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With the cloud being increasingly lifestyled and infrastructured into a range of everyday social and economic practices and processes, data centres continue to grow in size. Far from a massive database in the sky, it is the planet’s surface and our everyday lives that are gradually being colonised by the cloud. — Failed Architecture
This piece by Alexander Taylor, a social anthropologist at the University of Cambridge, looks back on the evolution of data center infrastructure, which continues to grow larger as our everyday lives become increasingly influenced by cloud computing. View full entry
Chicago’s City Council on Wednesday approved a multibillion-dollar expansion plan for O’Hare International Airport, after an earlier dispute between the airport’s two largest carriers had previously threatened to snarl the project. — Reuters
"The city of Chicago entered into an agreement with carriers United Airlines, American Airlines, Delta Air Lines and Spirit Airlines for airport renovations that include expanding the airport’s existing terminals and increasing the number and availability of some gates," Reuters reports. View full entry
The clown king of novelty infrastructure fantasies has once again stolen the limelight with his preposterous plan for a 22-mile bridge across the Channel. [...]
But none of this matters. In a world where Johnson got as far as flushing £37m of public money into the Thames on another fantasy project, the Garden Bridge, a great Channel crossing could easily be conjured into being.
— The Guardian
The Guardian's architecture critic, Oliver Wainwright, responds to the former London Mayor's suggestion to build a 22-mile bridge across the Channel and physically connect the European Union with the brexiting island kingdom (on top of the already existing 31.35-mile Channel tunnel). Let's just... View full entry
I’d been assigned to write a story about Pennsylvania Station, but I wanted to get a caboose-eye view of the decaying tunnels leading up to it, because the only imaginable way the station could be any worse is if it were underwater. Penn, the Western Hemisphere’s busiest train station, serves 430,000 travelers every weekday—more than LaGuardia, JFK, and Newark airports combined. — Bloomberg Businessweek
"As the gateway to America’s largest city," Devin Leonard writes in his piece for Bloomberg Businessweek, "Penn Station should inspire awe, as train stations do in London, Paris, Tokyo, and other competently managed metropolises. Instead, it embodies a particular kind of American failure—the... View full entry
The value of all this for engineering is currently hypothetical. But what if transport engineers were to improvise design solutions and get instant feedback about how they would work from their own embodied experience? What if they could model designs at full scale in the way choreographers experiment with groups of dancers? What if they designed for emotional as well as functional effects? — The Conversation
UCL Urban Design and Culture Researcher John Bingham-Hall writes about how choreography techniques can potentially be used by engineers in designing solutions for better city-planning and mobility. “We need new approaches in order to help engineers create the radical changes needed to make it... View full entry
[...] announced the Port Authority's selection of a Mott MacDonald-led consulting team [...] for the redevelopment of John F. Kennedy Airport. This announcement is the next major step in the Governor's plan to transform JFK Airport - which welcomes more international passengers to the United States than any other U.S. airport -- into a unified, world-class operation to accommodate substantial forecasted passenger growth, while helping to further boost the New York City regional economy. — governor.ny.gov
Image via JFK Vision PlanWithout mentioning specific details at this point, the announcement from Governor Cuomo lays out the general scope of this ambitious airport redevelopment project based on the January report from the Airport Advisory Panel, including "the creation of a seamless... View full entry
Hyperloop One just announced the winners of its global challenge, unveiling ten teams from five countries with their proposals of the strongest routes for future Hyperloop connections. As a next step, the company plans to work with the teams and expert business and engineering partners to... View full entry
The American Institute of Architects released a statement this morning, in light of damage wrought by Hurricanes Harvey and Irma, urging policy makers to reject any weakening of building codes. President Thomas Vonier advocated for state and federal legislators to reject attempts to roll back... View full entry
The unexpected closure of Angels Flight on Monday, four days after the funicular’s grand reopening, seemed a fitting twist for a railway that has operated in fits and starts for half a century. Since its reopening, 21 years ago, Angels Flight has been shut down more than half the time. — Los Angeles Times
Los Angeles's well known car culture quite efficiently dismantled the city's public transportation, passenger railway system, and the now long-gone network of red cars. Yet, one passenger train, and the smallest of all, keeps rising from the ashes — and dying again. Angels Flight, the... View full entry
The infrastructure council, which was still being formed, would have advised Trump on his plan to spend as much as $1 trillion upgrading roads, bridges and other public works. Its cancellation follows Trump’s announcement Wednesday that he was disbanding two other business advisory panels. — Bloomberg
After multiple CEO's began quitting both the American Manufacturing Council and the Strategic and Policy Forum in protest of Trump's response to Charlottesville, the 45th President has decided to not move forward with the Council on Infrastructure, still in the process of being formed. The council... View full entry
Melbourne, Australia has been ranked as the most “liveable” city in the world for the seventh consecutive year by the Economist Intelligence Unit.
The EIU’s benchmark annual report titled “The Global Liveability Report 2017,” ranks 140 cities in order of best living conditions.
Melbourne’s 97.5 score is down to perfect assessments in health care, education, and infrastructure, as well as hitting over 95 in stability, and culture and environment.
— qz.com
As in previous years, the top 10 list is mostly comprised of major cities in Australia and Canada, while Vienna — once again — barely misses the first spot by 0.1 percentage points overall. Auckland, Helsinki, and Hamburg manage to claim some coveted spots at the top for their respective... View full entry
The Frederick Douglass Memorial Bridge sits across the Anacostia River in Washington, D.C. Named after the prominent American abolitionist, the bridge was built in 1950 and today, makes crossing the river possible for 77,000 daily commuters. Over the decades, the bridge has deteriorated faster... View full entry
The project, part of a broader plan called “New York Crossings,” would outfit the MTA’s seven bridges and two tunnels — and the Port Authority’s George Washington Bridge — with pulsating, multicolored LED lights that can be choreographed with each other, with the Empire State Building and with One World Trade. — Politico
MTA's crumbling infrastructure has been making headlines since April and the situation does not appear to be getting any better for NYC transiters; three-quarters of the city's subway lines are plagued by chronic delays and frustrated riders continue to overcrowd the system... View full entry
How will China's $36.1 billion dollar investment shape the future of Africa? While China only has 66 projects over the continent compared to the United States' 91 projects, it has pledged about ten times the total amount of money, and the lion's share of that cash is earmarked for Egypt. As Global... View full entry
There’s long lap pools, and then there’s UMA’s design for Stockholm—a kilometer long infinity pool that serves as tourist attraction, recreational facility, and even infrastructure. The idea is to extend a walkway stretching from the northern part of Söderman to the eastern point out over... View full entry
