I live in L.A., a land of 20-lane interchanges, parking lots the size of football stadiums, and mind-bending, soul-crushing, life-altering traffic. Every day, I meet people who don’t even know we have a public transit system and see places in my neighborhood without any sidewalks. This is because, a half-century ago, my city decided to redesign itself for cars, not humans.
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Bike lanes are cool and all, but haven’t you always thought that what your neighborhood really needs is some bedazzled water fountains? You can pimp your block with Blockee, a tool designed by several Code for America fellows.
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It would appear that, as a country, we’re experiencing some serious regret (or relief?) in examining plans for our cities that never came to fruition. San Francisco looked at its Unbuilt SF
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Last night, Gizmodo got a sneak peek at the new SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow expansion pack due out next month. The eye-popping visuals of the relaunch were covered widely, immediately making a game as easy to discuss for its many frustrations as for its design advances, and we were thus keen to learn how Cities of Tomorrow expansion would continue or depart from the recent refresh.
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In 2007, I got an email from San Francisco. A big industrial design conference was coming to town and Bay Area hotels were predictably overbooked and overpriced. Two designers wanted to help their friends find affordable, un-scary places to stay, so they started a website called AirBed & Breakfast.
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Military strategist David Kilcullen was in New York City earlier this week to talk about the future of urban warfare at the World Policy Institute here in Manhattan. Gizmodo tagged along to learn more about "future conflicts and future cities," as Kilcullen describes it, and to see what really happens when urban environments fail—when cities fall apart or disintegrate into ungovernable canyons of semi-derelict buildings ruled by cartels, terrorist groups, and paramilitary gangs.
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Facebook is dipping its big blue thumb into the real estate market, investing in a cushy 394-unit apartment complex that’s a 45-minute walk to its new Frank Gehry-designed Menlo Park campus
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A 2003 article in the Military Review has proven darkly prescient with last weekend’s terrorist siege of an indoor shopping mall in Nairobi, Kenya. Written by two retired U.S. Army Lieutenant Colonels, the piece outlines the emergence of modern-day siege warfare tactics, or the invasion of large architectural structures.
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Silent parks. Designing for disabilities. Human-powered data. Garbage anthropology. World-class sidewalks. Floating favelas. Paint as infrastructure. These are the keys to the cities of the future, according to the most recent TED conference, City 2.0.
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This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
