City Planning – Page 5

Analysis, Automobiles, City Planning, Transportation

These are the 20 most congested cities in the world

February 18, 2019

The transportation data firm INRIX Research released on Tuesday its annual rankings of the most congested cities in the world.
Cities were ranked based on delays caused by congestion, adjusted for each city’s population.
Moscow was named the most congested city in the world for the second year in a row, and Europe had more cities in the top 20 than any other continent.

The transportation data firm INRIX Research released on Tuesday its annual rankings of the most congested cities in the world.

The company measured the amount of time lost per capita in 2018 due to the difference between traffic at the busiest and least busy commuting times each day. Cities were ranked based on delays caused by congestion, adjusted for each city’s population.

Moscow was named the most congested city in the world for the second year in a row, and Europe had more cities in the top-20 than any other continent.

Continue reading… “These are the 20 most congested cities in the world”

Architecture, City Planning, Housing, Latest Trend

Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the ‘pencil towers’ of New York’s super-rich

February 13, 2019

The proposed 2022 skyline overlooking Central Park.
Photograph: Andrew C Nelson/Jose Hernandez/Skyscraper Museum

An extreme concentration of wealth in a city where even the air is for sale has produced a new breed of needle-like tower. By Oliver Wainwright

It is rare in the history of architecture for a new type of building to emerge. The Romans’ discovery of concrete birthed the great domes and fortifications of its empire. The Victorians’ development of steel led to an era of majestic bridges and vaulted train sheds. The American invention of the elevator created the first skyscrapers in Chicago. Now, we are seeing a new type of structure that perfectly embodies the 21st-century age of technical ingenuity and extreme inequality. A heady confluence of engineering prowess, zoning loopholes and an unparalleled concentration of personal wealth have together spawned a new species of super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive spire.

Any visitor to New York over the past few years will have witnessed this curious new breed of pencil-thin tower. Poking up above the Manhattan skyline like etiolated beanpoles, they seem to defy the laws of both gravity and commercial sense. They stand like naked elevator shafts awaiting their floors, raw extrusions of capital piled up until it hits the clouds.

Continue reading… “Super-tall, super-skinny, super-expensive: the ‘pencil towers’ of New York’s super-rich”

2019 Predictions, City Planning, Human Behavior

New projection : World population will level off, then fall forever

February 12, 2019

The conventional wisdom is that the global population is hurtling toward catastrophe — some project it could hit a staggering 11 billion by the year 2100.

But a new book examines the data and comes to a radically different conclusion: instead of continuing to rise, the population will level out in about 30 years — and then start to decline, possibly forever.

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Analysis, Children, City Planning

Which U.S. cities have the most families with kids?

January 25, 2019

Spoiler alert: It’s simply not the case that families with kids have disappeared from urban America.

Look around a hip neighborhood in Lower Manhattan or downtown San Francisco, and you’ll see lots of young people, and Baby Boomers whose kids have left the nest. There are also some stylish moms (or nannies) pushing tots in strollers. But you won’t see many traditional nuclear families with school-age children.

There’s a growing consensus that our cities are becoming “childless.” This past October, Axios ran a story on the ”great family exodus,” showing data that the share of families with children under the age of 20 has fallen in 53 large cities across the country. As far as I can tell, the phrase “childless cities” was first advanced in 2013 by Joel Kotkin in an essay of that title for City Journal.

Several factors are said to be pushing families with kids out of cities: the expensiveness of city living; the lagging performance of urban versus suburban public schools; and the preference of immigrant families for the suburbs over urban locations. But just how childless are our cities, really?

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City Planning, Future, Green Friendly, Housing, Science & Technology News

This is what the cities of the future could look like

January 21, 2019

Could hyperloops be the future of inner-city travel?

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City Planning, Culture, Economy, People Making a Difference

From coworking to a smart city.

January 2, 2019

This year is the 10th anniversary of my decision to devote myself to the creation of the models of social changes. After banging my head against the wall, trying to scale the default coworking business model, I realized that only city-wide catalyst models such as smart city can survive and are ones of the pillars of the future of coworking business as well as cities itself.

It took some time when I tried to persuade the atomized community of small coworking owners that our model will not sustain and will probably end up very, very soon, but they didn’t want to listen. Next year, the network of publicly financed spaces turned up into business, disrupting the co-working space in every major city.

Continue reading… “From coworking to a smart city.”

Big Problems, City Planning, Economy, Housing, Latest Trend

The homeless crisis is getting worse in America’s richest cities

December 1, 2018

A toxic combination of slow wage growth and skyrocketing rents has put housing out of reach for a greater number of people.

Daniel Olguin, 28, works on his computer in the front of his van, while his wife, Mary, 26, checks on their almost-2-year-old child in the back. The couple, who have a band called Carpoolparty, have traveled around the U.S. since 2017, playing gigs with their electronic pop music whenever they can. Daniel, who was recently diagnosed with schizoaffective disorder, says his parents kicked the couple out on Christmas Day a few years ago, but they have since reconciled. The two musicians have been in Los Angeles for about five months, and use the quiet and safety of the Safe Parking L.A. lot in the Koreatown section of the city to work on their music and sleep. According to a 2018 count done by Los Angeles County, there are more than 15,700 people living in 9,100 vehicles every night. These vehicle dwellers represent over 25 percent of the homeless population in L.A. County.

Continue reading… “The homeless crisis is getting worse in America’s richest cities”

China, City Planning, Housing

A fifth of China’s homes are empty. That’s 50 million apartments

November 18, 2018

Risk is potential for flood of sales during any property slump. Xi has said homes are for living in, not for speculation.

Chinese President Xi Jinping’s mantra that homes should be for living in is falling on deaf ears, with tens of millions of apartments and houses standing empty across the country.

Soon-to-be-published research will show roughly 22 percent of China’s urban housing stock is unoccupied, according to Professor Gan Li, who runs the main nationwide study. That adds up to more than 50 million empty homes, he said.

The nightmare scenario for policy makers is that owners of unoccupied dwellings rush to sell if cracks start appearing in the property market, causing prices to spiral. The latest data, from a survey in 2017, also suggests Beijing’s efforts to curb property speculation — considered by leaders a key threat to financial and social stability — are coming up short.

Continue reading… “A fifth of China’s homes are empty. That’s 50 million apartments”

City Planning, Economy, Engineering, Future

The future of cities

November 15, 2018

Cities may occupy just 2 per cent of the earth’s land surface, but they are home to more than half of the world’s population and generate 80 per cent of all economic output. And their dominance is growing: by 2045, an extra 2 billion people will live in urban areas.

At Pictet, we think it will put pressure on infrastructure, resources and the environment.

Encouragingly, those responsible for planning and building the urban centres of the future are up to the challenge. Worldwide, authorities are working ever more closely with the private sector in an effort to make our cities safer, more sustainable and better connected.

That’s good news for the planet.

Continue reading… “The future of cities”

Automobiles, City Planning, Driverless cars, Transportation

Driverless cars could free up land for more housing

October 7, 2018

Look, no hands! Big car and technology companies such as BMW, Apple and Google are investing in driverless technology.

Widespread adoption of driverless cars would release thousands of acres of land for new housing and reduce the strain on transport infrastructure, according to research published today.

The report, centred on Edinburgh, suggests that congestion is costing the city more than £300 million a year in lost time and autonomous vehicles would help to trim that figure.

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Analysis, City Planning, Energy, New Viewpoints

Study: Decentralized microgrids can provide 90% or a neighborhood’s energy needs

September 17, 2018

“The new approach could even pave the way for 100 percent self-sufficiency in power, heat, and water.”

A new report funded by the Dutch government finds that microgrid technologies could make a local “techno-economy” 90 percent self-sufficient, through the decentralized sharing of energy at the local level between multiple households.

This report adds fuel to efforts by the Siemens Corporation to design better microgrids and promote their efficiencies.

The new approach could even pave the way for “100 percent self-sufficiency in power, heat, and water, and 50 percent self-sufficiency in food production”, according to the report’s author, energy systems engineer Florijn de Graaf.

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Automation, City Planning, Future, Robotics

Cities will automate first. We should prepare now

August 17, 2018

Three robotic arms move brushes languidly across canvases as the glass eyes of cameras gaze ahead. The robots are painting a still life—lit with a tarnished black standing lamp—of a stuffed fox, a bird perched on a branch, a skull in the center, and a seashell to the side.

This summer in Paris, it is not only the clutch of international travelers filling the museums, but robotic visitors as well. The Grande Palais is hosting an exhibit called “Artistes and Robots” that features works created via artificial intelligence and robotic hosts. Elsewhere, AI-produced art is growing increasingly indistinguishable from the “real thing.” Since 2016, teams of programmers have competed in an annual RobotArt competition (here are this year’s finalists), and robot-made art will go on sale at the Seattle Art Fair this summer, alongside works that came solely from human hands.

This partnership between human and machine is what lies ahead as automation tools permeate our lives at a quickening pace. As many worry about the potential for robots to steal our jobs (or lead a violent overthrow of society), the reality may be more nuanced: They may end up being something more like creative collaborators, much like these robotic artists on display.

Continue reading… “Cities will automate first. We should prepare now”