Tag Archives: urban life

NYC: The Most Walkable U.S. Town

JMG reader Bill points us to Slate’s walkability “heat map” of New York City, the nation’s most walkable town. Green means walkable, red not so much. (I’m at the asterisk.) Read Slate’s feature story on how the calculations are made.

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200 Years Of The Manhattan Street Grid

Tomorrow is the 200th anniversary of the approval of Manhattan’s street grid, a decision that some historians say did more to create the most densely populated space in North America than any other bit of urban planning. The grid certified by the city’s street commissioners on March 22, 1811, spurred development by establishing seven miles of regular, predictable street access. …

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China To Create World’s Largest City

Chinese urban planners will join nine large cities near Hong Kong into one sprawling 16,000 square mile city which will be 26 times larger than London. With 42 million people within its boundaries. The new mega-city will cover a large part of China’s manufacturing heartland, stretching from Guangzhou to Shenzhen and including Foshan, Dongguan, Zhongshan, Zhuhai, Jiangmen, Huizhou and Zhaoqing. …

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If The Whole Country Was Brooklyn

According to some urban planners, if the entire USA lived with the same population density of Brooklyn, we could all live in an area the size of New Hampshire. The rest of the nation would become farmland and parks and there’s be little need for domestic air travel. And we’d all ride our solar-powered hovercycles to our sustainable green office …

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World’s Weirdest Apartments

Koldcast has posted their Top 20 Weirdest Apartment Buildings, of which I really dig the above complex in Rotterdam, Netherlands, where it looks like you really could fall out of the windows.

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The Roar Of The Crowd

As a commenter on Vanishing New York puts it, “No one moved to the East Village/Lower East Side to hear birdsong in the mornings and crickets at night,” but the new Thompson LES Hotel’s rooftop pool bar, which is literally inches from the windows of the surrounding apartments, has got the entire neighborhood in an uproar. Here’s a 20-second clip …

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