Google’s new tool lets us witness the planet changing in near real-time
Planet Earth is changing, transforming, and shifting faster than we can keep track of these days. Human development continues to spread, The Alps are turning from white to green, massive solar farms are being erected, and droughts are shrinking lakes and drying out rivers. All of these major Read More...
Design firm turns old airport runway into beautiful park in Shanghai
Back in 2011, the Longhua Airport in Shanghai was closed and left abandoned. Now, more than a decade later, architecture studio Sasaki has finished transforming the runway of the former airport into an expansive linear park. The Xuhui riverfront area once hosted the airport, but hasn’t Read More...
How AI and the video game Minecraft can help us design better cities
While artificial intelligence (AI) is nowhere near ready to tackle the complicated task of designing an actual city, it can assist city planners, especially when it comes to the quantitative aspects of urban planning. In order to improve the urban planning abilities of AI, programmers are turning Read More...
The case for relocating small businesses back to residential areas
If you walk around some 1920s-era neighborhoods, it’s not unusual to see a tiny grocery store inhabiting the street corner. This used to be normal in residential areas, but as cars became more widespread, businesses relocated to more centrally-located commercial centers such as malls. The Read More...
This bill will require all new public buildings to be bird-friendly
Birds, often migratory ones, are known to fly into the reflective facades of glass buildings. In fact, the Cornell Lab of Ornithology estimates almost one billion birds are killed annually from collisions with buildings in the US. In order to protect birds from this fate, the US House of Read More...
The surprising reasons a bike boom is great for American cities
COVID-19 has drastically changed not only how much we travel but how we get around. With people looking to get out of the house while avoiding public transit, bicycles are suddenly an enticing choice. They promise speed, freedom, and fresh air on newly quiet streets. Sales of bikes in the US in Read More...
London is going all-in on car-free zones
Following in the footsteps of leaders in Milan and New York City who are heeding global calls to #BuildBackBetter from the coronavirus pandemic, London Mayor Sadiq Khan on Friday unveiled plans to create "one of the largest car-free zones in any capital city in the world" to improve local Read More...
How the capital of Lithuania is turning itself into a vast open-air cafe
For many cities around the world, the need for social distancing has motivated cities to experiment with different urban planning schemes. Recently, we published a story about how Paris is creating 650 kilometers of pop-up “corona cycleways” to be ready for May 11 when the lockdown is eased in Read More...
Cities to ban evictions for workers affected by coronavirus response
The coronavirus is certainly a worrying development—and while it doesn’t necessarily feel that the federal government is acting swiftly enough to protect people, cities such as San Jose, California, are taking steps to help those who need it most. As you might know, someone trying to survive Read More...
Fairbnb is the community-oriented alternative we need to Airbnb
The problem with Airbnb is that more and more full-time, short-time rentals are on the market in major cities, which means that housing can’t be used for someone who actually wants to live in the city. This is only encouraging mass tourism in cities like Amsterdam, Venice, and Paris, and makes a Read More...