Rental Car Rally. (From the guys who brought Street Wars to NYC). That is all.
posted on Jul 8, 2008 - View this thread

"Q: What the hell is this site about? This is a site about urban exploration in the Ozarks." Abandoned water slides, underground tunnels, abandoned buildings and half-demolished malls throughout Missouri were all once fair game for this blog, and remain fair game for those who post in Underground Ozarks' forums.
posted on Jun 16, 2008 - View this thread

From the Improv Everywhere people comes the Urban Prankster blog to keep track of delightful shenanigans around the world.
posted on Jun 11, 2008 - View this thread

Humble abode: Loftcube // Rucksack House // Micro-Compact Home // Superadobe // Zigzag Cabin // Tree Sphere // Mirador // La Petite Maison du Weekend _ all via.
posted on Jun 4, 2008 - View this thread

Two visions of the ideal city rise in the Persian Gulf: "Waterfront City will probably be where a lot of Middle Eastern investors will put their money—and where international architectural stars will build their putative landmarks—but if little Masdar develops successfully, it may hold much more important lessons for us all."
posted on Apr 27, 2008 - View this thread

Last summer, the Missoula MT city council deadlocked on the question of whether city folk should be allowed to keep "urban chickens". (Missoula, pop. 57,000 is what passes for urban in Big Sky Country.) Reporter Ann Medley made a wonderful video essay on the issue for New West.
posted on Feb 16, 2008 - View this thread

Madrid's "Air Tree" is a working experiment in combining public spaces with energy generation.
posted on Jan 25, 2008 - View this thread

"This is a building where our deeply-troubled public school system once stored its supplies, and then one day apparently walked away from it all, allowing everything to go to waste...All that's left is an overwhelming sense of knowledge unlearned and untapped potential." (Via Making Light.)
posted on Jan 22, 2008 - View this thread

City Farmer is a Vancouver-based organization that's been promoting urban agriculture since 1978. If you dig around their sprawling website, you can find everything from this feel-good news story, to a series of links leading to a nice deep free book. Alternatively, their new blog has cool pictures.
posted on Jan 20, 2008 - View this thread

Postcards from Our Awesome Future. [via] An art exhibition stemming from the minds of Packard Jennings (whose illustrations have appeared in Adbusters) and Steve Lambert (of Anti-Advertising Agency fame); using San Francisco's infrastructure as a model for improvement, the duo answered the siren call of Objectivism through an arcology devoid of “...budgets, beauracracy [sic], politics, or physics”.
posted on Jan 8, 2008 - View this thread

Hugh Ferriss: Delineator of Gotham. Through his charcoal renderings of dramatic, imaginary skyscrapers in early 1900s New York City, Ferriss influenced the aesthetics of numerous architects with his bold compositions.
posted on Jan 6, 2008 - View this thread

Train runs through bangkok market. (via)
posted on Dec 1, 2007 - View this thread

Urban Exploring. Recently: Sanatorio Popolare Cantonale di Piotta. Sinteranlage, Duisburg. Atomschutz Kurfürstendamm, Berlin (flash). (Previously.)
posted on Nov 28, 2007 - View this thread

Defying Demographics: A look at University Park Campus School, a 7-12th grade school located in the poorest neighborhood in blue-collar Worcester, MA. Approximately 73% of students hover at or below the poverty line and 61% are minorities, yet over 80% go on to college and 99% pass the Massachusetts graduation exams. The partnership between Clark University and Worcester Public Schools has created an environment so successful that a number of cities are looking to emulate it. Have they discovered the key to closing the achievement gap?
posted on Nov 23, 2007 - View this thread

John Stilgoe is a professor at Harvard who teaches his students how to, among other things, mindfully observe the urban and suburban environments they inhabit.
posted on Oct 11, 2007 - View this thread

"First we kill the architects..." Photographer Danny Lyon [1, 2, 3, 4] offers ten suggestions for New York City. Suggestion #6: "Leave the World Trade Center excavation exactly as it is and use the space as a freshwater pond planted with pink, white, and yellow lilies..." His essay is only one of many from names you'll recognize in a book called Block by Block: Jane Jacobs and the Future of New York. An associated exhibition opened yesterday [museum, NYT review]. Is New York City moving in the right direction? Is your city? [via]
posted on Sep 26, 2007 - View this thread

Sewer openings turned into street art by São Paolo duo 6emeia. [via FunForever]
posted on Sep 18, 2007 - View this thread

Urban Scout. Sincere crusader for sustainable living or poseur hipster douchebag? [last link is google video]
posted on Sep 1, 2007 - View this thread

Illicit Ohio has a wide range of photos and essays of abandoned places in Ohio, from the Cincinnati subway system (yes, there really is was one, and it's been discussed here before), to various and sundry prisons, government installations, hotels, hosiptals, houses and more. And don't miss the old vs. new galleries, either.
posted on Aug 29, 2007 - View this thread

WebUrbanist: Collective Bloggings about Urban Cultures and Alternative Arts
posted on Aug 17, 2007 - View this thread

Why New Yorkers Last Longer. Interestingly, urban theorists believe it is not just the tightly packed nature of the city but also its social and economic density that has life-giving properties. When you’re jammed, sardinelike, up against your neighbors, it’s not hard to find a community of people who support you—friends or ethnic peers—and this strongly correlates with better health and a longer life. [New York Magazine article]
posted on Aug 15, 2007 - View this thread

Associative Design - a study of new neighborhood models. requires QuickTime
posted on Aug 10, 2007 - View this thread

Walk Score helps people find walkable places to live. Walk Score calculates the walkability of an address by locating nearby stores, restaurants, schools, parks, etc.
posted on Jul 23, 2007 - View this thread

High salaries and rising property values in Sodom and Gommorah? There Goes the Neighborhood: How and Why Bohemians, Artists and Gays Effect Regional Housing Values.
posted on Jun 23, 2007 - View this thread

Iran Graffiti and Urban Art Report
posted on Jun 15, 2007 - View this thread

In 1957, Swiss typographer Max Miedinger invented "the official typeface of the 20th century" -- Helvetica [previously discussed here, via Arts and Letters Daily].
posted on Apr 21, 2007 - View this thread

Kehinde Wiley : painter and sculptor . "The subjects, anonymous men in T-shirts and jeans that Wiley approaches on the street, are given the mantle of authority and grandiosity bestowed on figures such as Napoleon in Jacques-Louis David's famous depiction with a rearing steed or the holiness of saints." (via)
posted on Mar 7, 2007 - View this thread

The Dervaes Institute is an 'off the grid' homestead in Pasadena, CA and supports 4 adults full time. It also produces 3 tons of produce annually. It's all run from solar panels and biodiesel. Over 350 different plants and a handful of farm animals thrive on a 1/5 acre lot, not too far from the middle of Los Angeles. An 'urban homestead' indeed!
posted on Jan 26, 2007 - View this thread

Photography of the unexpected and neglected architecture. Romain Meffre and Yves Marchand travel the world photographing "singular and surprising buildings of all domains," mostly 19th and 20th century urban and industrial architecture. Don't miss the photos of Detroit (under Projects), or more of Marchand's stunning work at his personal site.
posted on Jan 15, 2007 - View this thread

What's behind Niagara Falls? Some dudes investigate.
posted on Jan 14, 2007 - View this thread

Birds that rap and cows with accents. The big picture is urban adaptation, which is pretty cool. (...and the egg wins.)
posted on Dec 28, 2006 - View this thread

City in Flames Twenty Five years ago the City of Lynn Massachusetts experienced its second great fire. Devastating several downtown industrial buildings dating to the rise of the Shoe industry. All of which were undergoing redevelopment. While nowhere near as big as the Great Boston Fire of 1872, or the various Chelsea fires, the tragedy of the story is the empty wasteland that still sits after all these years. Today the Boston Globe dug up several articles from their pre Web vaults. The Lynn Museum has an exhibit, and the Lynn Library will have a slideshow.
posted on Nov 28, 2006 - View this thread

Running from a voodoo spirit. The urban game Crossroads is one of the featured games from last weeks Come Out and Play (yes, another FPP!) Posting because this game is still running this weekend.

Using GPS cell phones, players are trying to take over intersections in lower manhattan, like playing Go. But the Baron Samedi is in the grid with them, and one thing I know is that you don't want him to touch you... which is weird because he doesn't actually exist. You end up getting chased down Hudson street by something invisible. Feels like the future.

Part of an exhibition called the Good Life that closes this weekend.
posted on Sep 29, 2006 - View this thread

"The streets of 2030's New York remain the only venues not under the thumb of the monolithic corporations. Manhattan’s three major hacker gangs have developed black-market technology that enables them to jack into the phone network though the payphone nodes, and redirect the payment deposited into that phone into their own coffers." The premise of a new cyberpunk novel? Nope. A new street game you can play with your friends.
posted on Sep 24, 2006 - View this thread

The Conflux Festival brings together mapmakers, urban adventurers, and performers to "investigate the physical and psychological landscapes of cities," NYC in this case. Tunnels and shortcuts, turning city sound samples into music, guerilla radio on unused FM frequencies, and a nighttime game of pursuit. My personal favorite is tide-propelled commuting on the Tide and Current Taxi. Via Flavorpill.
posted on Sep 14, 2006 - View this thread

Design Times Square: The Urban Forest Project "brings 185 banners created by the world’s most celebrated designers, artists, photographers and illustrators to New York’s Times Square. Each banner uses the form of the tree, or a metaphor for the tree, to make a powerful visual statement. Together they create a forest of thought-provoking images at one of the world’s busiest, most energetic, and emphatically urban intersections." Including work by Milton Glaser, the Walker Art Center, and many, many others. Via Speak Up.
posted on Aug 29, 2006 - View this thread

Sewers of Canada Many pictures of Great Canadian Drains.
posted on Aug 28, 2006 - View this thread

Queen Street: Thematic Preview - "Queen Street is one of Toronto's oldest, longest, and most varied routes. It began in 1793 as a line on a map, running dead straight for ten miles, in modern measure some 16 kilometres. It is the spine, the high street, the main street of many distinct, and quite different, neighbourhoods. The street's fine grain is a cavalcade of urban variety, where the grain is broken by parks, institutions, industry. Queen Street is a promenade of public life, one you can stroll for 16 kilometres. I have, all of it, often camera in hand: I wanted others to see it, to know something of its life. And its gifts — meant to be shared. Here I'll share with you some of what I have seen along, and just off, Queen Street."
posted on Aug 3, 2006 - View this thread

Joe Nishizawa's new photojournalism book, Deep Inside, is a visual exploration of the amazing, highly mechanized world under Japan's urban areas. This brief interview with the author is accompanied by several interesting photos.
posted on Jul 24, 2006 - View this thread

The Urban Pantheist is the livejournal of Jef Taylor, where he works out articles for his two zines: The Urban Pantheist: Loving Nature while Living in the City and Urban Nature Walk. The LJ became a bit more as he embarked on a project called 365 Urban Species, where he'll post a current photo and short article about a different living thing found in the city each day.
posted on Jul 16, 2006 - View this thread

Abandonded buildings: photos of.
posted on Jul 7, 2006 - View this thread

Urban Etiquette : Confused about when to answer your cellphone? Not sure when to take off your iPod? Baffled as to what to say to that guy you saw in that movie with that chick when you see him on the street? Worry no more. In too much of a hurry to read this long article from New York Magazine? This short guide has you covered. Here are a few more New York specific examples. When all else fails, ask Mr. Social Grace. [more inside]
posted on Jun 22, 2006 - View this thread

Naked in the Naked City. Artist Miru Kim takes curiously compelling nude photos of herself in gritty and deserted urban settings like sewers, subway stations, railroad tracks, tunnels, abandoned factories and asylums. (via)
posted on Jun 18, 2006 - View this thread

New York City has been trying to revamp its street furniture for nearly a decade and last Fall, deals were struck between a British architecture firm and a Spanish outdoor firm in a 1 billion dollar deal. Recently the designs for public toilets, bus stop shelters, and (my favorite) a modernized clean newsstand were released.
posted on May 18, 2006 - View this thread

FOVICKS - Friends Of Vast Industrial Concrete Kafkaesque Structures - a photo essay on the concrete geometries of the Los Angeles River flood control channels. [via inhabitat]
posted on Mar 31, 2006 - View this thread

Curating the City A Flash exhibition exploring the past and present urban landscape of Wilshire Boulevard, Los Angeles. A modest topic explored in depth - which is perhaps what makes it so fascinating. The site includes a pdf guidebook, in case you want to check out the bricks-and-mortar version.
posted on Mar 27, 2006 - View this thread

Farmadeliphication (fahr'muh'deli'fi'kay'shun), n. 1. The process of turning all of Philadelphia's vacant and abandoned lots into urban farms. n. 2. An entry in the UrbanVoids international design competition to redo Philadelphia's inner city.
posted on Mar 7, 2006 - View this thread

Slow Life is a Japanese movement that eschews the fast-paced consumption of modern urban life for the slower pace of farming and small villages. It emphasizes self-reliance, sustainability, and the appreciation of leisure. From some perspectives, it can be seen as a reaction to hazards in the modern world or as a peer to Shinto and modern schools of thought.
posted on Feb 27, 2006 - View this thread

Gunkanjima or Battleship Island is 480 x 160 meters and was home to more than 5000 people. Abandoned for more than 40 years it is a microcosm of 20th century industrial development. A soundtrack to the photos. Or take the multimedia tour. Urban exploration.
posted on Feb 25, 2006 - View this thread

Parkour is nothing new. It has been posted about before. However, what is new is this stunning example of the gymnastics in action. Watch, enjoy.
posted on Nov 28, 2005 - View this thread