New York in the snow by Vivienne Gucwa - in pictures | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/nov/14/new-york-snow-vivienne-gucwa-pictures
New York in the snow by Vivienne Gucwa - in pictures | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2014/nov/14/new-york-snow-vivienne-gucwa-pictures
Inside Lavasa, India’s first entirely private city built from scratch
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/19/inside-lavasa-indian-city-built-private-corporation
Lavasa is the $30bn (£20bn) baby of Ajit Gulabchand – a high-profile billionaire industrialist known as much for his mega-projects like highways and dams as for installing a helipad on his office building in Mumbai – and his powerhouse Hindustan Construction Company (HCC). It is an ambitious, and deeply controversial, project to build an entire private city from scratch. The name Lavasa is the invention of a US branding firm, having no meaning, but meant to conjure up images of mystery and exoticism with its abstract poeticism and hint at Hindi.
According to the project’s promotional materials, life in Lavasa – two hours from IT hub Pune, and four hours from Mumbai – “has been envisioned as energetic yet calm, aspirational yet affordable, hi-tech yet simple and urban yet close to nature”. A promotional brochure describes it as a “stirring adventure”, “an enterprise that will redefine the very notion of a city as we know it.” (Upon entering Lavasa, you must brace yourself for an onslaught of corporate bromides.)
La #privatisation sans précédent de la #ville la vide de sa diversité et la désurbanise donc : long texte de Saskia Sassen revenant sur un mouvement qu’elle juge inédit de reconfiguration.
But an examination of the current trends shows some significant differences and points to a whole new phase in the character and logics of foreign and national corporate acquisitions. (...)
The sharp scale-up in the buying of buildings (...)
The extent of new construction (...)
The spread of mega-projects with vast footprints (...)
The foreclosing on modest properties (...)
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/24/who-owns-our-cities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should-concern-us-all?C
The foreclosing on modest properties
SASKIA SASSEN est professeur à l’université Columbia. Elle a étudié la philosophie, les sciences politiques, l’économie et la sociologie. Elle a créé le concept de ville globale. Ce livre est la synthèse de trente années de recherche sur les migrants, la globalisation et l’État.
Can you identify the world cities from their ’naked’ metro maps ? | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/30/world-cities-quiz-naked-geographically-accurate-metro-maps?CMP=share_re
5/11 ?
Artist and urban planner Neil Freeman of Fake is the New Real has been updating his geographically accurate maps of city subway systems, all drawn to the same scale. We’ve used a selection of his maps below: can you identify the cities?
Can you identify the world cities from their ’naked’ metro maps ? | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/30/world-cities-quiz-naked-geographically-accurate-metro-maps?CMP=fb_gu
Artist and urban planner Neil Freeman of Fake is the New Real has been updating his geographically accurate #maps of city #subway systems, all drawn to the same scale. We’ve used a selection of his maps below: can you identify the cities?
All images: Neil Freeman / Open Street Map
Cities in numbers: how patterns of urban growth change the world | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/23/cities-in-numbers-how-patterns-of-urban-growth-change-the-world
Cities in numbers: how patterns of urban growth change the world
Beneath the crude statistic that the world is heading towards 70% urbanisation by 2050 lie regional differences in demographic, economic and environmental change. LSE Cities’ Urban Age programme takes a deeper look at the data
In 1950, the fishing village of Shenzhen in south-east China had 3,148 inhabitants. By 2025, the UN predicts, that number will exceed 12 million. Congo’s capital Kinshasa will have gone from 200,000 to more than 16 million, growing over the next decade at the vertiginous rate of 4% a year (about 40 people an hour). Meanwhile Brazil’s economic engine São Paulo will have slowed to less than 1% per annum, nonetheless experiencing a 10-fold expansion over the 75-year period.
#démographie #urban_matter #population #agglomérations #villes #urban_world
Who owns our cities – and why this urban takeover should concern us all | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/24/who-owns-our-cities-and-why-this-urban-takeover-should-concern-us-all
Does the massive foreign and national corporate buying of urban buildings and land that took off after the 2008 crisis signal an emergent new phase in major cities? From mid-2013 to mid-2014, corporate buying of existing properties exceeded $600bn (£395bn) in the top 100 recipient cities, and $1trillion a year later – and this figure includes only major acquisitions (eg. a minimum of $5m in the case of New York City).
#urban_matter #villes #agglomérations
I want to examine the details of this large corporate investment surge, and why it matters. Cities are the spaces where those without power get to make a history and a culture, thereby making their powerlessness complex. If the current large-scale buying continues, we will lose this type of making that has given our cities their cosmopolitanism.
Where is the fastest growing city in the world? | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/nov/18/where-is-the-worlds-fastest-growing-city-batam-niamey-xiamen
The fastest growing city in the world is Batam in Indonesia … or Niamey in Niger … or maybe Xiamen in China. It all depends on who you ask.
Batam is the fastest-growing city in the world by population, according to US-based consultancy Demographia, which bases its annual Demographia World Urban Areas ranking largely on the United Nations’ 2010-20 world population forecasts – but only includes cities with a population of 1 million or more. Batam is close to Singapore and operates as a transport hub and industrial area, while a free-trade zone boosts trade with the island city-state. Batam had a population of 1.1 million in the latest estimate, with an annual growth of 7.4%.
Second on Demographia’s ranking is Mogadishu in Somalia, with a population of 2.1 million, growing at 6.9%. Mogadishu’s growth is driven by its improving security situation and economic prospects after decades of civil war – many Somalis have returned from abroad.
Five reasons Belgium has the worst traffic in Europe | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2014/aug/28/belgium-worst-traffic-europe-brussels-antwerp-congestion
Brussels hosts the giant bureaucracy of the EU ... yet its roads are the most congested in Europe. Laurent Vermeersch reports on what Belgium is doing so wrong(Permalink)
The art of the Stockholm metro – in pictures | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/oct/20/art-stockholm-metro-in-pictures
From fake underground grottoes to giant bronze tulips, murals making statements on ecology to work by ‘the Swedish Banksy’, Stockholm’s metro stations are full of surprises. All photographs by Luis Rodriguez
The forced evictions of Badia East, Lagos: ’This is not right’ | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/oct/16/forced-evictions-badia-east-lagos-this-is-not-right
Until 2013, Badia East – a small, densely populated pocket in central Lagos flanked by overhead expressways – was home to 30,000 people living in an informal housing settlement. In February of that year, 9,000 were forcibly evicted. This month the same thing happened to another 1,000 more. It is one of the largest forced evictions in the state’s history.
Their homes were demolished under the authority of the Oba Ojora, a local tribal king who has long claimed hereditary ownership of the land, previously owned by the Nigerian government. As bulldozers crashed through the neighbourhood, the residents scrambled for their belongings, most of which were crushed into rubble.
How a crowd-sourced map changed Kuala Lumpur’s ideas about cycling | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/18/how-crowd-sourced-map-kuala-lumpurs-ideas-cycling
“I was a bit naive,” admits Jeffrey Lim. “I thought it would be easy.” In Lim’s bright studio in Kuala Lumpur, bike wheels adorn the walls and a large table is spread with maps of Malaysia. Lim, a graphic designer, has spent the past three years mapping the city for cyclists.
To anybody familiar with Kuala Lumpur’s urban sprawl, “naive” might seem like an understatement. As residents will tell you, this is a city built for cars. According to Nielsen, Malaysia has the third highest rate of car ownership in the world – a whopping 93% of households own a car.
#malaisie #vélo #byciclette #crowd_sourcing #cartographie_participative #visualisation
What are the most ’emotionally stable’ cities in the US? | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/oct/02/what-most-emotionally-stable-cities-us
The best city stories from around the web this week include a ranking of the most and least emotionally stable places in the US and UK, a peek inside a bizarre Canadian ghost town, noise maps of busy US cities and a look at a traditional German city in the heart of southern Brazil. We’d love to hear your responses to these stories: just share your thoughts in the comments below.
Is your city emotionally stable?
#urban_matter #états-Unis #villes #agglomérations
Next City shares a ranking of the most “emotionally stable” cities in the US, based on assessments of the personality traits of over 1.3 million people, including resilience, agreeableness and neuroticism. Jackson, TN, is the winner here – in case you wanted to move somewhere famous for its emotional stability – but I have to admit I don’t recognise many place names on the list. Perhaps the larger and more well known the city, the more unstable its residents! Entrepreneurial spirit has also been assessed, with the Californian city of San Luis Obispo coming out on top.
In praise of dirty, sexy cities: the urban world according to Walter Benjamin | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/21/walter-benjamin-marseille-moscow-cities?CMP=share_btn_tw
via @isskein c’est un chouette texte !
Marseille isn’t as wicked as it used to be. In 1929, the playwright and travel writer Basil Woon wrote From Deauville to Monte Carlo: a Guide to the Gay World of France, warning his respectable readers that, whatever they do, they should on no account visit France’s second city. “Thieves, cut-throats and other undesirables throng the narrow alleys and sisters of scarlet sit in the doorways of their places of business, catching you by the sleeve as you pass by. The dregs of the world are here unsifted … Marseille is the world’s wickedest port.”
Why is a Paris suburb scrapping an urban farm to build a car park ? | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/11/paris-un-climate-conference-colombes-r-urban-urban-farm-car-park
With less than three months to go before the UN climate change conference in Paris, a project at the forefront of urban sustainability in the city’s north-western suburb of Colombes faces impending closure – in favour of a car park.
Initiated in 2008 by Constantin Petcou and Doina Petrescu from Atelier d’Architecture Autogéreé (AAA), the award-winning R-Urban scheme is composed of a co-working and making space, the Recyclab, plus (just down the road) an urban agriculture facility, Agrocité, which is made up of allotments, a micro-farm whose produce is sold locally and a school providing professional training in compost-making. There is also a community space and cafe where the food grown on-site is processed and sold at affordable prices.
Petcou points out that the UN’s intergovernmental panel on climate change (IPCC) acknowledges the role of individuals and local governments in tackling climate change, and that R-Urban “is doing just that”.
“The scheme is all about local practices,” Petrescu adds, “but it’s also about scaling up through regional networks, and changing the way citizens in Colombes and elsewhere think about urban resilience.”
With the climate conference putting Paris in the global spotlight from 30 November, the decision by the City of Colombes to abandon one of Europe’s most ambitious urban sustainability schemes seems almost comical in its timing.
The city council argues that the replacement car park is essential to serve the regeneration of the area – but Benoît, a long-term resident of Colombes who joined R-Urban in the project’s early days, points at all the spaces around the Agrocité that sit idle, ready to host the car park.
Un article de mediapart de juillet
R-URBAN, la « campagne » pour la ville
▻http://blogs.mediapart.fr/blog/unpalimpseste/080715/r-urban-la-campagne-pour-la-ville
« Un projet de résilience urbaine, comme il n’y en a pas ailleurs », me dit Constantin Petcou, l’un des architectes de AAA (Atelier d’Architecture Autogérée) qui a initié et co-élaboré ce projet urbain, intitulé R-Urban. Construire des unités de résilience, à partir desquelles on peut agir pour lutter contre les crises globales (climatique, énergétique, économique, ressources) et « sauver la planète » en agissant de bas en haut. Des opportunités spatiales où les habitants viennent d’abord pour le loisir et puis peu à peu, s’y développent des activités avec d’autres habitants jusqu’à même pouvoir créer des emplois. Ce sont des espaces porteurs d’autres modes de vie plus résilients, moins polluants, par la culture bio, le recyclage, moins consommateurs de pétrole, d’électricité, de matières premières, en somme plus écologiques. Ces espaces sont aussi conçus autour de la coopération, de la mutualisation entre habitants, entre amateurs et professionnels, entre producteurs et consommateurs, lesquels se rapprochent et collaborent, comme dans une Amap. En citant André Gorz, Constantin rappelle souvent que pour lutter contre les crises globales, nous devons “consommer ce que nous produisons et produire ce que nous consommons“. Or les unités R-Urban sont des opportunités pour pouvoir agir concrétement et rapidement, pour réaliser cet équilibre perdu dans les modes de vie urbains et globalisés actuels.
R-Urban, c’est un projet européen de résilience participative, inscrit dans le programme LIFE +. Après diverses tentatives à partir de 2008, notamment à Paris, la discussion avance et un partenariat éclot avec la Mairie de Colombes (PS), à partir de 2009-2010. Dans ce cadre, avec la participation de la Mairie, du Département, de la Région, de la Commission Européenne, réalisation de deux des trois projets élaborés, le recyclab et l’agrocité, l’éco-habitat devait suivre, à proximité des deux autres, mais le changement de municipalité a interrompu le processus. La nouvelle municipalité (Les Républicains) veut récupérer le terrain de l’agrocité pour faire un parking temporaire, dans le cadre de la rénovation urbaine du quartier Fossés-Saint-Jean, envisagée avec l’ANRU.
The meticulously hand-coloured bomb damage maps of London – in pictures | Cities | The Guardian
►http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/sep/02/hand-coloured-bomb-damage-maps-london-in-pictures
The devastation wrought on the capital by the blitz was documented by the architect’s department of London County Council. The impact of the destruction from air raids and V-bombs can still be seen in London today
#Londres #bombardements #cartographie via @jcfichet
London’s greatest design icons: from Regent’s Park to Brick Lane via the M25 | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/sep/04/london-greatest-design-icons-regents-park-brick-lane-m25?CMP=twt_gu
The M25
Britain came late to motorways. It was only in 1959, long after Germany’s autobahns and the United States’ parkway-building programmes had taken shape, that Britain finally started developing its own version. The M25 orbital, London’s distinctive contribution to motorway building, came even later. It may owe something to Washington DC’s Beltway, or the Boulevard Périphérique in Paris, but it is the largest of its kind in Europe and serves to define the shape and the identity of the city.
BBC News - The Hurricane Station: WWL, the New Orleans radio station that fought to keep listeners alive during Hurricane Katrina
▻http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/resources/idt-20ed5228-1f23-4906-9057-ffdd9d5272f2
On Friday afternoons in the Big Easy, people clock off early.
True to its reputation as America’s most hedonistic city, offices empty as bars and restaurants fill up.
On 26 August 2005, many were scrambling to watch their beloved football team, the Saints, play against the Baltimore Ravens in the New Orleans Superdome.
Built in the 1970s, the Superdome sits next to a spaghetti of concrete flyovers. An imposing steel structure with a white roof, it sits in stark contrast to the Spanish inspired balconies with lace-like finishes in the French quarter, where tourists flock.
–--------------
Katrina Washed Away New Orleans’s Black Middle Class | FiveThirtyEight
▻http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/katrina-washed-away-new-orleanss-black-middle-class
▻https://espnfivethirtyeight.files.wordpress.com/2015/08/new_orleans_lede.jpg?quality=100&strip=all
Ten years ago, shortly after the floodwaters subsided, James Gray stood in the ruins of his New Orleans home and tried to salvage what remained of his belongings. They fit inside a handbag.
“I don’t know if my wife will ever get over that,” Gray said recently.
But Gray and his wife have since restored the New Orleans East home where they have lived for more than 20 years. Most of their neighbors have returned, too. And Gray, who now represents the neighborhood on the City Council, points to other evidence of rebirth in a district that has long been home to much of the city’s black middle class: a gleaming new hospital, which opened last year; new schools open or under construction; national chains such as Wal-Mart and CVS that are returning after years of absence.
–------------------
A ’new’ New Orleans emerges 10 years after hurricane Katrina - CSMonitor.com
▻http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Society/2015/0825/A-new-New-Orleans-emerges-10-years-after-hurricane-Katrina
New Orleans — American taxpayers put New Orleans back on its feet after hurricane Katrina. Matt Haines helped take it from there.
The young New Yorker came to New Orleans in 2009 as part of Ameri-
Corps to help resurrect the city after one of the worst natural disasters in US history, and, like more than 30,000 other people, never left. He bought a rickety house in the rough St. Claude neighborhood, fixed it up, then bought another. Today he still lives in that second shotgun house – a classic narrow rectangular box with a brightly painted Gothic facade.
–-------------------
White people in New Orleans say they’re better off after Katrina. Black people don’t. - The Washington Post
▻http://www.washingtonpost.com/news/post-nation/wp/2015/08/24/white-people-in-new-orleans-say-theyre-better-off-after-katrina-blac
This week marks the 10-year anniversary of Hurricane Katrina’s landfall in New Orleans. By all accounts, the city has made enormous strides since the 2005 calamity.
But how much residents think that’s true depends largely on their race.
A new Louisiana State University survey found that black and white people in New Orleans had starkly different assessments of their community’s strides since the storm.
–-------------------
Increasing destructiveness of tropical cyclones over the past 30[thinsp]years : Abstract : Nature
▻http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v436/n7051/abs/nature03906.html
Theory1 and modelling2 predict that hurricane intensity should increase with increasing global mean temperatures, but work on the detection of trends in hurricane activity has focused mostly on their frequency3, 4 and shows no trend. Here I define an index of the potential destructiveness of hurricanes based on the total dissipation of power, integrated over the lifetime of the cyclone, and show that this index has increased markedly since the mid-1970s. This trend is due to both longer storm lifetimes and greater storm intensities. I find that the record of net hurricane power dissipation is highly correlated with tropical sea surface temperature, reflecting well-documented climate signals, including multi-decadal oscillations in the North Atlantic and North Pacific, and global warming. My results suggest that future warming may lead to an upward trend in tropical cyclone destructive potential, and—taking into account an increasing coastal population—a substantial increase in hurricane-related losses in the twenty-first century.
–-------------------
Is New Orleans in danger of turning into a modern-day Atlantis? | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/24/new-orleans-hurricane-katrina-louisiana-wetlands-modern-atlantis
In the years before Hurricane Katrina, residents of New Orleans sought solace in the belief that the Crescent City could build itself out of all environmental threats. Despite a sinking urban footprint, a shrinking coastal buffer and rising sea levels, they had faith that strong stormwater infrastructure was enough to keep them safe. The huge, federally built levee system encircling the metropolitan area enshrined that belief.
–-------------
Hurricane Katrina | US news | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/hurricane-katrina
Hurricane Katrina: The latest news and comment on Hurricane Katrina. The Guardian is marking the tenth anniversary of Hurricane Katrina with the series Hurricane Katrina: 10 years on.
–---------------
10 Years After Katrina, Will California’s Capital Be The Next New Orleans? | ThinkProgress
▻http://thinkprogress.org/climate/2015/08/24/3690955/sacramento-katrina-levees
A 2011 New York Times Magazine story sounded the alarm: “Scientists consider Sacramento — which sits at the confluence of the Sacramento and American Rivers and near the Delta — the most flood-prone city in the nation.” The article went on to note that experts fear an earthquake or violent Pacific superstorm could destroy the city’s levees and spur a megaflood that could wreak untold damage on California’s capital region.
#mississippi #katrina #nouvelle_orléans #états_unis #désastre #ouragan #climat
Shanghai’s European-style ghost towns – in pictures
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/gallery/2015/jul/23/shanghai-china-european-style-ghost-towns-in-pictures
Just a decade after six European-style towns were built to absorb Shanghai’s increasing population, China’s slowing economy has left them mostly deserted. James Bollen’s images record the failure of these empty copycat boroughs
Photograph: James Bollen
Can the Safecity app make Delhi safer for women? | Cities | The Guardian
▻http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/aug/13/can-the-safecity-app-make-delhi-safer-for-women
The Safecity app lets women share their stories of harassment and abuse in public spaces in cities. Elsa D’Silva, one of its founders, says that women can use it to report “what happened, where it happened and when it happened”.
D’Silva started to form the idea for Safecity during a visit to Sweden where, having recently begun working on women’s issues following 20 years in the aviation industry, she met the founders of HarassMap – a project that, among other things, uses online and mobile technology to work towards ending sexual harassment and assault in Egypt. Shortly after D’Silva returned home to Delhi, the now infamous gang rape of a 23-year-old medical student on a Delhi bus took place.
That rape changed something for D’Silva, and for many other Indian people. She says: “That was when everything lined up and I said to myself: Safety and security need to be urgently addressed. Until then, not many of us were even talking about it actively or openly enough, including me. It was that rape that really got me thinking more actively … And then I started to remember the various incidents that had taken place in my own life.” Her personal silence broken, D’Silva began to talk to friends: “I realised that every one of them had a story to share, but until then we had never really spoken about it.”
#femmes #harcèlement_sexuel #ville #espace_public #app #cartographie_collective #culture_du_viol #Inde