328 posts tagged with urban.
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Researchers say that bird species are remarkably segregated.
a portrait of Tenochtitlan
a 3D reconstruction of the capital of the Aztec Empire The year is 1518. Mexico-Tenochtitlan, once an unassuming settlement in the middle of Lake Texcoco, now a bustling metropolis. It is the capital of an empire ruling over, and receiving tribute from, more than 5 million people. Tenochtitlan is home to 200.000 farmers, artisans, merchants, soldiers, priests and aristocrats. At this time, it is one of the largest cities in the world.
Today, we call this city Ciudad de Mexico - Mexico City.
Not much is left of the old Aztec - or Mexica - capital Tenochtitlan. What did this city, raised from the lake bed by hand, look like? Using historical and archeological sources, and the expertise of many, I have tried to faithfully bring this iconic city to life.
The Crane River
The
Crane River winds gently through West London, from the vast concrete bulk of Twickenham Rugby Stadium, past the
shot tower that is the last remnant of the vast gunpowder factory that lasted from 1776 to 1927 (blowing up 55 times), to the sunken Feltham Circles which are one of the few open graffiti walls in London. If you're lucky on your walk you can see seven species of bats, water voles, kingfishers, adders and eels, tawny owls and glow worms or Muntjac deer.
they're almost entirely absent from video games' depictions of reality
Why There's No Room for Suburbs in Open-World Games [Waypoint] [Games by Vice] “The other day I was replaying The Crew 2, driving from Texas to San Francisco in my silver 1955 Mercedes-Benz SLR. After passing through the epic canyons and peaks, I finally arrived at the glistening Pacific. Looking at my GPS, now barely 3 miles away from downtown San Francisco, I was shocked to still be seeing dense redwood forests and not, say, suburban Millbrae. Then in a flash, I was finally amidst skyscrapers. But when I looked in my rearview, there were the redwoods I barely left behind. Booting up GTA V, GTA San Andreas, Saints Row, and Watch Dogs 2, I noticed a similar pattern. We are transported to major cities and vast countrysides, but nothing that really speaks to the in between — to the suburbs. Where is New York’s mighty Westchester County, once ground zero for COVID in those early days? What about Chicago’s burbs where Ferris Bueller went ham?”
How much does the median American ride public transportation each year?
How to save America's public transit systems from a doom spiral - "The only realistic way for transit officials to garner public support for the funding they desperately need is to demonstrate an ability to replace car trips, not just serve economically disadvantaged people who lack other means to get around their city. Otherwise, they forfeit the pro-transit arguments that resonate most with the public: curtailing congestion, reducing auto emissions, and boosting economic growth. And to replace cars, transit agencies must offer fast, frequent, and reliable trips. This should be the core mission of any functional public transportation system..." [more inside]
Toronto Urban Hike Collection
Urban hikes with transit available at the start and endpoints, and which give a feeling of being out of the city [via mefi projects] [more inside]
Parks replace downtown freeways
The U.S. city of the future - "What does the city of the future look like in the USA? Let's take a trip to Any City, USA of the mid 21st century. With a look at the existing situation, current trends, and recent government policy, let's take a look at where we'll work, how we'll get around, and where and who we'll live with in the coming decades." [more inside]
The 33 Coolest Streets in the World, according to TimeOut respondents
Street life is what makes the places we live feel alive. From grand avenues and shopping strips to pedestrianised backstreets and leafy squares, these streets are manageable microcosms of the world’s most exciting cities – each one chock-full of independent businesses, creative humans and everything else that makes urban life brilliant. Ready to take a stroll?
TimeOut asked more than 20,000 people the question: what’s the coolest street in your city?
What takes years and costs $20K? A San Francisco trash can
Why Detroit Residents Pushed Back Against Tree-Planting
Cities and Cities
Why Tokyo Works - "A developed country is not a place where the poor have cars. It's where the rich use public transportation."[1,2,3] (via) [more inside]
Paris is taking space back from cars. Here's how.
The Liberation of Paris From Cars Is Working - "The French capital is quickly cutting automobiles out of daily life. David Belliard is the deputy mayor behind it."[1,2] (previously) [more inside]
The Innovation of Modular Housing: How Buildings Learn Pattern Languages
Apartments Built on an Assembly Line [ungated] - "The pandemic put a general crimp in housing construction, but made a California factory that churns out prefabricated housing extra busy."[1,2] [more inside]
Constructed Worlds, Group Beliefs and Narrative Consciousness
Three Simple Policy Heuristics - "The most important thing to understand is this: Harm ripples, kindness ripples. People you hurt go on to hurt other people. People who are treated with kindness become better people, or more prosperous people, and go on to help others. Yes, there are exceptions (we'll deal with those people), but they are exceptions." (via) [more inside]
NYC’s Street Trees
For the data-loving dendrophiles, NYC Parks has mapped every streetside tree in the city. [more inside]
Toward arcology: making ourselves scarce
The City as a Survival Mechanism: Kim Stanley Robinson - "A future with far more cities, and cities that are asked to do far more." (Bloomberg) [more inside]
suburban retrofitting
The People the Suburbs Were Built for Are Gone. Shayla Love @ Vice.com interviews architecture professors June Williamson and Ellen Dunham-Jones on their new book, Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges. "Since the 1990s, Williamson and Dunham-Jones have been watching the suburbs evolve. They have found that much of the suburban sprawl of the 20th century was built to serve a very different population than the one that exists now, and so preserving what the suburbs once were doesn't make sense." [more inside]
When you don't notice there aren't bugs on your windshield anymore
Insect populations suffering death by 1,000 cuts, say scientists - "'Frightening' global decline is 'tearing apart tapestry of life', with climate crisis a critical concern."[1,2] [more inside]
Inside the New York Public Library’s Last, Secret Apartments
"There used to be parties in the apartments on the top floors of New York City’s branch libraries. " When the Carnegie Libraries were built, the buildings required caretakers, until modernization meant that live-in furnace-minders were no longer needed. Surprisingly for New York City, the apartments were left empty, or used for storage, though with space at a premium, they're starting to be used again.
With fewer tourists to entertain, it has found a much more important use
An empty Paris hotel now shelters the homeless - "In normal times the Hotel Avenir Montmartre is a tourist magnet with its views of the Eiffel Tower and the Sacre Coeur church, but COVID-19 has scared off the usual guests. Instead, the hotel has opened its doors to the homeless." [more inside]
Surrounded by giant slabs of cross-laminated timber
Austrian Wood Providing Answer to World's Concrete Problem - "For Austrian timber merchants, who cover about half the world's CLT demand, the material is a bridge linking the digital age to three centuries of forest management begun by Hapsburg Empress Maria Theresia. She saw Austria's forests as a national-security resource and mandated strict sustainability laws." [more inside]
A Virginia City's Playbook for Urban Renewal: Move Out the Poor
How Norfolk, Virginia Is Using Tax Breaks to Demolish Black Neighborhoods - "Paul Riddick, the only member of Norfolk's eight-member city council to repeatedly vote against aspects of the redevelopment effort, has a different take. 'Because of institutional and systemic racism, the African-American community is going to be pushed out again', he says. 'This is nothing but gentrification'. Riddick, whose ward includes St. Paul's, figures that if the plan goes through, the share of Norfolk's population that is Black will dwindle from more than 40% now into the mid-30% over the next 10 years." [more inside]
Skyscrapers for plants: maybe farm/forest arcologies should be things
Wheat yield potential in controlled-environment vertical farms - "Here we show that wheat grown on a single hectare of land in a 10-layer indoor vertical facility could produce ... 220 to 600 times the current world average annual wheat yield of 3.2 t/ha." (via) [more inside]
A New Vision of Urban Living: The 15-Minute City
How the '15-Minute City' Could Help Post-Pandemic Recovery - "A new C40 Cities report touts Paris's model for putting essentials within close walking or biking distance as an economic boost for coronavirus-ravaged municipal budgets." [more inside]
Why we the people must "dominate the streets."
I've Seen a Future Without Cars, and It's Amazing - "Why do American cities waste so much space on cars?" (previously: 1, 2) [more inside]
Are you hearing unusual levels of fireworks?
A Twitter thread about excessive amounts of fireworks being let off in urban areas all across the United States consistently overnight since the protests began -- with no police response when 911 is called. Is it "black and brown youth letting off steam with stolen high grade fireworks" or a concerted psyops campaign to destabilize troublesome populations?
the built environment: seize the means of recreation
How cities are reshaping streets to prepare for life after lockdown - "Milan is beginning to transform 22 miles of local streets, adding temporary bike lanes and wider sidewalks, and lowering the speed limit. In Berlin, some parking spots have also become pop-up bike lanes. Paris is fast-tracking long-distance bike lanes that connect suburbs to the city center. And in Brussels, on May 4, the city center will become a priority zone for people on bikes and on foot." (previously) [more inside]
Ancient ‘megasites’ may reshape the history of the first cities
Nebelivka, a Ukrainian village of about 700 people, sits amid rolling hills and grassy fields. Here at the edge of Eastern Europe, empty space stretches to the horizon. It wasn’t always so. Beneath the surface of Nebelivka’s surrounding landscape and at nearby archaeological sites, roughly 6,000-year-old remnants of what were possibly some of the world’s first cities are emerging from obscurity. These low-density, spread-out archaeological sites are known as megasites, a term that underscores both their immense size and mysterious origins. Now, some scientists are arguing the settlements represent a distinct form of ancient urban life that has gone largely unrecognized.
Big Up Grime in 2019
2019 marked another chapter or two in the grime story, from pirate radio to mainstream (Channel 4 documentary; Fact Magazine review). Brothers Skepta and Jme, still on their own Boy Better Know label, each released new albums. Skepta's Ignorance is Bliss (YouTube playlist) charted in 15 countries (Wikipedia), while Jme's Grime MC (LP sample on YouTube; Discogs) is currently a physical-only album, charted at #26 on the UK album charts, selling out of most shops, as noted in this Pitchfork review. But the biggest event was probably Stormzy's performance (YouTube, full set) as the first black solo British artist to headline Glastonbury (Guardian) in the festival's roughly four decades (Wikipedia). [more inside]
So here are some New Years 2020 time facts
"If you were born in the 1980s like me, a kid today who’s the age you were in 1990 is a full 30-year generation younger than you. They’ll remember Obama’s presidency the way you remember Reagan’s. 9/11 to them is the moon landing for you. The 90s seem as ancient to them as the 60s seem to you. To you, the 70s are just a little before your time—that’s how they think of the 2000s. They see the 70s how you see the 40s. And the hippy 60s seems as old to them as the Great Depression seems to you."
dissuaded demand?
15 major cities around the world that are starting to ban cars[BI] in an effort to reduce emissions[Bloomberg], speed transit[Vox] and remove deadly vehicles from city streets[Guardian].
Cities Worldwide Are Reimagining Their Relationship With Cars[NYTimes]
Exploring the myths and realities of America’s urban-rural divide
Last year, Citylab presented a six-part series by Richard Florida: The Truth about the Urban-Rural Divide. 1) The Divides Within, and Between, Urban and Rural America -- Economic growth is not only uneven between urban and rural places—it is uneven within them, too. 2) Some Rural Counties Are Seeing a Job Boom, Too -- Economic growth is a mixed bag in urban and rural counties, large and small. 3) Some Rural Areas Are Better for Economic Mobility -- Kids from many rural areas have a better chance at upward mobility than those who grow up in urban areas, but it varies from place to place, and from neighborhood to neighborhood. [more inside]
Green Public Housing Act
“Through a 10-year mobilization of up to $172 billion, the bill would decarbonize and upgrade more than 1 million units of public housing. (To put that in perspective, if those homes formed a single city, it would be the country’s fourth largest—more populous than Houston, slightly smaller than Chicago.) The legislation gives a glimpse of how a Green New Deal could improve lives, attack inequality, and slash emissions. We would know because our think tank, Data for Progress, researched the damn bill.” Green New Deal for Public Housing (The Nation) “ For more details on where new jobs would be created nationally, view our data tables. For more details on where jobs would be created in New York City specifically, see the NYCHA report.” (Data For Progress)
"Perhaps city criticism should be recognized as distinct and necessary"
"Given how long we’ve relied on the work of critics on film, music, food, and much else besides, as well as the ever-increasing relevance of cities in our lives, it’s time we recognised city criticism as its own distinct category of writing. But what is city criticism — or rather, what isn’t it?" 'A way of learning from everything': the rise of the city critic. [more inside]
“It’s such a helpless feeling.”
“ ... thousands of Harvey survivors remain displaced or live in damaged homes. Thousands more relive their trauma with each rain, making mental lists of what to grab if they must evacuate or comforting family members troubled by memories of rising water. And, two years after the storm, residents have been given precious few reasons for optimism. Not in the progress of programs to repair and rebuild flood-damaged housing. Not in projects aimed at lessening the risk of future floods.” Hurricane Harvey, Two Years Later (Houston Chronicle)
A way towards 'reparations': expand housing opportunity (& public goods)
America has a housing segregation problem. Seattle may just have the solution. - "Economist Raj Chetty found the program has 'the largest effect I've ever seen in a social science intervention.'"[1,2] [more inside]
Toronto Tomorrow
A Big Master Plan for Google's Growing Smart City - "Google sibling company Sidewalk Labs has revealed its master plan for the controversial Quayside waterfront development—and it's a lot bigger."[1,2] [more inside]
The Real Estate State
CAPITAL CITY: “Planners provide a window into the practical dynamics of urban change: the way the state both uses and is used by organized capital, and the power of landlords and developers at every level of government." Antifada Podcast: The Housing Monster w/ Samuel Stein of Capital City on the Real Estate State (89:00) 'Places where real estate is cheap don’t have many good jobs. Places with lots of jobs, primarily coastal cities, have seen their real-estate markets go absolutely haywire. " Why Housing Policy Feels Like Generational Warfare (The Atlantic) Grim New Report Shows Rent Is Unaffordable In Every State (Huffpost) Tenants Won This Round: Last week, New York tenants overcame the state's powerful real-estate lobby to win a historic package of renter protections. Next stop: universal rent control. (Jacobin) Berlin backs five-year rent freeze amid housing pressure (BBC) Lessons from Berlin (RTE)
I want to be where the people are
Why US troops ‘flattened’ Raqqa and Mosul, and why it may herald an era of ‘feral city’ warfare. In 2004, Richard J. Norton wrote an influential paper, Feral Cities [US Naval War College Review], in which he defined a "feral city" as a city of more than a million, which no longer was under the rule of law of a larger state, and yet maintained an international level of influence. [more inside]
‘The moment of awakening’
On May 15th, 1919, the country — and the world — watched in astonishment as tens of thousands of workers walked off the job in Winnipeg. They demanded higher pay, better working conditions and the right to bargain collectively. Some 35,000 workers took over the running of Canada's third-largest city for six weeks. The Winnipeg General Strike was one of the most important labour events in Canadian history. “Men who had just returned from a horrific war in Europe could not find employment; factories were shutting down and bankruptcies were a common occurrence. Tens of thousands of people in Winnipeg, Manitoba alone lived in substandard housing, where disease was a deadly reality. Working-class immigrants faced deep divisions along ethnic, linguistic, and religious lines.” Lessons From The Winnipeg General Strike
It Means ‘The Good Land’
“For most of his twenty-four years as mayor, Hoan lacked a sympathetic majority on the city council. But he won over many colleagues by showing it was possible to both expand public services and balance the city’s budget. In 1932, however, voters installed a leftist majority on the council, and Hoan was emboldened. At a time when many cities resorted to violence to intimidate striking employees, Hoan pushed for a law that allowed the mayor to close any factory if the employer refused to negotiate with the workers. He asked Milwaukee’s voters to support municipal ownership of the city’s electric power system and streetcars. They rejected the idea in a referendum, but other cities around the country embraced it.” What Milwaukee Can Teach the Democrats about Socialism
City Killers
“The automobile is the paradoxical example of a luxury object that has been devalued by its own spread. But this practical devaluation has not yet been followed by an ideological devaluation. The myth of the pleasure and benefit of the car persists, though if mass transportation were widespread its superiority would be striking. The persistence of this myth is easily explained. The spread of the private car has displaced mass transportation and altered city planning and housing in such a way that it transfers to the car functions which its own spread has made necessary. An ideological (“cultural”) revolution would be needed to break this circle. Obviously this is not to be expected from the ruling class (either right or left).” The social ideology of the motorcar - André Gorez, 1973. (Uneven Earth)
Even growing in a filthy pond, the white lotus never gets dirty.
In the great inland city of Chongqing in southwest China, as aerial tramways arced overhead and the towers of the wealthy loomed, French filmmaker Hendrick Dusollier documented the Last Days in Shibati (十八梯) slum before it was demolished. [more inside]
So Danish!
Copenhagen Wants to Show How Cities Can Fight Climate Change "Mr. Jensen said mayors, more than national politicians, felt the pressure to take action. “We are directly responsible for our cities and our citizens, and they expect us to act,” he said." NYT By Somini Sengupta Photographs by Charlotte de la Fuente
I won't see that kind of life ever again.
The Floods Are Coming: Climate Refugees in Bangladesh (42½min video) “An estimated 2000 people arrive in Dhaka every day. During monsoon season, the number rises to 4000 a day.”
Life In The High-Rise
“It’s a very different, and more disquieting, achievement to create a high-rise district on a plinth so sealed-off and yachtlike that nobody need ever leave.” On March 15, after 12 years of planning and six of construction, the Related Companies (which is actually just one mammoth real-estate company) will open the gates to its new $25 billion enclave, Hudson Yards -an agglomeration of supertall office towers full of lawyers and hedge-funders, airborne eight-figure apartments, a 720,000-square-foot shopping zone, and a gaggle of star-chef restaurants. Live Blog of the first day of opening by The NYC Eater (start at the bottom) “It is always a little sad to see what the people rich enough to have everything actually want. ” Hudson Yards Is An Ultra-Capitalist Forbidden City “Unlike a real neighborhood, which implies some kind of social collaboration or collective expression of belonging, Hudson Yards is a contrived place that was never meant for us.” Hudson Yards Has $4.5 Billion In Taxpayer Money. Will We Ever See It Again?
All the Bad Things About Uber and Lyft In One Simple List
Streetsblog publishes a compilation of why the current explosion of unlicensed taxis is bad. One nice, easy read summarizing a bunch of things (with links, facts, and figures): vast increase in car driving; increase in new car ownership; >100% "deadheading" (cruising without passengers); cannibalizing transit; political effects; traffic fatalities; data opacity; financial unsustainability.
Change the land, change the world
Civil Eats’ Best Solutions Journalism Stories of 2018 Read about good ideas in food production, management, and distribution from churchland to farmland, expanding co-operative models, Navajo leading the way in expanding traditional foodways, sequesting carbon into farmland, teen-run plant based bakeries, and more.(previously, previously)
The Modernization Sequence, Regional Divergences and Mobility
How to Get Growth in the Places That Need It Most - "The 2017 tax reform law gave the wrong kinds of incentives to help struggling urban areas and regions." (thread) [more inside]