The state government will audit the use and ban the supply of the potentially flammable building cladding that led to London's deadly Grenfell Tower inferno, in what it styles as Australia's toughest fire safety reforms. [...]

Better Regulation Minister Matt Kean said the government had undertaken an audit sample of about 180,000 residential and commercial towers constructed in NSW since the 1980s.

About 1000 of those buildings "may have [unsafe] cladding", the Minister said. — The Sydney Morning Herald

Eighty-two buildings have failed a new fire safety test set up in the wake of the Grenfell Tower fire, ministers say.
The test examines the safety of building cladding and insulation in combination.
It comes as an independent review of building regulations and fire safety has also been announced by the government.
It will look at current building regulations and fire safety, focusing on high-rise residential buildings. — BBC

Sentinel Peak Resources, which took over the roughly 1.1-acre site in December, now believes that affordable housing is the “best beneficial use” for the land [...] Neighborhood leaders said they were interested in closing and re-purposing the site, but are awaiting more details. They stressed that regardless of any plans, they still want the city to pursue their concerns about violations at the site, which Sentinel Peak Resources has so far brushed off. — Los Angeles Times

A mass shooting scenario changes the function of every object in the built environment. [...]

The buildings themselves, the fabric of the city, ends up not mattering so much. In fact, sometimes it becomes a kind of enemy. [...]

Americans aren’t going to rebuild their cities to accommodate the possibility of violence. The people who protect the people in those cities will just have to learn to see them differently. — wired.com

Transportation Secretary Anthony Foxx said Tuesday he seriously considered ordering a shutdown of the entire Washington Metro subway system last week and may still do that if local officials don't follow Transportation Department safety directives.

"We have the ability to withhold (federal) funds from Metro. We have the ability to shut Metro down, and we're not afraid to use the authority we have," Foxx said told reporters. "This is serious business." — AP

Eleven people died while working on Olympic facilities or Games-related projects between January 2013 and March 2016, according to a report released Monday by Rio de Janeiro's Regional Labor and Employment Office.

The report, released by Elaine Castilho, the auditor for the Rio Olympic Games works, also notes that no workers died in the preparations for the 2012 Summer Games in London. — ESPN

The Landmarks Preservation Commission is set to consider a proposed $190 million renovation to the Ford Foundation...Although many aspects of the building have long been outdated...it is health and safety, not aesthetics or technology, that initially drove the foundation’s plans. The city has given Ford until 2019 to bring the building up to code for fire safety and handicapped accessibility... — Curbed

This month marks the 30th anniversary of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster. On April 26, 1986, technicians conducting a test inadvertently caused reactor number four to explode...

Reuters reports that a huge recently-completed enclosure called the New Safe Confinement—the world's largest land-based moving structure—will be “pulled slowly over the site later this year to create a steel-clad casement to block radiation and allow the remains of the reactor to be dismantled safely.” — The Atlantic

As cranes have grown in height and girth, the controls to operate them have intensified in number and complexity...the crane units in use these days have libraries of intricate manuals, packed with details...some operators may not have time to fully understand or read completely. Same goes for the maintenance team. When something does go wrong with such large machines...the 'mess and carnage' gets magnified. — Popular Mechanics

Taiwan's Government has ordered an investigation into the collapse of a high-rise building in an earthquake after it emerged tin cans had been used in its construction.

Rescue workers found the cans as they searched for survivors two days after the 6.4-magnitude earthquake that has killed at least 37 people. — independent.co.uk

In an interview with The Times, Dame Zaha Hadid said that the Qataris “should do something” about the issue of migrant workers. [...]

“I’m not a defender of the Qatari situation, but it’s important to get the facts right and then we can discuss it. I’m very happy that the press make the government aware of problems on certain sites. But it doesn’t apply to this site.” — designmena.com

The companies that made and installed the exterior panels on The Address Downtown Dubai hotel say that most of the towers built in the city prior to 2012 used non-fire-rated exterior cladding.

The disclosure comes as investigators probe the causes of the spectacular blaze [...] on New Year’s Eve.

An investigation by The National into the origins and specification of the exterior panels used on the building raises serious questions over the fire safety of hundreds of buildings. — thenational.ae

China has detailed its urban planning vision, which has been designed to make its sprawling cities more inclusive, safer and better places to live.

[...] policymakers pledged to transform urban development patterns and improve city management.

The last time China held such a high-level meeting was in 1978, when only 18 percent of the population lived in cities. By the end of 2011, in excess of 50 percent of the population called the city their home. — chinadaily.com.cn