A new plan for U.S. transportation! California tries to fix its water crisis! An ugly building with good politics in Philly! Plus, Italy’s boyish new leader and a walking tour of “crushingly boring” Silicon Valley! It’s all in this week’s best Urban Reads.
Obama unveiled a new transportation and infrastructure plan last week. Now he should raise the gas tax to pay for it [Grist]
2026: That’s the year we’ll all have autonomous cars, according to Morgan Stanley [Slate]
Alexis Madrigal travels throughout California to get a first-hand look at the state’s audacious new plan to gain water independence [The Atlantic]
Italy’s new prime minister is sworn in: 39-year-old Matteo Renzi [The Guardian]
Detroit’s long history as a glass manufacturing city may help its rebirth [Jaunt]
Can L.A.’s wacky Hayden Tract, currently a whimsical office park that’s largely the vision of a single designer and developer, ever be more than an architectural folly? [Curbed LA]
“As a human landscape, it’s a crushingly boring sunny suburban slab of freeways, fast food, traffic, and long smoggy boulevards of faded retail sprawling out to endless housing developments of sand-colored stucco boxes.” A walking tour of Silicon Valley [Gawker]
How Google is slowly but surely taking over the city of Mountain View: They even just bought an airport [The Verge]
Good urbanism, bad architecture: A new Mormon church development in Philadelphia achieves its civic goals, but it’s horrifically ugly [The Inquirer]
Suck it Leo DiCaprio: Ed Begley Jr. took the subway to the Oscars last night [A Walker in LA]
Opening image courtesy Emmanuel Lubezki—who won Best Cinematographer for Gravity last night—and who you can follow on Instagram. Got a photo of your own you’d like us to use in our next link round-up? Tag it #gizmodocities and we’ll be in touch if we want to post.
