News

Nobody knows what the future holds, but that has never stopped anyone trying to predict it. It’s a game countless US retailers are engaged in right now, while their industry shudders under the pressures of e-commerce, an overabundance of brick-and-mortar stores, and changing consumer spending habits. The ongoing “retail apocalypse” is forcing them to question the value of their physical stores.

https://qz.com/956745/retail-experiments-from-farfetch-nike-and-amazon-offer-visions-of-the-store-of-the-future/

A new data project aims to help people understand one of the country’s most complex and enduring challenges.

https://www.citylab.com/housing/2017/04/map-america-homeless-crisis/522339/?utm_source=SFTwitter

For decades, Oregon has been a trailblazer in progressive cannabis culture. In 1973 it became the first state to decriminalize possession and use. In 1998, The Oregon Medical Marijuana Act allowed cannabis to be cultivated, purchased and used by medical patients for certain ailments, including severe pain, nausea, cancer, HIV/AIDS, and epilepsy. 

http://theglobalgrid.org/legalized-cannabis-land-use-regulations-portland-oregon/

The "Q" subway extension, has been planned for 100 years, a ground breaking ceremony was held nearly 50 years ago, and excavation and construction has been going on for ten years. Now, the first phase, along Second Avenue, is open. The stations are light and airy, with generous art installations. The Station entrances are marked by glass canopies. Station levels are open and can be viewed from other levels. Author, architect, and realtor Carol Berens describes the stations in words and photos in the source article. 

http://newyorkcity.urbdezine.com/2017/04/08/take-train-q/

Walking between busy urban environments and green spaces triggers changes in levels of excitement, engagement and frustration in the brain, a study of older people has found.

https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170410085324.htm#.WO6iRwE-meM.linkedin

Here are 12 cities leading the car-free movement.

https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2017/02/these-major-cities-are-starting-to-go-car-free

Thanks to this free open-source mapping tool, you can digitally demolish your city’s loathed urban expressways and reveal what lies beneath.

Imagine there’s no highway, it’s easy if you try—even easier, since now there’s a map for that. With this latest cartographic venture, you can make the concrete superslabs and soul-sucking underpasses that are the scourge of urbanists everywhere disappear with a mere click.

https://www.citylab.com/design/2017/03/the-magic-of-disappearing-highways-map/520263/?utm_source=SFFB

Flâneuse: Women Walk the City in Paris, New York, Tokyo, Venice, and London

How women writers and artists, from Virginia Woolf to Sophie Calle, found inspiration and freedom by navigating cities on foot.

From the French verb flâner, the flâneur, or ‘one who wanders aimlessly,’ was born in the first half of the nineteenth century, in the glass-and-steel covered passages of Paris. When Haussmann started slicing his bright boulevards through the dark uneven crusts of houses like knives through a city of cindered chèvre, the flâneur wandered those too, taking in the urban spectacle. A figure of masculine privilege and leisure, with time and money and no immediate responsibilities to claim his attention, the flâneur understands the city as few of its inhabitants do, for he has memorised it with his feet. Every corner, alleyway and stairway, has the ability to plunge him into rêverie. What happened here? Who passed by here? What does this place mean? The flâneur, attuned to the chords that vibrate throughout his city, knows without knowing.

https://longreads.com/2017/03/02/flaneuse-women-walk-the-city-in-paris-new-york-tokyo-venice-and-london/?utm_content=buffer7498b&utm_medium=social&utm_source=twitter.com&utm_campaign=buffer

"It is NOT written by a planner, but instead by someone from outside the profession looking inward — Mr. Settis is an archaeologist and an art historian. Secondly, the topic is timely and universal — Venice’s current situation is a microcosm of issues, problems, difficulties, and debates taking place in historical and destination cities around the globe. The advantage of utilizing Venice as the focal point is that nearly everyone has either heard of the city or has a mental image of the city, even if they have never been there...The simple premise Mr. Settis articulates throughout his outstanding book is, “Why not focus on what made Venice great in the first place instead of trying to re-invent it or recreate it?” Don’t kill a city’s soul by turning it into something it was never meant to be. Not every city is meant to be a Las Vegas, an Orlando, or a Macao. This is a point that city leaders worldwide should be reminding themselves of constantly."

https://panethos.wordpress.com/2017/02/11/the-most-important-urban-planning-book-of-our-time/

"Solutions to the affordability crisis lie on a spectrum. At one end, an increase in subsidized housing can help those with lower incomes. At the other end, an increase in housing of all kinds in walkable places can help alleviate the rising prices due to high demand for low supply. However, as I wrote about previously, one potential problem with this latter solution is that most developers and cities are building new housing for city living, but few, if any, are building housing for neighborhood living. Missing Middle Housing provides a critical middle solution: affordable-by-design workforce housing that helps meet the demand for walkable neighborhood living."

http://www.moderncities.com/article/2017-jan-the-missing-middle-affordable-housing-solution