Anyone who’s spent time in a city in the summer knows that these bastions of blacktop get uncomfortably hot compared with the surrounding countryside. But even within a city’s bounds, some neighborhoods swelter more than others, and that can have a big effect on who’s most threatened by heatwaves. Which is why citizen…
In a way, cities are giant science labs, providing an environment for organisms that’s unlike anywhere else on the planet. Even though cities have been around for thousands of years, the way that humans are urbanizing our planet in recent decades has become radically transformative for entire ecosystems. Urban living…
In another stunning display of its might, Amazon will be transforming an old post office building into a new Amazon office building. Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau just announced that the Seattle-based online retailer will open a new tech hub on the site of a historic Canada Post building in Vancouver. The…
Climate change could make drought a way of life in certain parts of the world. Though the prospect of “Day Zero” in Cape Town is being staved off, it’s far from the only city to suffer through a water crisis right now.
There’s a new trend sweeping the nation—the world actually—and it’s called plogging. No, not blogging on platforms (that “plogging” came and went three years ago) but running while picking up trash. Plogging comes from the Swedish phrase “plocka upp,” which means to pick up, and publications from The Washington Post…
Growing up around Washington, D.C., it’s a relief to now live in a city laid out in a coherent fashion, with numbered streets increasing along a cardinal directional axis and being intersected at sensible right angles. Which is why it pains me to say that physics brings some bad news for my fellow gridded…
After what felt like five years of mayoral begging and media gimmicks, we finally know the top 20 finalists in the brutal battle for Amazon’s second headquarters. The cities are about as predictable as you’d think. Basically, all the big ones.
When you’re in a major city, it can be easy to forget about the outside world. But city life is not a hermetic experience—in fact, the environmental footprints of cities can stretch around the world. A new study shows that cities are overlooking a major source of emissions as they craft policies to transition toward a…
When humans settled into larger villages and towns some 12,000 years ago along with the advance of agriculture, wildlife took advantage. Those species “preadapted” to survive in early cities, including mice and rats, grabbed onto the coattails of modern civilization and haven’t looked back since. Now they pretty much…
In the latest example of “Philip K Dick-inspired nightmare becomes real life,” Saudi Arabia just became the first nation to grant citizenship to a robot. The robot’s name is Sophia. It is artificially intelligent, friends with CNBC’s Andrew Ross Sorkin, and, arguably, a glimpse into the dark future that will kill us…
If you’ve ridden the New York City subway, you know the feeling. You buy a flimsy plastic card that lets you ride the train, and when you try to swipe it at the turnstile, it doesn’t work. You swipe again. The machine asks you to swipe again. You swipe again. The machine asks you to swipe again at the same turnstile.…
A so-called “fatberg”—a tightly congealed mass of fat, wet wipes, diapers, and condoms—is blocking a section of London’s Victorian-era sewage network. It could take weeks for utility crews to remove the horrific mass, which, if not removed, could cause raw sewage to spill onto London’s streets.
Jeff Bezos and friends are on a bit of a spending spree. Amazon just announced that it’s looking to drop a cool $5 billion on a “second headquarters” that will employ as many as 50,000 workers. In characteristically splashy fashion, the company also announced that cities across North America will get to bid on the…
In Julius Horsthuis’ short film Recurrence, he takes the audience on a slow descent into a sprawling metropolis he’s created. But as you get closer and closer to the city, and try to make out details like houses and skyscrapers, you start to realize that those tiny details only reveal more of the same, and that your…
Some Dubai residents woke up to a familiar sight early Friday morning: flames engulfing an enormous skyscraper. In fact, the fire that spanned 50 of the 86 stories of the massive Torch Tower was all too familiar. The same skyscraper burned in 2015, and the causes appear to be related.
When the world is descending into chaos, it can be hard to believe that optimistic visions of the future are within our reach. But personally, I think I’ve hit that point where escapist fantasy worlds of tomorrow are the only thing that can ease the stresses of our modern world. This 1923 illustration, for instance,…
Few cities represent the remarkable 20th century trend of skyscraper-filled, obscenely dense cities better than Hong Kong. At its height, The Kowloon Walled City, which was demolished in 1993, was perhaps the most dystopian portrait of urban living. And according to photographer Andy Yeung, 21st-century Hong Kong…
The more I learn about Elon Musk’s Boring Project—a batshit idea to build a tunnel that sends cars at breakneck speeds under Los Angeles—the more I want to take a ride. The twisted genius just posted video of a test sled zooming through a test tunnel. Holy shit, it’s like going into hyperspeed, and I want to ride! And…
