Generally speaking, architects are the only people I know who like Brutalist architecture. In fact, architect, professor and author Witold Rybczynski once proposed the following litmus test to determine whether a building is indeed an example of Brutalism: “If people don’t hate it, it can’t… Read More
Garrett Dash Nelson recently published a study looking at urban density on a cell-by-cell basis for a number of US cities. Each “cell” is a 30 arc-second grid cell, but you can think of them as being approximately one square kilometer. The goal of the… Read More
San Francisco recently became the first city in the US to ban the use of facial recognition software by city agencies. (There’s a second vote next week, but it is considered just a formality.) A similar ban is also making its way through the system… Read More
There’s a lot of money at work right now trying to reinvent the way that homes are bought and sold. Perhaps the most popular trend is “instant buying” or algorithmic home buying. I have been writing about this for years, mostly because of Opendoor. But… Read More
According to the National Association of City Transportation Officials (NACTO), scooter trips in the US surpassed station-based bike share trips for the first time in 2018. Here is a chart taken from Streetsblog: Dockless electric scooters have created a public nuisance in many of our… Read More
River Davis’ recent article in the Wall Street Journal about Tokyo’s generally flat home prices had me, again, wondering about demographics. I mean, aren’t their demographics working in reverse? They have an aging population, low immigration, and a low birthrate. But Tokyo, which represents about… Read More
I worked late this evening, which is pretty typical these days. After I got home, I flipped on the Raptors vs. Celtics and sat down to write something about cities, as is the case every day. But the game was too close and too good… Read More
As part of the Amazon HQ2 bid process, a number of cities produced videos. I only discovered them today and so maybe some of you also missed them when they were released last fall. There are videos from Detroit, Boston, Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Dallas-Fort Worth, Las… Read More
Earlier this week a 58 year old woman named Dalia was struck and killed by a car near the University of Toronto’s downtown campus. This tragedy has everyone talking about and questioning how to make our roads safer, though the answers are not difficult to… Read More
This morning I stumbled upon an old (2013) post from Rebel Metropolis that documents urban American life through street photos taken before the automobile. Above is Little Italy, New York City, 1900. All of the photos in the post are from Shorpy. The photos are… Read More
