Lotte World Mall has finally received approval by the Seoul city government to open up its aquarium and movie theater, five months after the facilities were shut down due to safety concerns. [...]

Lotte World Mall has been embroiled in several safety issues since it opened its doors in October. Several construction workers fell to their deaths during the construction of the annexed skyscraper [...]. — Korea JoongAng Daily

Most buildings in the country today use the minimum structural safety standards that the government has prescribed, say building safety experts and structural engineers.

"Our codes offer the lowest level of earthquake safety protection. We are designing for one-fifth the intensity that might hit a particular earthquake zone," says Sangeeta Waj, technical director at global design firm AECOM.

Experts however point out that there is no separate code in India for high rise buildings. — The Economic Times

From time to time, our Omnibus columnists check in to provide commentary on issues of design, policy, and history and their impact on the life and form of the city today. Stephen Rustow’s first column scaled the heights of New York’s skyscrapers to consider “The Privatization of Prospect.” Here, in his second installment, Rustow looks at three intangible forces that greatly influence the shape of our built environment: zoning, finance, and the building code. — urbanomnibus.net

The Fire, Buildings and City Planning Departments are writing rules to govern what are called occupant-evacuation elevators — cars that can, in special circumstances, be used to move people down in an emergency. [...]

Experts who have spent years studying building evacuations believe that approach has become outmoded and is in itself potentially dangerous as extremely tall skyscrapers increasingly pierce the New York skyline. — nytimes.com

Sen. Carol Liu on Wednesday announced a bill, SB 192, that will require bicycle riders to wear helmets or face a $25 fine.

“Any responsible bicycle rider should wear a helmet,” Liu said ... “This law will help protect more people and make sure all riders benefit from the head protection that a helmet provides.” — sacbee.com

By shutting down New York City’s subways, commuter rail, and roads for this week’s storm-that-wasn’t, Governor Andrew Cuomo and the state-run Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) made the right call. [...]

The city has learned the hard way that the best way to keep people off the streets is by shutting down mass transit. [...]

Preemptively shutting down subways before Hurricane Irene in 2011 and Superstorm Sandy in 2012 worked well in keeping people home. — city-journal.org

Earlier this week we reported on Tulsa Mayor Dewey Bartlett’s decision to prevent construction of a sidewalk on Riverside Drive that would provide walking access to a major new city park. Local advocates say the lack of a sidewalk will make the park harder to get to on foot, and they don’t buy the mayor’s explanation that people will be safer if there’s no sidewalk tempting them to walk. — usa.streetsblog.org

In fact, as many as 600 million birds die in window collisions in the U.S. and Canada every year, scientists estimate. [...]

A growing awareness of the threats to bird populations has prompted new laws and voluntary guidelines in cities from Toronto to San Francisco. Along with "green" building programs, these new rules are spurring demand for bird-friendly glass among architects, glass manufacturers, and their clients. — news.nationalgeographic.com

SketchFactor ... is a Manhattan-based navigation app that crowdsources user experiences along with publicly available data to rate the relative "sketchiness" of certain areas in major cities. [...]

The founders are also bracing for potential complications from an app that asks anonymous users to judge a neighborhood's sketchiness. After all, fear can be subjective. And the site could be vulnerable to criticisms regarding the degree to which race is used to profile a neighborhood. — crainsnewyork.com

If liberal cultural and educational institutions are to operate with any integrity in that environment, they must insist on a change of the rules: abolish the recruitment debt system, pay a living wage, allow workers to change employers at will and legalize the right to collective bargaining. Otherwise, their gulf paymasters will go on cherry-picking from the globalization menu [...] while spurning the social contract that protects basic human rights. — nytimes.com

"Ai Weiwei, who helped design the Bird’s Nest stadium in Beijing, stayed away from the opening ceremonies because he said he wanted his building to represent freedom, not be a trophy for an autocratic regime uninterested in change." — hyperallergic.com

"I have nothing to do with the workers," said Hadid. "I think that's an issue the government – if there's a problem – should pick up. Hopefully, these things will be resolved."

Asked if she was concerned, Hadid added: "Yes, but I'm more concerned about the deaths in Iraq as well, so what do I do about that? I'm not taking it lightly but I think it's for the government to look to take care of. It's not my duty as an architect to look at it. — theguardian.com

The organising committee for the Qatar 2022 World Cup has promised that contractors who build its stadiums will be held to high standards on the welfare of migrant workers, in the wake of trenchant and sustained criticism.

But the promises, made after demands for a progress update from football's governing body Fifa, do not deal with wider concerns about workers engaged in the £137bn construction boom underpinning World Cup infrastructure. — Guardian