Over the last 47 years, Southwest Airlines has built a vibrant—if a little goofy—airborne community. Now some of that culture is fueling urban improvements on the ground. Southwest’s new initiative called the Heart of the Community is working to build public spaces in all of the 90 cities the airline serves.
Around the world, cities are transforming busy streets into public spaces, if only for a few blissful hours. These open streets festivals create safe, healthy recreation areas for residents and help cities carve out space for biking, walking, skating, rolling, strolling, stretching, and even dancing.
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It seems counterintuitive, right? Rip out eight lanes of freeway through the middle of your metropolis and you’ll be rewarded with not only less traffic, but safer, more efficient cities? But it’s true, and it’s happening in places all over the world.
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The runway success of the High Line has sparked trendy rail-to-trail conversions across the country. Now D.C. is offering its own twist: A park on a span of decommissioned freeway that crosses the Anacostia River. Maybe they’ll call it the "Highway Line."
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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.
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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.
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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.
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On the Downtown Project’s website, among several lofty goals—such as adding ground-level density and creating passionate communities for downtown Las Vegas—one goal sticks out as a bit different, if not simply odd: "Create the shipping container capital of the world."
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With supertall towers popping up along Central Park’s southern edge like wildly expensive luxury mushrooms, Manhattan’s largest park is about to be cast into shadow—some as long as half a mile. The real estate boom is stirring up a debate: Do we have a "right to light"?
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