cities
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If you promise not to panhandle, San Francisco will give you a puppy
San Francisco has an overabundance of dogs who need love and homes, and a large number of people who make their living by panhandling. This summer, the city’s starting a program that could benefit both groups. The program, called WOOF (which, in a textbook example of why coming up with the acronym first isn’t always […]
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Mayor Bloomberg uses a full-sized room A/C unit to cool his SUV
It really would be interesting to find out what moral calculus goes into Mayor Michael Bloomberg’s environmental decisions. It must go something like “I’m a big city mayor, working hard to draw down emissions on a municipal scale. Therefore, it is 100 percent justifiable that in my personal life, I fly regularly to the Bahamas […]
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Cities sell ad space on potholes, hydrants, and fire trucks
Well, this is dystopian: Faced with a cash shortage, some cities are opening up ad space on public services like fire hydrants, manhole covers, subway turnstiles, and fire trucks. On the one hand, that revenue means that the cities can continue providing services to advertise on. On the other hand, tell me this photo of […]
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Bookshelf that hides extra furniture is small-apartment genius
Orla Reynolds' furniture emerges "as if from nowhere" -- her bookshelves hide a table and four extra chairs.
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Flock of 5,000 ducks stops traffic in city of 6 million people
Taizhou lies 190 miles south of Shanghai and has 6 million people, putting its size at “somewhere in between Los Angeles and New York City” on a U.S. scale and “just some town” on a Chinese one. One day recently, though, the streets were filled not with cars, scooters, or pedestrians, but with ducks. Thousands […]
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Amazing illuminated art installations call attention to urban blight
Madrid’s Luzinterruptus collective’s large-scale light installations aren’t just haunting and beautiful — they’re also activist. Each piece is designed to call attention to some social or urban ill, from light pollution to nuclear radiation. Sometimes the targets are almost impossibly silly (sanitary napkins?), and sometimes the justification seems to have been reverse-engineered (are Madrid’s public […]
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Tulsa authorities bulldoze edible garden for being too tall
Denise Morrison had read the city code and knew her plants were legal. So why did the city come to her yard and bulldoze her garden?
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Smarter than a Smart car: A Smart e-bike
Quick, what’s smarter and cuter and more awesome than a Smart car? We’re going to go with a Smart bike, the tiny car’s even-tinier electric bike sibling. The bike’s won all kinds of design awards, and it’s no surprise. It actually still resembles a bike, instead of a cyborg bike with a tumor-looking motor attached, […]
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Possibly the best Humans of New York photo yet
I’ve mentioned before my abiding love for Humans of New York (HONY), photographer Brandon Stanton’s (entirely unpaid, as far as I know, unless you buy prints) mission to photograph New York’s infinitely visually arresting inhabitants. It’s an amazing love letter to the city, and to humanity in general. Stanton has taken over 3,500 photographs to […]