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Get PocketThe image is probably the most widely shared touchstone in planning: An urban building with apartments upstairs and a café on the ground floor. For any planner who came of age after The Death and Life of Great American Cities, this image encapsulates the field. Density. Mixed use.
At 2am on a cold winter’s night in London last year I was loitering in the shadows on Furnival Street near Chancery Lane tube station with a veteran urban explorer called Lucy Sparrow.
WAITING for a bus on a drizzly winter morning is miserable. But for London commuters Citymapper, an app, makes it a little more bearable.
Looking at buildings designed for purposes of contemplation—like museums, churches, and libraries—may have positive measurable effects on mental state.
China has in the past 30 years become the most urbanized country that has ever existed. More than 450 million Chinese — 1 in 25 people on the planet – live in cities. At least 160 Chinese cities have more than 1 million people, compared to nine in the United States.
Welcome to the jungle. Brazil’s first national park, the world’s largest urban forest, smack bang in the heart of Rio de Janeiro. Reclaimed and replanted as Atlantic rainforest in the latter half of the 19th century, the forest is a green smear of waterfalls, tall trees and rugged peaks.
Editor's Note: On March 10, 2014, journalist Matthew Power lost his life pursuing a story along the Nile River in Uganda. He left behind a body of work as diverse and compelling as the adventures, tragedies, and passions of his subjects.
Ever taller, ever thinner, the new condo towers racing skyward in Midtown Manhattan are breaking records for everything, including price. Sold for $95 million, the 96th floor of 432 Park Avenue will be the highest residence in the Western world.
The offices of Hafeez Contractor, India’s most commercially successful architect, are on Bank Street, just around the corner from the Mumbai Stock Exchange. The prestige of the address, however, is undermined by the beleaguered state of the Raj-era building.
Japan is famous for its radical residential architecture. But as Tokyo architect Alastair Townsend explains, its penchant for avant garde housing may be driven by the country’s bizarre real estate economics, as much as its designers’ creativity.
Most of us agree that development that provides employment and tax revenue is good for cities. Some even argue that the need for jobs outweighs aesthetic, lifestyle, or climate concerns—in fact, this argument comes up any time Walmart proposes a new megastore near a small town.
OKLAHOMA CITY — Americans have never hesitated to pack up the U-Haul in search of the big time, a better job or just warmer weather. But these days, domestic migrants are increasingly driven by the quest for cheaper housing.
Charles Montgomery begins his new book, Happy City: Transforming Our Lives Through Urban Design, on a bicycle ride in Bogota, Colombia, with former mayor Enrique Peñalosa. While in office, Peñalosa implemented a number of policies quite progressive for that time and place.
Ukraine's Independence Square, and the revolutionary dimensions of public spaces. Ukraine is the size of Texas, but for the last three months its burgeoning protest movement has largely crowded into the space of 10 city blocks.
We’d gathered by the ticket booth outside the South Bank Centre in London at 6.30pm. It was the last Friday in May but there was a slight chill in the air, so we clustered in groups — couples sticking together, friends facing in towards each other.
There are many exercise apps that allow you to keep track of your running, riding, and other activities. Record speed, time, elevation, and location from your phone, and millions of people do this, me included.
EVEN thieves, it seems, now have a smartphone app. Makkie Klauwe (it means something like “easy pickings” in Amsterdam slang) reveals the city’s best places for pilfering—for instance Reestraat and Tuinstraat, where bicycles appear to be a good target.
On May 5, musician Patti Smith was asked what advice she had for young people trying to make it in New York City. The long-time New Yorker's take? Get out. "New York has closed itself off to the young and the struggling," she said. "New York City has been taken away from you."
Like many residents of Northwest Portland, Matthew Hale doesn’t own a car. Instead, he prefers to walk or ride the bus to the city’s innumerable coffee shops and breweries and live-music spots.