“What hides behind the literary aspect of this report are deep reflections on the lessons, errors, approaches and paths of China’s previous urbanizations efforts,” concluded an editorial in the newspaper Southern Metropolis Daily. The state-controlled People’s Daily gushed: “If we want high rises, we even more need the fresh mountain waters. Only by seeing the past can we grasp the future.” — qz.com

[The Catskills] could become a lot flashier, thanks to [Sherry Li's] proposal for the area: a multibillion-dollar "China City of America," complete with an amusement park, mansions, a casino, retail centers, a college, and more. [...]

The Center for Immigration Studies wrote a comprehensive take-down of "China City," criticizing the project's potential for environmental disruption, dubious promise of job creation, and possible role as a stalking horse for the Chinese government. — The Atlantic Cities

The latest market opportunity for entrepreneurs in China? Polluted air. For nearly as long as pollution has been a salient, public issue in the country, foreigners and locals have been devising ways to help residents avoid the worst of smog—and in some cases make a little money in the process. Here are some of the most notable ones. — qz.com

Kate Orff wants to grow oysters in New York’s Jamaica Bay. Not for you to eat, but to save the shore from mighty storms. Great piles of mollusks will diffuse the energy of 10-to-15-foot waves, like those from Sandy that shattered boardwalks and beach homes and shot like missiles up city streets. — bloomberg.com

By century's end, rising sea levels will turn the nation's urban fantasyland into an American Atlantis. But long before the city is completely underwater, chaos will begin — rollingstone.com

From the very first, the Vietnam Memorial, it was about being extremely site-specific and site-sensitive, creating something that merged with the land around it. But much more so in the last decade or two decades, my artwork has focused on making you aware of things in the natural world that we might not be aware of. What’s invisible we tend not to think about, so I’ve made sculptures that reveal the terrain below sea level. — style.time.com

More than 50 students will attempt to break the nationwide record of 1,655 boxes, currently held by BYU

The battle to build the world’s largest cardboard structure has been an ongoing rivalry between three schools: UNLV, Harvard University, and BYU.

UNLV students have been preparing for weeks to manipulate the cardboard into realistic architectural concepts, using lessons learned in a fundamentals of design course. — news.unlv.edu

The red began appearing in the Yangtze, the longest and largest river in China and the third longest river in the world, yesterday near the city of Chongquing, where the Yangtze connects to the Jialin River... and officials have no idea why. — abcnews.go.com

The report, entitled The Greenest Building: Quantifying the Environmental Value of Building Reuse, has been said to provide the most comprehensive analysis of the potential environmental benefit of building reuse to date. Most notably, it concludes that, when comparing buildings of equivalent size and function, building reuse almost always offers environmental savings over demolition and new construction. — earthtechling.com

A coalition of environmental activists and community advocates has mounted the first major legal challenge to a planned downtown [Gensler-designed] Los Angeles NFL stadium, filing a suit Thursday that says a state law intended to assist the project is unconstitutional. — latimesblogs.latimes.com

Dawson City spent more than $600,000 last year dealing with damage to roads and pipes caused by melting permafrost.

A recently-published report says the shifting ground, a result of climate change, can do a lot of damage to infrastructure such as water and sewer systems. — cbc.ca

Green building does not always require the latest in smart grid technology, solar panels, expensive recycled materials or the manipulation of Leed scores for environmental design in the same way students study tactically for standardised university examinations. Architects and designers across the globe are channelling their ancestors and creating building plans that maximise air flow, mitigate their impact on the local environment and offer comfort to residents and workers. — guardian.co.uk

Ms. Lin conceived "What Is Missing?" as the fifth, and last, of her memorial projects, which began with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial built on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., in 1982. — post-gazette.com

Fred Chambers, an Associate Professor of Geography and Environmental Sciences at the University of Colorado, is studying what he calls "ghost town climatology," or the declining temperature of a region as it is abandoned by human activity. He describes it as "a reverse urban heat island effect." — bldgblog.blogspot.com