Urban Planning Blog

Buildings of the future, today. ‘Futuristic’ architects like Norman Foster, Frank O’Gehry, and I.M Pei abound.

The Los Angeles Times has a nifty mapping feature using Google Maps to display locations of nearly 515 homicides in the city county [between 01/01/07 and 08/06/07]. This might be one of the first features in providing crime data to the public in near-real time.

I don’t hate Microsoft like most geeks do but this is darn funny.

I love walking down Bombay’s historic D.N.Road so these photographs of ’stone flowers’ brings up fond memories. More here and here.

The energy rich country of Kazakhstan could soon to be the home of an interesting new development that is going through the application process called Seven Towers in its capital city, Astana. I hope they don’t have a naked Borat running through these towers.

A Daily Dose of Architecture brings our attention to the delightfully simplistic architecture of the Shanely Building. A fan of traditional ‘Rotring’ architectural rendering, I love how the end result was so close to the drawing.

A grocery store in China makes you ride a tiny train to shop [YouTube link]. Mind you, not only is this insanely crazy but also lets the store manipulate you into buying goods at eye-level.

“Galactic Suite,” the first hotel planned in space, expects to open for business in 2012 and would allow guests to travel around the world in 80 minutes.

The other side of urbanization? Interesting pictures but I don’t see the point.

An interior design competition results are always fun to browse through. A competition conducted by FabulousStationary and decor8 brought forth more than hundred joy-inducing entries [before and after pictures provided].

In light of the bridge collapse in Minnesota, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ 2005 report on the nation’s infrastructure should be re-read by policy makers. ASCE estimates that $1.6 trillion is needed over a five-year period to bring the nation’s infrastructure to a good condition

First you chop down trees. Then you build roads. And finally, you name those roads after the trees. Ironic, eh? The Austin Real Estate Blog [via] is examining if street names affect home value. Of course, there are enough wacky names to justify such a study.

Americans throw away 12 million oil barrels’ worth of plastic bags every year. And now they are choking us.

“The world now has more regional trade schemes than countries” [via] - from Paul Collier’s The Bottom Billion.

…takes the antiquated parking meter into the 21st century kicking and screaming. But don’t expect your city to replace the old ones.