urbanism

The Rise of the Aerial Commuter: When Will We All Be Flying to Work?

Last month, a blog post by Sam Cookney captured the imagination of anyone who pays a little too much money for the convenience of living near work. He reasoned that, for the same price he paid for his one-bedroom London flat, he could live in a three-bedroom flat near the beach in Barcelona and fly…

The WTC’s Security Center Will be Topped By an Elevated Park

As the NYPD and the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey iron out the final plans for the World Trade Center site, new details are emerging—including this week’s news that the roof of the site’s vehicle security checkpoint at the WTC will be occupied by a lovely elevated park. The big reveal wasn’t…

The world beneath the sidewalk

There’s an entire world under your feet, saturated by colors out of space and patrolled by colonies of bandit animals. Once in a while, you are able to visit. Here is what it looks like. In today’s issue of San Francisco’s Bold Italic, there is a terrific photo essay about the city’s underground spaces. Some…

A Photographic Journey Down The Old Industrial Banks of the Thames

After the Thames River weaves eastward through London, it widens into an industrial landscape of factories sretching out into the English Channel. London-based photographer Alice Gur-Arie has documented this landscape in her series Passages: Industry on the River Thames, a collection of beautiful black and white photographs depicting the hulking structures that rely on the…

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…

A Fake Slum for Luxury Tourists Who Don’t Want to See Real Poverty

It’s estimated that one in eight people worldwide live in so-called slums, which, in some cities, makes visiting these informally maintained neighborhoods unavoidable. Although controversial, the practice of “slum tourism” has become a popular way for tourists to engage with poverty on a personal level. But why go visit an actual slum when you can…

An Army of the Deaf Watches Surveillance Cameras in Mexico

Security camera footage makes some pretty boring TV. There’s no sound, so you don’t know what people are saying, and it’s tough to read body language out of context. But that’s exactly what makes deaf people the perfect workforce for interpreting the footage. In Oaxaca, Mexico, they’re called “Angels of Silence.” The capital city in…

Zombie Towers: 5 Vacant or Foreclosed Skyscrapers Across the U.S.

Tall buildings are economic bellwethers: Evidence suggests they tend to rise just before recessions, and they’re the first to proverbially fall when the bubble bursts. Nowhere is that more obvious than mid-sized American cities. https://gizmodo.com/could-chinas-new-skyscrapers-really-predict-an-economi-1092416908 This week, light was shed on the half-vacant status of One World Trade (which joins the sorta-empty London Shard). But…

Graffiti Removal, Coke, Vaginas: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week

Graffiti we’re going to miss, more cokehead politicians, doomed vagina stadiums, and your weekly Rob Ford report. It’s time to check in once again to see What’s Ruining Our Cities. The absence of graffiti is ruining Long Island City RIP 5Pointz, the tagged-up abandoned building in New York’s Long Island City neighborhood that’s become a…

The Most Unbelievable Part of The Circle? The Architecture.

Dave Eggers’ new book The Circle is a creepy tale about a tech company—which is proving to be annoying to people who actually work in tech. It’s also overhyped and may have even ripped off another Silicon Valley story. But there’s one thing Eggers gets the most wrong in The Circle, according to design critic…

Tokyo’s Newest Cafe Rents Out Naps to Women On the Go

With women languidly stretched out across Tokyo’s newest cafe’s stock of pay-by-the-minute beds, you could hardly be blamed for assuming something a little more lascivious is going on. But that’s not what Nap Cafe Corne is about. Women come to this particular spot for the one thing every working girl craves—shut-eye. Japan is certainly no…

Screw Salt, Wisconsin Is De-Icing Its Roads With Cheese Brine

Life handed Wisconsin lemons, and Wisconsin has come right back with the cheesiest lemonade you ever did see. Instead of spending thousands of dollars to dispose of cheese brine every year, Wisconsin will be putting that liquid provolone gold right back to use by pouring it onto the roads—which, in turn, is making them safer…

How to Build Los Angeles in 2094 A.D.

One can never have too many post-apocalyptic visions of Los Angeles, right? This future L.A. is better known as Mega-City Two, a late 21st-century megalopolis that comes to us thanks to a new Judge Dredd comic, Mega-City Two: City of Courts, which hits shelves in January 2014. Like Chris Burden’s Metropolis II sculpture crossed with…

Can Saying “People on Bikes” Instead of “Cyclists” Make Biking Safer?

A few years ago, I bought a bright orange city bike, which I chose because it allowed me to sit up as I rode. A few times a week, I wear my regular clothes—mostly dresses—to go to meetings, run errands or ride on the bike path by my house. I don’t own any padded shorts.…

The Ace Hotel’s Founder Left Behind a Legacy of Building Neighborhoods

Last Friday, Ace Hotel founder Alex Calderwood was found dead in London, where the chain had just opened its fifth location. He’s being remembered today as a design visionary, the leader of a cultural phenomenon. But his role was also that of a city-builder, reaching far outside hotel walls to build community and instill a…

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…

Bird Shit, Hipsters, and Driving: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week

Pooping birds, overflowing trash cans, radioactive poisoning, too much driving, and those goddamn hipsters again. Welcome to another edition of What’s Ruining Our Cities. Bird poop is ruining Rome The benches and sidewalks along the Tiber River in Rome are covered in bird shit from thousands of starlings migrating to Africa. Because the birds love…

A Self-Driving Mini Cooper Submarine for Commuting on the L.A. River

You’re late for a meeting in downtown Los Angeles and you’re still all the way over in Burbank—13 miles and 45 stop-and-go minutes away by freeway. Instead, you walk a few blocks to the Los Angeles River, where you board a stylish pod-like watercraft. Soon, you’re zipping down the river channel, faster than any vehicle…

Currently in its third and final phase of construction,New York City’s High Line unveiledtoday what looks like a giant green bowl, but has been officially dubbed the Spur. This salad bowl for the masses, shown in renderings by James Corner Field Operations and Diller Scofidio + Renfro, will offer stadium seating in addition to some…

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…