Americans are not only walking and biking to work, they’re gaining more support from local government and advocacy groups. And they’re also making cities safer: The higher the number of people walking to work, the lower the pedestrian fatality rate, according to a new report out today.
Let’s take rooftop farming to a whole new level—a microscopic level. Unveiled at Expo Milan this week, the Urban Algae Canopy is a living, breathing alternative to our inert roofs and facades. Could algae be the next hip trend in urban agriculture?
New York Times architecture critic Michael Kimmelman is on a roll lately in his quest to hold architects accountable
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.
How paying people to be parents has created a baby boom in Finland. Decoding the maybe-too-flashy urban renewal of once-dangerous Medellín, Colombia. And why a long-standing rivalry between Boston and New York led to the first American subways. Here are today’s Urban Reads.
Parking garages are ugly by their very nature: They’re metal cages that take up valuable space in our cities to house our automobiles for a few high-priced hours. But not all garages have to be ugly. In fact, three of the most beautiful are located within a few blocks of each other, in the city of Santa Monica, California.
La Paz is situated at a whopping 3,650 meters above sea level in Bolivia. El Alto, the country’s second biggest metropolis, is located 500 meters above that. Now a new cable car system linking the world’s highest cities made its public debut, allowing tens of thousands of commuters to bypass congested roadways for a sleek ride in the sky.
This colorful scene isn’t a view of a new luxury loft. It’s Rabot Towers, an abandoned public housing project in Ghent, Belgium. When the first stage of demolition removed the building’s exterior walls, the former blight became an unexpected beauty, captured here by photographer Pieter Lozie.
Someone’s doing dumb stuff with Smart cars in the Bay Area. A report says Los Angeles is beyond help. And did architect Thom Mayne’s new building damage a school’s legacy and the neighborhood it calls home? It’s all this week in What’s Ruining Our Cities.
The battle against bike lanes has turned into an all-out culture war here in the U.S., with NIMBYs shrieking about ceding a few feet of precious asphalt while squawking about the apocalyptic congestion that change will bring. But here’s a deep, data-driven investigation into the truth about bike lanes and traffic.
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