Entrapped Spaces

Designer Thor ter Kulve turns city fixtures into instant...

Tue, 11 Jun 2013 10:32:04 -0400

Designer Thor ter Kulve turns city fixtures into instant playgrounds.

How to Save Water-Starved Cities

Fri, 17 May 2013 11:30:30 -0400

How to Save Water-Starved Cities:

“A shared problem deserves a shared solution”

Designing a New Town Square for Our Crowded Urban Future With...

Wed, 08 May 2013 11:30:39 -0400

Designing a New Town Square for Our Crowded Urban Future

With most of the world living in cities, urban space is going to be at a premium, so we need to design ingenious and important ways to create public gathering spaces. But we can’t just copy the High Line everywhere.

How the Decline of the Traditional Workplace Is Changing Our Cities

Wed, 01 May 2013 11:30:45 -0400

How the Decline of the Traditional Workplace Is Changing Our Cities:

“For decades, cities have reflected the neat separation of work and home, with residences in one part of town, offices and industry in another, and infrastructure (highways, parking garages, hub-and-spoke transit systems) built to help connect us between the two around what has been for many people a 9-to-5 work day. But what happens when more people start to work outside of offices, or really anywhere – at all times?”

Taking its name from an era-appropriate Sonic Youth album, the...

Mon, 01 Apr 2013 10:00:46 -0400

Taking its name from an era-appropriate Sonic Youth album, the New Museum exhibit NYC 1993: Experimental Jet Set, Trash, and No Star celebrates the chaotic energy and culture of New York in 1993. In order to promote the exhibit as a conduit to the recent past, agency Droga5 arranged for 5,000 of the city’s pay phones to be equipped with bits of location-specific history from some of the people who lived it.

1993 was 20 years ago??

Fast Company

Seeing as megacities such as New York, London, Beijing, Mumbai,...

Fri, 29 Mar 2013 11:30:39 -0400

Seeing as megacities such as New York, London, Beijing, Mumbai, and Mexico City can only grow so much, most of the urban growth will take place in smaller cities. The WWF predicts that the highest growth rate of 4.19 percent will occur in cities with fewer than one million residents.

Photo

Wed, 20 Mar 2013 10:00:55 -0400

“Today [2012], Mumbai has the same number of people as the...

Mon, 18 Mar 2013 10:00:41 -0400

“Today [2012], Mumbai has the same number of people as the whole of London living in slum conditions.”

-Urbanized

"Defining sprawl is a little bit like defining pornography; you know it when you see it."

Fri, 15 Mar 2013 10:00:50 -0400

“Defining sprawl is a little bit like defining pornography; you know it when you see it.”

- Ellen Dunham-Jones, Urbanized

"The city [Mumbai] says that if there is one toilet for 50 people, that is 10 families have 1 toilet..."

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 12:59:00 -0400

“The city [Mumbai] says that if there is one toilet for 50 people, that is 10 families have 1 toilet seat, it means they have adequate sanitation. But in 1989 the ratio of people to a toilet seat was 900 people to a toilet seat. Today [2012] , it’s come down to 600. Our local politicians say, ‘Oh, we don’t want to build toilets in slums, because it will encourage people to come.’ As if people come to shit.”

- Sheela Patel, Urbanized

In Copenhagen, lime green footprints march up to matching lime...

Mon, 18 Feb 2013 10:00:00 -0500

In Copenhagen, lime green footprints march up to matching lime green trash cans — it’s hard to miss!

Clever Street Art by Oakoak

Sat, 19 Jan 2013 13:14:00 -0500

Clever Street Art by Oakoak

The Evolution of Urban Planning in 10 Diagrams

Tue, 13 Nov 2012 11:30:35 -0500

The Evolution of Urban Planning in 10 Diagrams:

A new exhibit from the San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Association showcases the simple visualizations of complex ideas that have changed how we live.

A sculpture-esque waste basket in Helsinki, Finland

Mon, 29 Oct 2012 10:00:28 -0400

A sculpture-esque waste basket in Helsinki, Finland

Malmö, Sweden

Mon, 22 Oct 2012 09:29:41 -0400

Malmö, Sweden

"What is the city but the people?"

Fri, 12 Oct 2012 11:21:44 -0400

“What is the city but the people?”

- William Shakespeare, Coriolanus

LIGHTSCAPE: A MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE ON STATE STREET In...

Thu, 11 Oct 2012 11:26:08 -0400

LIGHTSCAPE: A MULTISENSORY EXPERIENCE ON STATE STREET

In November of 2011, Mayor Rahm Emanuel officially unveiled Chicago’s newest attraction: Lightscape: A Multisensory Experience on State Street. The one-of-a-kind installation is located in twelve planters–each comprised of dozens of LED lights–along State Street from Lake to Van Buren. Between 10 am and 8 pm each day, the installation’s embedded speakers broadcast musical selections and special announcements, as lights change patterns in synchronization with songs.

Urban Planet: How Growing Cities Will Wreck the Environment Unless We Build Them Right

Wed, 10 Oct 2012 11:27:27 -0400

Urban Planet: How Growing Cities Will Wreck the Environment Unless We Build Them Right :

Today urban areas — ranging from Times Square to a small town in India — cover perhaps 3 to 5% of global land. But Seto and her co-authors calculate that between now and 2030, urban areas will expand by more than 463,000 sq. mi. (1.2 million sq. km). That’s equal to 20,000 U.S. football fields being paved over every day for the first few decades of this century. By then, a little less than 10% of the planet’s land cover could be urban. “There’s going to be a huge impact on biodiversity hotspots and on carbon emissions in those urban areas,” says Seto.

The bulk of that great urban expansion will be in Asia — where more than 75% of the increase in urban cover is projected to occur — and in Africa, where urban land cover will be 590% above the 2000 level of 16,000 sq. mi.

"The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a..."

Sat, 06 Oct 2012 11:23:25 -0400

“The city is a fact in nature, like a cave, a run of mackerel or an ant-heap. But it is also a conscious work of art, and it holds within its communal framework many simpler and more personal forms of art. Mind takes form in the city; and in turn, urban forms condition mind. For space, no less than time, is artfully reorganized in cities: in boundary lines and silhouettes, in the fixing of horizontal planes and vertical peaks, in utilizing or denying the natural site, the city records the attitude of a culture and an epoch to the fundamental facts of its existence. The dome and the spire, the open avenue and the closed court, tell the story, not merely of different physical accommodations, but of essentially different conceptions of man’s destiny.”

- Lewis Mumford The Culture of Cities (1938), reprinted in Phiplip Kasinitz (ed) Metropolis: Centre and Symbol of Our Times (1995) at 23. (via urbanjoburg)

spacecowboywhit: A really cool project from Armelle Caron, a...

Fri, 05 Oct 2012 12:29:44 -0400

spacecowboywhit:

A really cool project from Armelle Caron, a French artist, looking at how city blocks are shaped and spread out in various cities around the world.

From the top: Berlin, New York, Paris, and Istanbul.

(Also featured on Krulwich Wonders.)