Wired Magazine has an article entitled Pop-Up Cities, about the plan for a large new city near Shanghai, called Dongtan:
Dongtan’s master plan — hundreds of pages of maps, schematics, and data — has almost nothing to say about architectural style. Instead, it outlines the world’s first green city, every block engineered in response to China’s [...]
According to new research, it appears that British robins have switched to singing at night when in urban environments, in order to be heard:
“There are two ways of looking at these results,” says Fuller, who admits he does not know if the birds that sing at night are vocal in the daytime too. “On one [...]
The Milken Institute has rankings for its Best Performing Cities Index (most recently from 2005).
Wednesday, April 18, 2007
The New Yorker has an article by Nick Paumgarten entitled There and Back Again all about commuting and why some people are willing to endure unreasonably long travel times. It focuses mainly on New York City and Atlanta, evidently a commuting Hell. As a bonus, the article also includes a brief etymology of the term [...]
While actually dealing with the entire planet rather than just cities, AlertMap is a really interesting site. It displays, in real-time, all the disasters that have befallen the Earth recently (and it is extremely comprehensive too). The WSJ had an article about it where you can find out more.
Spider-Man is a creature of New York City. Few other cities have the ideal environment of tall buildings in such high density which is perfect for web-swinging. Almost anywhere else and Spidey would spend most of his time just jumping from place to place.
That being said, in honor of the upcoming opening of Spider-Man 3, [...]
Mark Napier created some interesting graphics displaying the Empire State Building as if it were melting or dissolving, almost as if it were organic. His work can be seen at the bitforms gallery from April 12th to May 12th. (via metrophile)
The movie I, Robot, (very) loosely based on Isaac Asimov’s short stories, takes place in Chicago, in the year 2035. In the movie, the main new addition to the skyline is the US Robotics building. Here are a collection of photographs and charts exploring the architecture and skyline of Chicago from the movie. Attempts are [...]
Awhile back, the Skyscraper Museum in New York City had an exhibit entitled BIG BUILDINGS. This exhibit, with an extensive online component, explored the history of really big buildings. Two categories, based on research, were created for these large structures, called Jumbos and Super Jumbos. These are buildings that are extreme, both in height and [...]