Urban planning

In twenty years, China will have 221 cities of over 1 million people

China and India are two of the most rapidly urbanizing areas of the world. In a fantastically interesting article over at Foreign Policy, Richard Hobbs breaks down the numbers on how big cities will be in both countries by 2030. Hobbs writes: In just two decades, China will have a whopping 44 urban areas boasting…

San Juan Is Getting a $1.5 Billion Transformation Into a Walking City

The government has approved plans for a redesign of this Puerto Rican city, featuring a new mass transit system, new roads and intersections, and more beach access points. The biggest change? No cars allowed inside the city. The plans hope to remedy previous poor urban planning in the oldest section of the city, the Isleta,…

Tech giant Cisco goes into the business of building instant cities in Korea

Cisco is a Silicon Valley company that makes routers, and famously helped generate the “great firewall of China” to aid that country’s government with internet censorship. Now they’re creating an instant, high tech city in Korea, controlled entirely via internet. Searching for a new business model, Cisco has turned to high tech city-building. Their beta…

Urban Renewal, OS 9 Edition

Spotted by a reader outside of Providence, Rhode Island (what isn’t “outside of Providence” in RI, anyway?), some charming little OS-9-themed graffiti on an abandoned nightclub. Wallpaper-sized shots after the jump. From afar, the scene is a little more grim (click for larger version): And seeing it up close makes me wish for a full-length…

Future Paris Is Larger, Glowing

What is the future of Paris? That’s a subject currently under discussion by architects and French President Nicolas Sarkozy, who wants to create a “Grand Paris” even if it includes redrawing the map altogether. Sarkozy’s plan, in the words of the UK Guardian is not to reshape Paris, but rather to extend its inherent beauty…

Star Trek’s Future San Francisco Would Never Get Past The Board Of Supervisors

Most people saw the massive cityscape in the new Star Trek trailer, and drooled. But not San Francisco activists, who’ve battled to keep mega-buildings out. Did Starfleet scrap our zoning laws? They ask. [SFIst]

India’s Walled Cities Resemble Neo-Victorian Enclaves of “The Diamond Age”

It’s as if we’re witnessing the rise of the walled cities in Neal Stephenson’s novel The Diamond Age, where neo-Victorians live in isolated, nanotech splendor while other people live in cardboard boxes. This image shows the stark contrast between the slums and the mini-city called Hamilton Court in Gurgaon, India. Today the New York Times…

The Public Transit Projects that Should Have Been

Urban history is littered with the dead bodies of scrapped public transit projects. When eager commuters and car companies turned the automobile into the most popular form of transit in the world in the twentieth century, many cities set aside plans for expanding their public transit systems, such as the electric tram system planned for…

Train-Sized Drill Eats Through Earth and Concrete

Last month in Leipzig, Germany, the world’s most enormous drill bit emerged from this wall. It was boring a subway tunnel. Want to see the drill up close? Here’s a close-up of the massive drill head. This is one of those moments when it is perfectly appropriate to exclaim: “DUDE!” You may also slap your…

First Look at the Future of the New Orleans Waterfront

A team of architecture firms has released the first sketches of plans to rebuild the New Orleans waterfront. (Final plans will be announced in February.) They include developing trails and buildings a four mile stretch along the Mississippi River, giving people more access to the water and views of its serpentine banks. At the center…

Chicago to Become Bicycler’s Paradise by 2015

The city of Chicago has released a very detailed plan to make the city one of the most bicycle-friendly in the U.S. In their “Bike 2015 Plan,” Chicago city planners propose elevated bike lanes, special maps designed to aid bikers, and a 500-mile bikeway network throughout the city. Their goal is to make 5 percent…

A new campaign wants to rename 42nd Ave. in Portland, OR to Douglas Adams Blvd in honor of the Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy author. The group’s site claims that renaming the street will show Portland’s commitment to the arts and the environment. Insert your own joke here about how this would be a “mostly…

Connections: AT&T’s Vision of the Future (Part 8, 1993)

Part 8 of our 9 part series looking at the 1993 video Connections: AT&T’s Vision of the Future begins with some rather mundane character development and moves into the final resolution of the dispute over a new housing project. "Mountain Climbing Bear" also makes a cameo. It’s noteworthy that we don’t get to see the…