Urban Reads

Houston struggles to save the Astrodome, London vows to make biking safer, L.A. sees light rail successes, and San Francisco mounts a shitty campaign for its sewers. It’s Christmastime in the city for this week’s urban reads. The blind Vancouver artist Carmen Papalia leads “Blind Field Shuttle” walking tours through cities so residents can discover…

San Francisco’s tech companies are bringing it down, L.A.’s having trouble growing up, plus sexy cabbies, vertical cemeteries, Bloomberg’s next act, and much, much more in this week’s Urban Reads. Michael Bloomberg is starting an urban think tank and taking most of his City Hall team with him [New York Times] The 60-year-old theory that…

Miami’s starchitect magnet, “Super Zips” for the rich, the real story behind our city-dwelling squirrels, and why Americans are driving less. Plus, a chilling portrait of homelessness in gentrified New York City—all in today’s urban reads. Once an urban punchline, Miami has become a hotbed for luxury, culture and dozens of starchitect-helmed projects dotting the…

Driving is slowly killing us, a freeway expansion uncovers geological treasures, Londoners protest the city’s poor cycling conditions, what dive bar bathrooms can tell us about our neighborhood, and a quick look at San Francisco’s real underground (not BART). All in this week’s urban reads. Can inner-city farms, pocket parks, and urban orchards really save…

Driverless cars as life savers, pigeons as pedestrians, lip readers as crime stoppers, and alcoholics as city employees. These are just a few of the urban reads on our radar this week. “Every year we delay this, more people die”: On Google’s driverless car [New Yorker] The city of Santa Monica is developing a “well-being…

This week: Why we need real neighborhoods! Keeping L.A.’s transit momentum alive! Americans may have reached “peak car”! Daylighting rivers! And a ghost town you can call your very own! What’s the role of the neighborhood in today’s globalized city? Tom Vanderbilt explores why we still need a sense of belonging somewhere local [Wilson Quarterly…

Redrawing America’s political boundaries in two different ways, a tour of Hong Kong’s outdoor escalators, the race to build bigger bike share programs, and a devastating typhoon. Let’s start the week off right with some nice urban reads. 10,000 people are feared dead after one of the most powerful typhoons ever to make landfall devastates…

You want urban reads? We got your urban reads right here. On this November day: Icelandic elves, Lou Reed, the lost & found art of walking, what “smart city” really means, and an adorable dancing traffic cop. Icelanders still believe in invisible elves—which is very good for the environment [The Atlantic] Part of the English…

Start your week off right with these excellent stories from the urban world. This week: baseball economics, a ghastly smelling tour, Canadian sewers, radical policing tactics, and more. Why World Series tickets cost 81 percent more in Boston than they do in St. Louis. [Next City] “30 million people in the American West depend on…