urbanism
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How Baby Boomers doomed the exurbs
Homes and strip malls in America's outer-ring suburbs, which contained most of the country's most expensive homes in the 1990s, are now worth less than what it cost to build them. And the land beneath them is worth effectively zero, says Brookings Institution senior fellow Christopher B. Leinberger, in a powerful op-ed arguing that the […]
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Turning vacant lots into parks reduces violent crime
A new study published in the American Journal of Epidemiology analyzes a 10-year project in Philadelphia to turn abandoned lots into public parks. As it turns out, the project hasn’t just eliminated eyesores — it’s also reduced crime. Gun-related assaults, vandalism ,and criminal mischief all dropped off significantly in the reclaimed spaces. The researchers theorize […]
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Report: Homeownership is keeping unemployment high
The U.S. is suffering crushing unemployment, yet workers can't move to where the jobs are because they are trapped in underwater mortgages, explains a new report from Brookings. This, it turns out, is the ultimate fate of the "ownership society" that our government has been pushing for so long through Fannie, Freddy, and tax policy: […]
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The creative genius of Occupy Wall Street
Photo: Paul SteinWhat are cities for, anyway? There are as many answers as there are people who love (or hate) cities. They are engines for economic growth, if you ask economist Ed Glaeser. They are breeding grounds for human innovation, if you ask physicist Geoffrey West. If you’re a dictator or a despot — or […]
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Mexico City’s ‘earthscraper’ would be a 1,000-foot underground building
BNKR Arquitectura wants to build a pyramid that penetrates nearly 1000 feet into the earth below Mexico City's largest and most historic public square. Its upper floors will be illuminated through a glass ceiling that will replace the paving stones of the current square, and its deepest reaches will receive daylight piped in from fiber-optic […]
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Stranded in suburbia: Why aren’t Americans moving to the city?
It's going to take more than wishful thinking to convince Americans to move back to the urban core.
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‘I will rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways,’ says Danish politician
Denmark is going to be the best cycling country in the world. Cycling leads to better public health, a cleaner urban environment, and helps us reach our climatic goals. So I will rather invest in cycle tracks than freeways!
So sayeth Margrethe Vestager, the new Danish minister of the economy and the interior. Vestager wants to increase the share of trips taken by bicycle 50 percent in 10 years, with at least half of those trips representing a replacement of a car with a bike.
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City Limits: 'Urbanized' underestimates the allure of the 'burbs
The creator of Helvetica produces Urbanized, a gorgeous, smart, and slightly out of touch ode to the city.
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Watch a city grow from a tiny sprout in this beautiful video
"Lilium Urbanus" envisions the city as a botanical, flowering from seed to sprout to village to metropolis. Its creators, Anca Risca and Joji Tsuruga, told Scientific American that their daily observation of urban growth in their home city of New York inspired the comparison: We embraced the idea of urban growth and saw it as something […]