Category Archives: Asides

New York – Empire of Evolution

Posted on by

White-footed mice, stranded on isolated urban islands, are evolving to adapt to urban stress. Fish in the Hudson have evolved to cope with poisons in the water. Native ants find refuge in the median strips on Broadway. And more familiar urban organisms, like bedbugs, rats and bacteria, also mutate and change in response to the pressures of the metropolis. In short, the process of evolution is responding to New York and other cities the way it has responded to countless environmental changes over the past few billion years. Life adapts.



Amazing examples of studying evolution…in New York City.

[Link to New York - Empire of Evolution]

Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal

Posted on by

Metropolitan Transportation Authority officials offered a glimpse Monday morning at the Apple store proposed for the train station, near the terminal’s east staircase. Apple plans to start building the gadget shop immediately, should the agency’s board give its approval Wednesday. Construction is expected to take about four months.



A new retail strategy implemented in one of the prime locations in New York City. One of the foremost in modern industrial design giants in one of the beloved historic designs in the world; a perfect match. I love the last three lines of the article.

[Link to Apple Store in Grand Central Terminal]

Fresh Thrust to Urbanization

Posted on by

India’s Census 2011 shows that one in every three Indians now lives in an urban habitat and that the move towards towns and cities has happened mostly in south India, contiguously from Maharashtra to Tamil Nadu.

According to the latest census, 31.2% of the total population lives in urban centres compared with 27.8% in 2001 and 25.5% in 1991. Of the 1.21 billion population, 833 million live in rural India while the remaining 377 million reside in urban India.



The fact that India has more than 1.21 billion people makes any percentage shift, let alone from 25% to 31% in two decades, for interesting times in the near future. Watch this space.

[Link to Fresh Thrust to Urbanization]

How the Great Reset Has Already Changed America

Posted on by

As many of our cities and older inner-ring suburbs are being renovated and revitalized, the great challenge of our time — far bigger than urban renewal was in decades past — is to remake our many shoddily-built, far-off exurbs into denser, more- connected, more livable communities. Some of them — the ones that were built as much to keep the building boom going as because people needed to live in them — might be fated to shrink back into small towns or disappear altogether.



It is fascinating how intertwined urban form is with economic ups and downs. Never discount an urban trend, it just might return thanks to economic changes. Or better still, give rise to a new urban form that constantly adapts to our times.

[Link to How the Great Reset Has Already Changed America]

Budget Cuts Close Pools Across the Country

Posted on by

There are few things in life more doleful than a child looking at a closed pool on a steamy summer day, and yet that sad scene has become as common as sunburns and mosquito bites as struggling local governments make the painful choice to shut their pools to save the budget. The list of locales where public pools have been in jeopardy in recent years includes some of the sweatiest spots in the nation, including Central Florida (90s and humid on the Fourth), Atlanta (90), and Houston (97).



This is indeed unfortunate. I have always marveled at the opportunities American kids had to learn swimming simply because of access to public pools.

[Link to Budget Cuts Close Pools Across the Country]

Ending Poverty via Urban Planning

Posted on by

For his new project, Romer set up a nonprofit organization dedicated to convincing governments across the developing world that they should cede a portion of their territory to an external authority in order to create a “charter city” in which new rules would make it attractive for skilled immigrants, unskilled migrants and businesses to come and settle.

This radical idea is slowly catching on. Honduras is poised to be the first country in the world to host a charter city after its Congress approved a constitutional amendment enabling such a plan in January.

[Link to Ending Poverty via Urban Planning]

Pedestrian and Bicycle Infrastructure: A National Study of Employment Impacts

Posted on by

Overall we find that bicycling infrastructure creates the most jobs for a given level of spending: For each $1 million, the cycling projects in this study create a total of 11.4 jobs within the state where the project is located. Pedestrian-only projects create an average of about 10 jobs per $1 million and multi-use trails create nearly as many, at 9.6 jobs per $1 million. Infrastructure that combines road construction with pedestrian and bicycle facilities creates slightly fewer jobs for the same amount of spending, and road-only projects create the least, with a total of 7.8 jobs per $1 million.

[Link to Pedestrian and Bicycle Infrastructure: A National Study of Employment Impacts]