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Smart city technology should do things like shorten commute times, speed the construction of affordable housing, improve the efficiency of public transit, and reduce carbon emissions by making building technology more efficient and providing less polluting transportation alternatives to the car. But often its proponents focus on what it can do rather than what it should. If Sidewalk’s Quayside failure taught us anything, it’s that these technologies need to respond better to human needs. — MIT Technology Review
The MIT Technology Review took a dive into the abandoned pre-pandemic conversion of Toronto’s 12-acre Quayside waterfront plot into an elaborate “Smart City” development by the hands of Sidewalk Labs. The revitalization was recently repackaged as a mixed-use green corridor concept to be... View full entry
A design competition hosted by the School of Architecture, Planning, and Landscape (SAPL) at the University of Calgary asked participants, "how might matters of equity and activism, ecology and environment, and health and wellness converge, and unfold, within our future cities?" Launched... View full entry
Rotterdam-based Orange Architects along with Echo urban design, Moederscheim Moonen, More Architecture, and Studio Nauta, has been commissioned by Rotterdam developers Leyten and Stebru to design the new Zomerhofkwartier (ZOHO) in Rotterdam. ZOHO is a kind of "city within a city" in... View full entry
This past June, London celebrated its annual London Festival of Architecture. The festival showcases exhibitions, installations, workshops, and other events highlighting architecture and design in the city. This year, London-based designer Yinka Ilori created two projects that filled... View full entry
Smart cities make two fundamental promises: lots of data, and automated decision making based on that data. The ultimate smart city will require a raft of existing and to-be-invented technologies, from sensors to robots to artificial intelligence. For many this promises a more efficient, equitable city; for others, it raises questions about privacy and algorithmic bias. — New York Times
Promises for a better, smarter city have flooded media headlines, but if these so-called "smart cities" are said to be the answer, can the general public adapt to these infrastructure dreams? In a recent piece by Shoshanna Saxe for the New York Times, the experienced civil and mineral engineer at... View full entry
If there is any place in the world where the skyscraper reins supreme, it is Hong Kong. From a distance, these tall, towering structures fill Hong Kong's skyline with forms that touch the clouds. Hundreds of these towers reflect off of Victoria Harbor creating a sense of hyperrealism as people... View full entry
Groundbreaking research presents credible estimates of the total parking supply in several American cities, and it's not pretty. Parking spaces are everywhere, but for some reason the perception persists that there’s “not enough parking.” And so cities require parking in new buildings and lavishly subsidize parking garages, without ever measuring how much parking exists or how much it’s used. — usa.streetsblog.org
A new report from Eric Scharnhorst at the Research Institute for Housing America, an arm of the Mortgage Bankers Association, estimates the total parking supply in five US cities. Looking at satellite imagery and tax record data, Scharnhorst tallied on-street parking, surface parking, and... View full entry
The "Future of the American City" initiative led by Harvard Graduate University School of Design will begin in Miami with $1 million in support from the Knight Foundation. The project will engage Miami residents in creating new approaches to address pressing urban issues including affordable... View full entry
UNSense, a new arch tech startup based in Amsterdam, is being launched by UNStudio. Operating as an independent sister company to UNStudio, the company will explore and develop new integrated tech solutions specifically designed for the built environment. UNSense explores new technologies... View full entry
After 14 years as the Los Angeles Times' resident architecture critic, Christopher Hawthorne is moving on to become chief design officer for the city of Los Angeles. Announced this morning, Hawthorne explained that "beginning next month, [he'll] be working in the mayor's office to raise the... View full entry
This isn't your grandfather's urbanization: population figures in major U.S. cities, which on the whole are on the uptick after declining in the 1960s, are adding residents not to their already built urban cores but rather in the form greenfield sprawl, which makes use of farmland and lightly... View full entry
The Information notes that building a city could allow Sidewalk Labs to “rethink government, social policy, and data-driven management.” [CEO Dan] Doctoroff explained that “thinking about a city from the Internet up is really compelling,” while also noting that “cities are hard. You have people with vested interest, politics, physical space…But the technology ultimately cannot be stopped.” — 9 to 5 Google
Alphabet's Sidewalk Labs joins the rarefied stable of companies potentially looking to expand from an initial service (in this case, improved WiFi access and traffic flow in cities) into a fully-fledged social experimentation machine. Will they build 21st century company towns or create a... View full entry
The complexities of designing at the scale of a city could take years to enumerate, but with Block'hood, a game where players design neighborhoods in various modes of complexity with over 80 pre-set blocks, it takes only minutes to start encountering these challenges first hand. Developed and... View full entry
