Paul Romer: A Theory of History, with an Application - "His economic theory of history explains phenomena such as the constant improvement of the human standard of living by looking primarily at just two forms of innovative ideas: technology and rules." (previously, via) [more inside]
posted by kliuless on Jul 3, 2009 - 11 comments

Prelude to Federation - Like a neocolonial SEZ (or TAZ) Paul Romer, not to be confused with David, posits "less developed countries contract with capitalist nations to set up Hong Kong's for them... that we rethink sovereignty (respect borders, but maybe import administrative control); rethink citizenship (support residency, but maybe import voice in political affairs); and rethink scale (instead of focusing on nations, focus on cities—on city states like Hong Kong and Singapore)." cf. neocameralism [1, 2, 3] [more inside]
posted by kliuless on May 21, 2009 - 16 comments

"Zipf's Law (pdf) states that if you tabulate the biggest cities in a given country and rank them according to their populations, the largest city is always about twice as big as the second largest, and three times as big as the third largest, and so on. In other words, the population of a city is, to a good approximation, inversely proportional to its rank." [more inside]
posted by AceRock on May 21, 2009 - 31 comments

Thinking of relocating in these troubled economic times? You might want to consider checking out Forbes' list of The Most Overpriced Cities in America. The Top 5: Los Angeles, Chicago, Miami, New York, and... Providence?
posted by grapefruitmoon on May 12, 2009 - 56 comments

Recent research has found that living in a city may be bad for your brain. Compared with natural settings, cities over-stimulate us and impair our memory and cognitive functions.
posted by jon_hansen on Feb 17, 2009 - 84 comments

"The last eight years, in terms of engagement, [Washington] D.C. has just been a photo op for the president, or a foil," says Tommy Wells, a social worker turned D.C. Council member. [more inside]
posted by l33tpolicywonk on Dec 22, 2008 - 27 comments

Soviet Music "You are browsing a resource which is devoted first of all to the history and culture of the Soviet Union, the country which the West for a long time usually named as "The Empire of Evil", the country to which some people in the West perceive as "something big and snowy". I offer you to try to look outside the frames of usual stereotypes, to try to understand life of a unique country, with its interesting history, beautiful culture and miraculous relations between people. The music submitted on this site - is an evident sample of a totally new culture, which completely differs from all that, with what Hollywood and MTV supply us so much. This culture, being free from the cult of money, platitude, violence and sex, was urged to not indulge low bents of a human soul but to help the person to become culturally enriched and to grow above himself." [more inside]
posted by tellurian on Sep 23, 2008 - 16 comments

Swimming Cities of Switchback Sea is an exhibit by Swoon composed of seven floating sculptures made from discarded materials. Following a performance tour down the Hudson River, it is docked at Deitch Studios in NYC until October 18th.
posted by lunit on Sep 9, 2008 - 4 comments

Visualizing Early Washington. A project at the Imaging Research Center of the University of Maryland-Baltimore County has reconstructed the original landscape of Washington DC before its radical transformation into a modern capital city. [more inside]
posted by Horace Rumpole on Sep 2, 2008 - 21 comments

Policy Exchange, the same British conservative think tank who brought you reports such as the tastefully titled The Hijacking of British Islam (previously), have released a new report, Cities Limited (pdf), which states that the only solution for people living in the North of Britain - where unemployment and poverty are high - is to abandon their homes and move south. Leader of the Conservative Party, David Cameron, minced no words in his response: "This report is rubbish from start to finish. I think the author himself said it might be a bit barmy. It is barmy. I gather he's off to Australia. The sooner he gets on the ship the better." Conservative bloggers have been very quick to distance themselves from the report, some going as far as to blame it on Liberal Democrats. Co-author of the report, Tim Leunig, a lecturer in economic history at the London School of Economics, defends his position.
posted by Marisa Stole the Precious Thing on Aug 14, 2008 - 32 comments

Are you a young middle-class creative type (probably white) who has chosen to live in an urban neighborhood that your parents would have shunned? Have the families that formerly lived in your neighborhood (probably not white) been pushed out by soaring rents and real-estate prices to the city fringes or suburbs? The New Republic on demographic inversion.
posted by digaman on Aug 2, 2008 - 64 comments

The National Traffic Scorecard ranks the 100 most-congested metropolitan areas in the United States. Number one? Los Angeles, naturally. [more inside]
posted by backseatpilot on Jun 17, 2008 - 53 comments

"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 by limeonaire on Jun 16, 2008 - 25 comments

From the Improv Everywhere people comes the Urban Prankster blog to keep track of delightful shenanigans around the world.
posted by CunningLinguist on Jun 11, 2008 - 21 comments

Another Paul Graham essay, Cities and Ambition. This one's one of his better ones though. His claim: each city sends its inhabitants a distinct message about how they should live their lives. New York City sends the message that you should be richer. Cambridge sends the message that you should be smarter. Berkeley sends the message that you should live better. Consequently, the city you live in has a profound effect on what you strive for, what you value, and how you channel your ambitions. Place matters; choose wisely. [more inside]
posted by decoherence on Jun 2, 2008 - 87 comments

City of the Future, Taiwan 1960s
posted by socalsamba on May 27, 2008 - 13 comments

Too much traffic? Can't find parking? Choking on smog? Worried about climate change? Gas prices too high, but you still have to drive? Send your city planner a link to the Online Encyclopedia of Transportation Demand Management strategies. [more inside]
posted by salvia on May 8, 2008 - 7 comments

The world's cleanest cities and dirtiest cities.
posted by Navelgazer on May 2, 2008 - 59 comments

New York City is the greenest city in America. Eighty-two per cent of Manhattan residents travel to work by public transit, by bicycle, or on foot. That's ten times the rate for Americans in general, and eight times the rate for residents of Los Angeles County. New York City is more populous than all but eleven states; if it were granted statehood, it would rank 51st in per-capita energy use.... But this is not necessarily something people want to hear: In a conversation with a Sierra Club representative involved in Challenge to Sprawl, I said that the organization's anti-sprawl suggestions and the modified streetscapes in the slide show shared many significant features with Manhattan-whose most salient characteristics include wide sidewalks, narrow streets, mixed uses, densely packed buildings, and an extensive network of subways and buses. The representative hesitated, then said that I was essentially correct, although he would prefer that the program not be described in such terms, since emulating New York City would not be considered an appealing goal by most of the people whom the Sierra Club is trying to persuade
posted by storybored on Apr 6, 2008 - 61 comments

"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 by ottereroticist on Jan 22, 2008 - 57 comments

Why humans started huddling together in cities is still shrouded in mystery but if the question is ever settled the answer will probably be found in Çatalhöyük, a settlement of five to eight thousand located in what is now Turkey that came into existence around 7500 BC. The current head archaeologist of the Çatalhöyük Project is Ian Hodder, one of the leading lights in postprocessual archaeology, who summarized his finding in a recent article in Natural History Magazine. The Çatalhöyük Project website is a treasure trove of information about the ancient settlement. [more inside]
posted by Kattullus on Dec 29, 2007 - 24 comments

Shrinking Cities (virtual and real): Analysis and Interventions. [more inside]
posted by salvia on Nov 29, 2007 - 12 comments

City of Sound as it describes itself, is a blog about cities, design, architecture, media, music, etc. But calling it a blog really does it a disservice. City of Sound is a category-killer; amazingly dense, thoughtful, erudite, and compelling, it begins to catalog our urban identity. A bit of reminiscent of Metropolis magazine, if it was edited by Robert Rauschenberg. If you've not visited, do yourself a favor. It is a treasure trove. [more inside]
posted by spacely_sprocket on Nov 17, 2007 - 11 comments

Top 101 Cities Lists (in the US)
posted by graventy on Nov 6, 2007 - 48 comments

The Young Gallery has an exceptional collection of photographs by both renowned and recently discovered photographers. The feast of visuals includes elegantly haunting images of African wildlife by Nick Brandt, Night Views of cities by Floriane de Lassée, salad vegetables by Viktor Polson, nudes and portraits by Patrick Demarchelier and images of Tibet, Mongolians and Tibetans by Richard Gere.
posted by nickyskye on Oct 27, 2007 - 8 comments

An interview with Lebbeus Woods -- designer and illustrator of speculative futuristic landscapes and buildings. Woods just set up his own website, which has an amazing quantity of drawings, photographs, and text focusing on his lesser known projects [for those willing to deal with a frustrating flash interface and sound. It's better in IE than Firefox.] [more inside]
posted by salvia on Oct 6, 2007 - 10 comments

Photographs of American Cities from the middle of the 20th Century.
posted by jonson on Sep 29, 2007 - 37 comments

"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] [more inside]
posted by salvia on Sep 26, 2007 - 19 comments

WebUrbanist: Collective Bloggings about Urban Cultures and Alternative Arts
posted by bijou on Aug 17, 2007 - 8 comments

This week, the world became more urban than rural for the first time in human history. Trace urban growth over the past century, or with more detail over the last 50 years, and see how the idea of the city has evolved. When you are done admiring the skylines (more from US cities) and singing the songs, reflect on the best and worst of cities: the richest by GDP and personal earnings, the worst slums, the best skylines, the worst polluted, the fastest moving, the most expensive, and the most polite (New York?). What does it all mean? Stuart Brand [video] (slideshow here) and other experts weigh in. [see also my previous post on the names of cities]
posted by blahblahblah on May 25, 2007 - 18 comments

The city of Detroit is in a bad way. House are cheaper than cars. The city's neighborhoods are in decay. Families are leaving. Even "revived" areas are struggling. Entire portions of the city are starting to revert to prarie and ruins. Can the city be saved or is it time to give up on the Arsenal of Democracy?
posted by fancypants on Mar 21, 2007 - 220 comments

Lost Cities.
posted by Wolfdog on Feb 26, 2007 - 27 comments

Tales of Future Past* — It's been a looong Monday. Do you want to get off the planet and out of the city to a place where you can really live? Well, here's some food for thought on the way home down life's highways. First, take a break from all this depressing war talk. Then empower yourself by giving yourself some space and maybe taking off for a few days. Drive just a bit slower, turn up the volume and imagine that your mechanic will say the tranny's OK after all. Once you're in the front door, take time to get slightly wired and forget all about politics. Get recharged for tomorrow: have a nice long bath, put your mind at ease, watch Ur Fave shOw, and listen to some soothing music. Now, don't things look a lot better? [*Note the 'Start the Tour' links at the bottom of each page.]
posted by cenoxo on Feb 12, 2007 - 10 comments

On walls and pavements in cities around the world you may encounter poetry.
posted by Wolfdog on Feb 6, 2007 - 7 comments

It took a long time for many achievements of the ancient world to be duplicated. The first city to reach one million people was Baghdad in 775 CE (or possibly Rome nine hundred years before), a feat that would not be duplicated until London and Beijing grew in the 19th century. The largest building in the world was the Great Pyramid for forty centuries until the 19th, and the world's current longest canal is over two millenia old. Some mysteries still remain, such as the formula of Greek Fire, but it looks like a different ancient weapon's secret has been discovered, that of Damascus steel. The key ingredient -- nanotech!
posted by blahblahblah on Jan 25, 2007 - 29 comments

Is "Apocalypto" pornography? "I am not a compulsively politically correct type who sees the Maya as the epitome of goodness and light... But in "Apocalypto," no mention is made of the achievements in science and art, the profound spirituality and connection to agricultural cycles, or the engineering feats of Maya cities." Traci Arden
posted by hard rain on Jan 6, 2007 - 129 comments

The City Desk is a blog dedicated to covering the history and traditions of a city that does not exist. Get the dirt on about the tramway that never happened or take a gander at fascinating statistics about the population. Heck, there's even a definitive origin for the term "Black Friday."
posted by beaucoupkevin on Dec 22, 2006 - 8 comments

This video (set to The Album Leaf's "Outer Banks") is an absolutely gorgeous bit of time lapse photography, all shot around a cityscape I couldn't recognize. Watching it made me think of this movie, which is another bit of ethereal time lapse urbanscape beauty, this time shot in a city I did recognize (downtown Los Angeles & LAX initially, San Francisco later). Direct download 480p version of second film here. Of course, watching the second film reminded me of this previously posted third film (Rivers of Light, by the Grass Collective) involving cityscapes(downtown L.A. again - flash based preview here), this time in slow motion, and without audio. All links are quicktime, and HUGE, but highly recommended and very, very pretty.
posted by jonson on Oct 14, 2006 - 19 comments

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 by salvia on Sep 14, 2006 - 7 comments

Beautiful Subways --worldwide--from palatial to postmodern, folksy to brutalist (pee smells not included--and don't miss Tehran's)
posted by amberglow on Aug 25, 2006 - 48 comments

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 by jonson on Jul 24, 2006 - 18 comments

Dark Age Ahead. Jane Jacobs passes on.
posted by Chuckles on Apr 25, 2006 - 49 comments

The 15 Best Skylines.
posted by CunningLinguist on Mar 26, 2006 - 70 comments

Arounder has an ongoing collection of high-quality full screen Quicktime VR panoramas of European cities, focusing on famous artistic and cultural landmarks (in Rome, Florence, Köln, Barcelona, Cyprus), with interactive maps and travel information. A collaboration with national tourist offices by Swiss company Vrway Communication, which also publishes Vrmag, a bi-monthly review of panorama photography, and the FullscreenQTVR directory in collaboration with the well-known panoramas.dk (previously mentioned on metafilter: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5).
posted by funambulist on Mar 6, 2006 - 5 comments

The Tokyo skyline [Windows or Real media] drawn from memory by savant Stephen Wiltshire.
posted by tellurian on Feb 5, 2006 - 38 comments

Cities is a cross between Urban Dead and Kingdom of Loathing.
posted by ChasFile on Jan 16, 2006 - 23 comments

Transit in Detroit details an urban planner's initiative to cut the costs of the city's traffic congestion-relieving highway expansion by proposing a transit system combining light rail and bus-rapid-transit. [More Inside]
posted by gregb1007 on Nov 25, 2005 - 15 comments

The CommonCensus Map Project is redrawing the map of the United States based on your voting, to show how the country is organized culturally, as opposed to traditional political boundaries. It shows how the country is divided into 'spheres of influence' between different cities at the national, regional, and local levels.
posted by BuddhaInABucket on Oct 17, 2005 - 11 comments

Ed Bacon, friend to skaters, died Friday. He presided over a successful urban renewal campaign (a rarity), yet leaves behind a complex legacy in the city he loved. [bugmenot]
posted by deafmute on Oct 16, 2005 - 18 comments

In the summer of 1995 there was a week-long heat wave in Chicago. Over 700 people died. Most of them were the elderly, poor, and African-Americans. Link above is a Slate article by Eric Klinberg who wrote the definitive Heat Wave: A Social Autopsy of Disaster in Chicago (2003) in which he concludes that "a city, in its decision to operate like a corporation, experienced the breakdown of massive social services" and the resulting "widening cracks in the social foundations of America's cities".
posted by stbalbach on Sep 9, 2005 - 20 comments