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Medellín has gained much attention for its urban transformation — and the escalators, which won several international prizes for innovation, make up one of the most striking projects. [...]
But are the escalators making any real economic or social impact in the neighborhood? To find out, I spent three months in Medellín talking with people in Comuna 13 about what has and hasn’t changed here.
— citiscope.org
The story of Boyle Heights reminds us that urban highway teardowns don't always end in victory. [...]
"What we don't know, however, is the story of the losers, the urban men and women who fought the freeway, unsuccessfully, on the conventional terms of political struggle, who weren't able to pack up and move on, and who channeled expressive cultural traditions to register their grievances against the presence of unwanted infrastructure."
— citylab.com
Construction of a four-mile long steel wall going up along a stretch of the Jersey Shore ripped apart during Hurricane Sandy is expected to begin next month [...] The state Department of Environmental Protection awarded a $23.8 million contract to Springfield-based EIC Associates in May to build the steel wall that will stretch from Lyman Street in Mantoloking through Brick. — NJ.com
[...] tech guru and multimillionaire Tim Draper has put forth a plan which will solve the ills of the state by – wait for it – splitting it into six smaller states! This “Six Californias” plan [...], as you might expect, divides the state into six smaller chunks, maintaining county lines. [...]
But there’s another reason to oppose the plan that few people are talking about: it would do damage to the state’s transportation systems, especially mass transit.
— thisbigcity.net
Obama has proposed a $302 billion, four-year transportation spending plan that is paid in part by closing corporate tax loopholes [...] The White House maintains that 65% of U.S. roads are rated in less than good condition, 25% of bridges require significant repair or can't handle today's traffic, and 45% of Americans lack access to transit. — Al Jazeera
Riots caused tens of millions of shekels in damage and destroyed the Shoafat and Es-Sahl station [...] Residents of Jerusalem’s Shoafat neighborhood are unlikely to enjoy service on the city’s light rail network for several months as CityPass, the company that operates the system, works first to repair the rails and signaling mechanisms destroyed during last week’s rioting, and only later the stations serving the area. — Haaretz
The Shoafat and Es-Sahl light rail stations in East Jerusalem were attacked last week after news broke that an Arab young man – Mohamed Abu Khdeir – had been kidnapped, burned alive, and abandoned in a forest. Many commentators view the killing as vengeance for the recent deaths of three... View full entry
In 2002, CINTRI, a branch of Canadian firm Cintec Environment Inc., was granted an exclusive 50-year contract to collect commercial and residential waste in Phnom Penh and keep the city’s main streets clean. The exact details of the company’s agreement with city hall have never been made public, but since the deal was inked, Phnom Penh’s population has swelled from just over one million to two million people. The population boom and its attendant urban sprawl seem to have caught CINTRI off-guard — nextcity.org
A new video by doctoral student and an associate professor at Arizona State University visualizes the expansion of LA's roads, starting in 1888 and running all the way up to 2010 [...]
Variations in color denote the age of the thoroughfares, with green being the oldest roads and red being newest. Watch as the map blooms with color in the fifties and the trend carries on through the eighties to the present.
— la.curbed.com
"Growth of the Los Angeles Roadway Infrastructure, 1888 - 2010", by Andrew M. Fraser and Mikhail V. Chester, Ph.D., of Arizona State University:Compare with the following video of Los Angeles' overall growth as a city during the 20th century, from NYU's Stern Urbanization Project: View full entry
From yesterday's announcement of the Rebuild By Design winners by the U.S. Department of HUD, we've got more details behind "The BIG U" by the BIG Team, who had one of the six winning propoals. The BIG-led consortium was awarded $335 million to implement their proposal for New York's Lower Manhattan, with the goal to increase the neighborhood's resiliency to future storm disasters. And with a name like "The BIG U", one can only be curious to find out more. — bustler.net
Read more about the proposal on Bustler. View full entry
Researchers have known for years that hosting large sporting events like the Olympics always costs more than expected and always yields less revenue and useful long-term infrastructure than estimated. Now voters and politicians in democratically elected countries are starting to realize the same thing.
Potential host cities are dropping out of the bidding process for the 2022 Winter Olympics like crazy.
— Business Insider
Most discourse on “smart” and “sentient” cities, if it addresses people at all, focuses on them as sources of data feeding the algorithms. Rarely do we consider the point of engagement — how people interface with, and experience, the city’s operating system. — Places Journal
As we enter the era of so-called “smart” cities, Shannon Mattern argues on Places, we need to consider how citizens interface with the city’s operating system. What does a “right to the city” mean for our future cities? “Can we envision interfaces that honor the multidimensionality and... View full entry
Forty-seven miles of the 400-mile California Aqueduct could have their flow reversed this summer to bring water to dry Central California districts with dangerously low supplies, reports KQED. As this megadrought's persisted and worsened, it's come to light that many water districts, especially the smaller ones, haven't had the chance (read: the money) to stockpile water as we do here in SoCal. — la.curbed.com
Have an idea for how to address the drought with design? Submit your ideas to the Dry Futures competition! View full entry
Most people are not completely clear on what a landscape architect does, but according to Susannah Drake, founder of interdisciplinary design firm dlandstudio, it boils down to a mix of art, science, and politics.
“I care very deeply about the practicality and the sustainability, and I care about smart design detail. But fundamentally I think that design work, particularly in an urban setting, is about creating comfort, and beauty, and livability,” Drake said.
— theepochtimes.com
Light-absorbing glow-in-the-dark road markings have replaced streetlights on a 500m stretch of highway in the Netherlands.
Studio Roosegaarde promised us the design back in 2012, and after cutting through rather a lot of government red tape we can finally see the finished product.
— wired.co.uk
The forest carries deep cultural significance. Within the urban landscape, this ecologically complex, spatially layered, dynamic system is also understood to perform a wide range of essential ecosystem services. As arborists, parks departments, landscape architects, planners and community groups engage in the reforesting of cities, how are they collectively shaping the urban landscape? What hybrid ecosystems are yet to be designed? How many trees are enough? — Scenario Journal
Scenario Journal's just-released issue, Scenario 4: Building the Urban Forest, features a broad, interdisciplinary conversation between architects, ecologists, landscape architects, and artists, about the meaning and possibilities of the spatial, biological, and metaphorical construct of the... View full entry