Beijing will suspend construction of major public projects in the city this winter in an effort to improve the capital’s notorious air quality, official media said on Sunday, citing the municipal commission of housing and urban-rural development.
All construction of road and water projects, as well as demolition of housing, will be banned from Nov. 15 to March 15 within the city’s six major districts and surrounding suburbs, said the Xinhua report.
— Reuters
"China is in the fourth year of a 'war on pollution,'" Reuters reports, "designed to reverse the damage done by decades of untrammelled economic growth and allay concerns that hazardous smog and widespread water and soil contamination are causing hundreds of thousands of early deaths every year." View full entry
The American Medical Association (AMA) has just adopted an official policy statement about street lighting: cool it and dim it.
The statement, adopted unanimously at the AMA's annual meeting in Chicago on June 14, comes in response to the rise of new LED street lighting sweeping the country. An AMA committee issued guidelines on how communities can choose LED streetlights to "minimize potential harmful human health and environmental effects."
— CNN
There are two basic issues at hand. First, new, "white" LED lighting, which have a color temperature of between 4000K and 5000K, can cause discomfort and glare. This is because the light is concentrate and has high blue content, which can cause severe glare and force pupillary constriction... View full entry
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
According to the L.A. Times, “No official plan has been drafted and details are scant, but [L.A. City Council President Herb] Wesson said he was ‘unbelievably excited’ about the idea, arguing it could pave the way to convert other local drilling sites.”But converting the site — which is... View full entry
The wide-ranging efforts include improving indoor air quality and even increasing activity levels of building occupants. Allen and colleagues at the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health have defined nine foundations for healthier buildings, such as better water quality, reducing noise, regulating temperature, and maximizing light. — National Geographic
As part of the Urban Expeditions series, Brian Howard explored some of the latest trends in green design, which go far beyond energy and water efficiency to issues of public health/wellness. View full entry
When the Government Hospital for the Insane opened in Anacostia in 1855, the asylum’s supervising physician, Charles Nichols, predicted that 50 percent of the mentally ill people treated there would make a full recovery. What made him so confident? The building. He’d designed it in accordance with the most cutting-edge theories of the day, which called for sunny, well-ventilated asylums in the countryside — the Washington Post
The "Architecture of an Asylum: St. Elizabeth's 1852-2017" is a new exhibit opening at the National Building Museum this weekend. It looks at past theories that contended that design could have a major and healing effect on mental illness. Fresh air was encouraged, as was scattering... View full entry
The worst flooding in two decades has struck Peru, causing a death toll of 72 people since the beginning of the year. The floods are caused by a series of “highly unusual rains” produced by the warming of surface waters along the country’s northern coasts. The waters have inundated hospitals... View full entry
“More and more people are living and working in high-rises and office blocks, but the true impact of vibrations on them is currently very poorly understood,” states Alex Pavic, Professor of Vibration Engineering at the University of Exeter.“Humans spend 90 per cent of their lives in... View full entry
Birds fly in and out of the eight-storey "Green Office Building" in Shenzhen, China, because a third of its walls are completely open to the air. It's a clever natural design that enables the building to stay cool without air conditioners.
Across town, in a vast campus known as the "Low Carbon Park", mist is sprayed into the air to cool the streets down and remove dust.
— The BBC
Experiments like these are appearing across China's cities, as part of a devolution of power designed to clean up smoggy air and meet energy targets to tackle climate change. View full entry
According to reportedly baffled researchers at the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, asbestos-related medical issues continue to plague younger people despite widespread efforts to reduce exposure.While the largest increases in deaths related to malignant mesothelioma were witnessed... View full entry
Perkins+Will have released a white paper that recommends avoiding including antimicrobial products in buildings. “Antimicrobial building products marketed as ‘healthy’ or beneficial to human health contain ingredients that may have adverse environmental or human health impacts, and... View full entry
“To work on architecture for culture and health is a social commitment during these challenging times,” states Steven Holl. His proposal for a new Cultural and Health Center in Shanghai has just received approval. Comprising two buildings set in a public landscape, the project is intended to... View full entry
The Chinese capital issued its highest red fog alert for a second day on Wednesday, keeping highways closed in and around the city which is already under a smog alert after weeks of choking winter pollution.
China's weather bureau warned of visibility of less than 50 meters in some areas, leading many airports to cancel flights.
— Reuters
Air pollution is one of the most significant public health issues facing major cities around the world. Find out more here:Working indoors not enough to protect you from air pollution, according to new studyThese are the most-polluted cities in the USReducing Turin's smog with free public... View full entry
Tens of thousands of “smog refugees” have reportedly fled China’s pollution-stricken north after the country was hit by its latest “airpocalyse” forcing almost half a billion people to live under a blanket of toxic fumes.
Huge swaths of north and central China have been living under a pollution “red alert” since last Friday when a dangerous cocktail of pollutants transformed the skies into a yellow and charcoal-tinted haze.
— the Guardian
According to Greenpeace, the total number of afflicted people equals the populations of the United States, Canada and Mexico combined.Air pollution is a major problem that affects nearly every city in the world. Find out more here:Working indoors not enough to protect you from air pollution... View full entry
One good thing to come of the substitution of a hospital serving the whole downtown community with homogenous housing for the wealthy is St. Vincent’s Triangle Park, [...] home to the nearly completed New York City AIDS Memorial [...]
Real estate plays an outsize role in most New York stories. In the story of AIDS, it has become crucial to understanding both the way that the city handled, or mishandled, the crisis in its early days and the way that the crisis forever marked the city in return.
— New Yorker
To mark the opening of the new New York City AIDS Memorial designed by Studio ai, Alexandra Schwartz reflects on the complicated relationship between the epidemic, the gay activist community, and real estate."The disease started charting its course through the city just as the bearish real-estate... View full entry
In an effort to curb air pollution, the city council of Paris has approved a controversial plan to pedestrianize the 3.3 km road that runs along the Right Bank of the Seine River. Stretching from the Tuileries Gardens to the Henri-IV tunnel near the Bastille, the road is currently used by some... View full entry
