time lost behind the wheel is Washington, D.C., researchers say, where commuters clocked 82 hours of delays in a single year.  — latimes.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

A new study by Thomas Laidley, a sociology doctoral student at NYU [...], uses satellite images to develop a new and improved “Sprawl Index,” which he links to a wide range of outcome measures.

Perhaps the biggest surprise is that L.A. ranks as the least sprawling metro in the country, ahead of New York and San Francisco. — citylab.com

In 2010, the Fondazione di Venezia—a well-endowed and entrepreneurial foundation with its historic roots in Italy’s regional banking system—launched an architectural competition for a cluster of buildings in the centre of Mestre, one of the mainland urban areas of Venice. [...]

The three accompanying essays, by Marco De Michelis, Aaron Betsky and M9 architect Matthias Sauerbruch, are less granular. They provide an overview of and perspectives on the museum-building boom [...]. — theartnewspaper.com

When we talk about why some places gentrify and others don't, there's often a pressing, underlying question at stake: To what degree is gentrification bound up with and shaped by race?

This is the subject of a path-breaking new study by Harvard doctoral student Jackelyn Hwang and urban sociologist Robert Sampson published in the August issue of the American Sociological Review. — citylab.com

Although anyone with Internet access can do a quick search online, nothing replaces a brick-and-mortar public library for quality resources and info — yet these centers are consistently overlooked by city policymakers. After setting up an RFQ for the Re-Envisioning Branch Libraries Design Study in New York, the Architectural League and the Center for an Urban Future selected five interdisciplinary teams out of 45 submissions. — bustler.net