Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, is back at it again with more outlandish ideas to solve Los Angeles' traffic. Earlier this month, Musk's latest venture–The Boring Company–resuscitated its flawed proposal to dig new car tunnels for Los Angeles, this time to connect the Red Line subway with Dodger Stadium [...] The Chicago tunnel idea is bad enough, but the Dodger Stadium plan is exceptionally poor even if one takes Musk's promises at face value. — urbanize.la

Though Harris County Judge Ed Emmett is the public official most closely tied to the salvation of the Astrodome, many private citizens have played important roles, too.

Without their many letters, petitions, documents and road trips – the tools of architectural preservation – Houston might have lost its most iconic building. — Houston Chronicle

The cost of Stan Kroenke's stadium in Inglewood is climbing [...].

Owners approved raising the debt waiver to $4.963 billion for the first phase of the project, which includes the football stadium where the Rams and Chargers will play, the neighboring 6,000-seat performance venue, the 200,000 square feet of office space for NFL Media, the parking lots surrounding the stadium, and the cost of the entire 300-acre parcel. — Los Angeles Times

Dignitaries at the 2020 Tokyo Summer Olympic and Paralympic Games will obviously get the best seats--those made of wood--but ordinary common folk will have to make do with plastic. — Asahi Shimbun

Russian president Vladimir Putin has warned 2018 World Cup officials that delays to preparations for the tournament are "unacceptable", although they are not yet "critical".

Russia will host its first World Cup from 14 June to 15 July using 12 venues in 11 cities across the country.

Putin, 64, said that while work was "entirely satisfactory" overall, "there are nevertheless some delays". — BBC

After weeks of negotiations with the International Olympic Committee, Los Angeles officials have reached a deal to host the 2028 Summer Games under terms they hope will generate hundreds of millions in savings and additional revenues.

The agreement will bring the Olympics back to Southern California for a third time, after Los Angeles hosted in 1984 and 1932. It also opens the door for the 2024 Games to be held in Paris. — latimes.com

A farmer in Russia has built a football stadium out of straw to mock the ballooning cost and corruption surrounding the construction of St Petersburg’s Zenit Arena, recently opened for the 2018 World Cup.

Although the straw version in the Stavropol region lacks the extra-terrestrial elegance of the Kisho Kurokawa’s design, and while its seating capacity is rather less than 68,000, it was a great deal cheaper: $673 compared with the original’s $720m. — Global Construction Review

​The rare decision to name the hosts of separate Games simultaneously — established with a unanimous vote of I.O.C. members on Tuesday — is an effort by the organization to counter diminished interest shown by democratic nations in hosting the Olympics amid exorbitant costs, white-elephant stadiums, widespread corruption, rampant doping and limited appeal to the youth audience.​ — NY Times

Harris County commissioners have chosen Houston-based Kirksey Architecture to design a project to retrofit the Astrodome by raising its floor and installing parking spaces underneath.
The $105 million project -- unveiled by county officials in September -- is the most recent attempt to secure the building's future. [...]

Many feared then that the world's first multi-purpose domed stadium for sporting events would face the wrecking ball. — Houston Chronicle

Tokyo has held a groundbreaking ceremony for a $1.5bn (£1.2bn) national stadium that will host the 2020 Olympic Games.

The prime minister, Shinzo Abe, Tokyo’s governor, Yuriko Koike, and other dignitaries attended the event on Sunday at the site of the demolished national stadium that was used during the 1964 Tokyo Olympics. [...]

The ceremony ended with a video showing how the stadium is expected to look and function once completed by November 2019. — The Guardian

Future Arena, the handball venue, will be taken apart and the pieces used to build four schools around the city, each serving 500 students. [...]

the city will turn the aquatics stadium into two community swimming centers; the media center will become a high school dorm; and the 300 acres of land on which Barra Olympic Park currently sits will go be turned over for public parks and private development. — grist.org