NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg's twelve years in office will leave an undeniable impression on the physical landscape of the city for future generations. The new and revised policies of this administration have encouraged unprecedented growth of New York City and its outer boroughs in the years following 9/11. According to a new series called The Bloomberg Years by WNYC and this article by Matthew Schuerman, Bloomberg's three consecutive terms have made New York City's skyline taller, have made the city more attractive and in turn, more expensive.

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For the last fifty years Richard Wurman - architect, graphic designer and founder of the TED Conferences - has been dedicated to creating a platform that compares cities. In Wurman's early studies, he quickly learned that comparing global cities was no easy task. Cities use very different languages to describe their assets, from planning principles to land use types to social statistics. "They don’t collect their information the same way. They don’t describe themselves with the same legend," he tells Nate Berg of Next City.

Thanks to sophisticated mapping tools, delving into the statistical data of numerous cities has become far more manageable than in 1962, when Wurman produced his first comparative analysis using clay models of 50 different cities. Wurman's analog-driven statistical analysis has turned into the Urban Observatory, a website that allows users to choose from 15 variables and easily compare the public data of up to 16 cities around the world in real time.

More about the platform after the break.

In the early 20th century rooming houses and residential hotels with small bedrooms and shared bathrooms were the norm of city life: they provided cheap, day-to-day housing near downtown areas (where affordable food and entertainment was abundant). However, a tide of well-intentioned health and safety regulations in the 50s and 60s led cities to essentially ban this type of housing across the United States. 

In an article for the Slate, the director of the Sightline Institute, Alan Durning, suggests that this was one of the most misguided legislations ever implemented in American cities: instead of enforcing higher quality housing for cities’ lower earning peoples, it has instead left them stranded, with fewer and fewer affordable housing options.

More after the break...

San Francisco's Planning Department is working with California's sustainability guidelines to structure growth within the city in accordance with the state's requirements and the city's goals through the department's Sustainability Development Program. The program aims to reduce water consumption, reduce waste and enhance community-scale energy resources. To aid in the fulfillment of these goals, the program is implementing a tool called Eco-Districts - a community of property owners, businesses and residents within a neighborhood that collaborate to develop and initiate sustainable development projects in their area. Using a set of performance metrics, neighborhoods can shape their projects with custom strategies for their community.

The Eco-District is fundamentally a community-driven development that has the potential to achieve the smart growth of sustainable ideas but also build local urban identity and enforce a sense of place among its residents. The Eco-District movement has already taken shape in Austin, TX; Boston, MA; Seattle, WA; Washington, DC; and Portland, OR is various degrees of development. San Francisco's adoption of this tool will help drive the successes of the Sustainability Development Program with a focus on holistic approaches of neighborhood development and support with environmentally conscious improvements.

Read on for more about the types of Eco-Districts that have been developed in San Francisco.

It is safe to say that architects and planners have always been among those striving for utopian ideals through physical space. Just look at the 20th century, when designers converged around the idea of creating new cities for lives that embraced new technologies. We had the Futurists who were obsessed with automobiles, speed and factory cities. We had CIAM and Team 10 who collectively and individually developed the modernist ideals for housing and urban planning. We had Archigram that developed conceptual creations for cities that walked, were inflatable, and could be packed and unpacked in locations all over the world. We had Superstudio, an architecture firm that developed renowned conceptual works of the "total urbanization" of architecture.

As impractical and experimental as some of these proposals were, they initiated a conversation, not only about the physical space that they presented, but the social implications of their designs. The latest issue of MAS CONTEXT, Improbable,tackles these "unlikely futures envisioned in the past that never became present" and explores how, to various degrees, these impossible and improbable agendas projects came to fruition. Join as after the break for a closer look at the new issue.

The Brooklyn Queens Expressway (BQE) cuts through myriad neighborhoods on its route between Queens and Brooklyn. Sometimes it takes the form of an elevated six-lane highway with nothing but dark parking lots below; sometimes as a deep trench that segregates neighborhood pockets. The Cross Bronx Expressway in the South Bronx similarly creates boundaries, isolating neighborhoods from each other.  

Projects such as these, built under the heavy handed politics of Robert Moses in the mid-20th century, show little regard for community development. The effects of these projects can be seen today; the spaces below the highway overpasses of New York City tend to be dark, dingy places that we avoid or rush past. They’re perceived as "lost space" within the city, yet they have an innate potential to be much more.

The Design Trust for Public Space, a non-profit dedicated to promoting public space, sees that potential. With their new project, Under the Elevated: Reclaiming Space, Connecting Communities, they hope to take these “lost” spaces and turn them into safe and exciting venues that will, at long last, reconnect long-separated communities.

More on this exciting program, after the break.

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Finnish elevator manufacturer KONE has unveiled a new hoisting technology that will enable elevators to travel twice the distance currently in use. The new development implies that the Burj Khalifa will not remain the tallest building for very long. The Burj, towering at 828 meters, has the longest elevator travel distance at 504 meters. KONE promises to double that.

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In response to the mounting criticism of Qatar's ability to host the 2022 World Cup, the "tiny Gulf Arab state" is considering developing floating hotels, luxury villas and a water park off the coast of Doha called Oryx Island to house the influx of visitors that will need accommodation during the games. The island would be developed by Barwa Real Estate Co, a firm partly owned by the government, at a cost of $5.5 million. Finish architecture firm, Global Accommodation Management (GAM) to design the various facilities which includes projects for a hotel and luxury villas that could house up to 25,000 people.

Join us after the break for more on this project.