-
+26 +1
How the slum women of Ahmedabad led a housing revolution
The Indian city where Gandhi established his first ashram can be gruelling if you live in a slum: 50C temperatures, poor ventilation, no running water. A group of women had had enough and agreed to work with developers.
-
+13 +1
The Psychological Cost of Boring Buildings
Scientists are investigating the emotional toll of ugly architecture.
-
+22 +1
Germany's bicycle autobahn: pedaling nowhere?
Construction on a bike highway - hoped to connect communities to make high-speed, emissions-free commuting possible - is underway in Germany. But with funding in question, will this bikers' dream still come true? German autobahns are famous for lacking speed limits - now, bike autobahns may continue the trend. Following in the footsteps of other northern European countries, Germany is building a traffic-free bicycle highway: the Radschnellweg Ruhr, also known as RS1.
-
+15 +1
What Are Bollards, and Why Are They So Beautiful?
How does one become a bollard photographer? For Andrew Choate it all started inadvertently, when he was living in California's Canyon County—“an abysmal suburb where everything had been built within the past 20 years,” he says. On bike rides that would take him on path behind a bunch of strip malls, Choate would photograph the backs of buildings, and eventually he started noticing that the strongest compositional elements in those shots were the bollards
-
+10 +1
Why Are America’s Most Innovative Companies Still Stuck in 1950s Suburbia?
When Apple finishes its new $5 billion headquarters in Cupertino, California, the technorati will ooh and ahh over its otherworldly architecture, patting themselves on the back for yet another example of “innovation.” Countless employees, tech bloggers, and design fanatics are already lauding the “futuristic” building and its many “groundbreaking” features. But few are aware that Apple’s monumental project is already outdated, mimicking a half-century of stagnant...
-
+54 +1
L.A. council OKs law limiting homeless people's belongings to what can fit in a trash bin
The Los Angeles City Council approved a law Wednesday to rein in the tent-and-tarpaulin encampments whose dramatic spread has raised the political stakes of handling one of the nation's worst homeless crises. The ordinance -- a revised version of the law known as 56.11 that was adopted in June -- limits storage on sidewalks, parkways and alleys citywide to what homeless people can fit in a 60-gallon container, about the size of a city recycling or trash bin.
-
+23 +1
A New Way of Walking
Artist-explorers called psychogeographers are changing the way we experience the city
-
+18 +1
Fascinating maps reveal what our cities sound like
How researchers mapped the spectrum of urban sound.
-
+26 +1
The Cemetery in the City
Austin's Cemetery Master Plan is a revolutionary idea, but it shouldn’t be. How Austin’s Cemetery Master Plan preserves 160 acres of urban cemeteries
-
+44 +1
The car century was a mistake. It’s time to move on.
Each week, In Theory takes on a big idea in the news and explores it from a range of perspectives. This week, we’re talking about car-free cities. Need a primer? Catch up here. We must first remember that all cities were car-free little more than a century ago. Not all cities responded to the advent of automobiles with the same enthusiasm as the cities of the United States. In fact, some cities never did adopt the car. Venice was unwilling to destroy itself in order to build...
-
+47 +1
Is it time to rethink recycling?
Criticize recycling and you may as well be using a fume-spewing chainsaw to chop down ancient redwoods, as far as most environmentalists are concerned. But recent research into the environmental costs and benefits and some tough-to-ignore market realities have even the most ardent of recycling fans questioning the current system.
-
+28 +1
Giving housing to the homeless is three times cheaper than leaving them on the streets
The final week of January saw an annual ritual in government statistical gathering that few people know about — the Department of Housing and Urban Development's Point-in-Time survey of the homeless population, in which HUD recruits volunteers around the country to go out and try to count up all the homeless people living in America. This year, White House Chief of Staff Dennis McDonough even joined up, volunteering as part of the San Francisco PIT crew.
-
+25 +1
Remembering Architecture Through Fragments and Impressions
Artist Liene Bosquê explores a range of memories that are evoked by historical images, architecture and constructed real and fictional urban environments.
-
+19 +1
What I Learned From Talking to My Neighbors About Gentrification
How conversation helped me connect with longtime residents in my rapidly changing neighborhood.
-
+24 +1
How to Make Architecture Human
Witold Rybczynski’s new book skewers the avant garde, but overlooks prisons and urban shrinkage.
-
+15 +1
Lives Displaced By Central Park Take Center Stage In New Play
The land that became New York City's Central Park was once home to Manhattan's first-known community of African-American property owners. A new play explores how eminent domain forced them out.
-
+30 +1
Drone flies high to deliver 'smarter Glasgow' report
Glasgow became one of the UK's first "Smart Cities" following a £24m grant under the Future City programme. The grant, offered by the UK government's Technology Strategy Board, aimed to stimulate technology-enabled innovation. Glasgow Chambers of Commerce has published a report detailing how technology will impact on the city centre over the next five years.
-
+13 +1
Why the time is right to re-examine the L.A. freeway
In 1981, a young writer named David Brodsly described the Los Angeles freeway as one of the city's indispensible metaphors, “one of the few parts capable of standing for the whole.” He argued that the freeway had expanded “the realm of the accessible” for drivers in Southern California — that it was a powerfully democratic force, in essence — and lent “a new clarity” to a vast metropolitan region that newcomers had long found illegible and tough to grasp.
-
+19 +1
Road from Europe to U.S.? Russia proposes superhighway
London to New York City by car? It could happen if the head of Russian Railways has his way. According to a March 23 report in The Siberian Times, Russian Railways president Vladimir Yakunin has proposed a plan for a massive trans-Siberian highway that would link his country's eastern border with the U.S. state of Alaska, crossing a narrow stretch of the Bering Sea that separates Asia and North America.
-
+16 +1
This Wharton Grad Wants You to Live in His Shipping Containers
Luke Iseman has figured out how to afford the San Francisco Bay area. He lives in a shipping container. The Wharton School graduate’s 160-square-foot box has a camp stove and a shower made of old boat hulls. It’s one of 11 miniature residences inside a warehouse he leases across the Bay Bridge from the city, where his tenants share communal toilets and a sense of adventure.
Submit a link
Start a discussion