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October 21, 2005
By 2007, 3.2 billion people— more than the entire global population in 1967—will live in cities
While in Paris this summer, I snapped the above shot, it was wonderful to note how frequently the bollard was executed for the safety of the pedestrian. So please read Aaron Naparstek's excellent post on Bollards. A must read. Bravo Aaron.
Outstanding long read on today's Mega Cities, each of those you might expect in the list, are analyzed individually. Dhaka, Bangladesh: "had only 3.5 million people in 1951; now it has more than 13 million. The city has been gaining population at a rate of nearly seven percent a year since 1975, and it will be the world’s second-largest city (after Tokyo) by 2015". Fantastic broadview. In related news, Shadow Cities author Robert Neuwirth asks the right questions in a recent Fortune article, "70 million people a year are migrating to cities. That’s 130 people arriving every minute, and two every second. Where will all those people live?"
The journal Space & Culture published an interesting article on Brooklyn's Prospect Heights' neighborhood this month... "This article uses photography and ethnography to understand and represent residents’ emotional-phenomenological experiences of walks through their neighborhood."
Forbes slide show of the ten most expensive homes in the US. Spatial Alienation comes at a premium.
A history of the Northland Shopping Mall outside St. Louis MO, and a documentation of its slow destruction. A template for so many urban areas, it is the great American snafu.
New York Times excellent coverage of China's building Boom... has a great slide show.
Musings from 3 Quarks Daily on the airport architecture of Kennedy Airport.
From UK paper Building Design, London Mayor Ken Livingston is trying to wrest control of housing & planning from the local authorities, "Livingstone argued that many of London’s councils lacked the experience to deal with property developers. He said: “We need five planning authorities rather than 33 boroughs. You can’t take people that are dealing with backyard extensions five years out of six and then expect them to get on top of some of the most rapacious bastards on the planet.”
Unsettling b&w photos documenting the human toll of Katrina... and a fantastic photoblog, Operation Eden, from a resident with a filmic eye for post-Katrina New Orleans.
Posted by jmarston at October 21, 2005 11:34 AM
Comments
Thanks. Been enjoying your site for a while now, likewise.
Posted by: aaron at October 27, 2005 11:35 AM