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Tech NewsAn App Can Help You Locate the Williamsburg of Your City, Or, Which Neighborhood to Avoid
Say you’re traveling in a strange new city but suddenly find yourself really jonesing for the familiar comfort of pour-over coffee and man buns. A new app will help you find such amenities in any city you visit, or, more helpfully, allow you to steer clear of them. TheWhere Is Williamsburg app, which is available … Continued
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Tech News
Why Tesla’s Model 3 Can’t Fix Our Energy Problems
You know what’s hard? Trying to get anyone to say anything remotely critical about the Tesla Model 3. Everyone wants it to succeed because electric vehicles are good, and affordable electric vehicles are even better. But the Model 3 cannot be the hero for the US’s energy woes if we don’t fix a few serious … Continued
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Tech News
Zaha Hadid Was One of the Most Polarizing Architects of Our Time
Zaha Hadid has died suddenly at age 65 from a heart attack. As the first woman architect to achieve notable celebrity, Hadid’s prolific and geographically diverse commissions mean that she will likely remain the best-known woman architect on the planet for many years. But her work was also incredibly controversial— not just the design of … Continued
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Tech News
Building Highways Through Cities Was a Huge Mistake—But We Can Fix It
The US interstate highway system was once a marvel of modern engineering, allowing the movement of goods and ideas that ushered in an era of unprecedented prosperity. But when those highways reached the cities they connected, they plowed through the lowest-income areas, physically dividing neighborhoods and financially devastating communities. A new initiative announced by US … Continued
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Tech News
The People Moving Back Into Big American Cities Are Mostly Rich White People
We keep hearing that this is the age of rapid urbanization: By 2050, 70 percent of the world’s population will live in cities. But in the United States, the people moving into those cities are largely rich, white, and childless. What’s more, not as many of them are moving as they were a few years … Continued
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Tech News
How a Street Artist Secretly Painted an Urban-Scale Mural in Cairo
All over the world street artists have become famous by surreptitiously adding swabs of paint or wheatpaste to city walls. But the most remarkable thing about a new mural in Cairo is not only its size—it covers about 50 buildings—it’s that the artist managed to do it in a place that’s not known for encouraging … Continued
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Tech News
Another Day, Another Burning Skyscraper in Dubai
Until yesterday, it had been almost three months since the last burning skyscraper in the United Arab Emirates. That all changed when a building went up in flames on Monday just outside of Dubai. Several residential high-rises were evacuated by fire in Ajman, a city in Dubai’s metropolitan area. According to the Gulf News, the … Continued
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Tech News
The Best Solution to Stop Skyscrapers From Casting Shadows on Central Park
Upper Manhattan-dwelling New Yorkers have been complaining for years that supertalls are going to ruin the views from their beloved Central Park. Here’s a very good solution: lower the elevation of the park. The annual eVolo Skyscraper Competition consistently delivers some of the wackiest concepts for tall buildings we’ve ever seen. I particularly love the … Continued
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Tech News
This Is the Scariest Future for Autonomous Vehicles I Can Imagine
The biggest promise of self-driving cars is that traffic will finally be democratized. All vehicles will flow smoothly through the city using optimized routes, getting everyone where they need to go safely and efficiently. But there’s a very good possibly that’s not how it will work at all. In a piece called “When All Is … Continued
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Tech NewsPapasan Convertible Is LA’s New Laid-Back Approach to Fighting Traffic
Angelenos stuck in gridlock have high hopes for the opening of the Expo Line, which will bring rail transit to the western half of the city for the first time in 50 years. But stealing all the LA transportation headlines is another solution for improving the commute—a car made from a papasan chair. Car is … Continued
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Tech News
Cities of the Future Could Look Like Burning Man
Once a tiny counter-culture gathering on a San Francisco beach, Burning Man has ballooned into what could be considered an impressive experiment in rapid urbanization. Last year, the population of Black Rock City, which is erected for the festival in the Nevada desert, swelled to over 70,000. Sure, those people are only there for a … Continued
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Tech NewsWatch How Terrifyingly High LA’s Skyslide Will Be
Last Saturday, Los Angeles was treated to the dramatic arrival of the Skyslide, a 45-foot glass tube that will soon allow civilization’s braver souls to peacefully glide along the exterior of the city’s US Bank Tower—1,000 feet in the air. After being trucked to downtown LA from the fabricator in nearby Orange County, the Skyslide … Continued
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SciencePhysics & ChemistryWhen Autonomous Vehicles Roam the Roads, We Won’t Need Stop Lights
Autonomous vehicles are going to radically change how we get around, and as they become commonplace in our streets, we’ll need to rethink how we design our roadways. MIT’s Sensable City Lab looked at this problem a couple of years ago, producing an installation called DriveWave, which is responsible for the above video. Simply put, … Continued
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Tech News
America’s Public Transit Is Broken—And It’s All Your Fault
When was the last time you rode a bus? Maybe you took the bus to save money, or for environmental reasons. In a few instances here in the US, you might have taken the bus because it’s more convenient than driving. But the important thing to recognize is that you probably had a choice. And … Continued
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Tech News
Congress Doesn’t Really Seem to Get Why the US Needs Self-Driving Cars
Yesterday, representatives from Google, GM, Delphi, and Lyft testified before the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation about the future of self-driving vehicles. The senators, bless their hearts, asked all the wrong questions. I don’t doubt that as a legislator who normally deals with something like FCC regulation, wrapping your head around this new-fangled … Continued
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Tech NewsA Computer Can Spot Your Drunk Tweets From a Mile Away
If you were at a bar with your phone in New York City during 2014, your whiskey-laced illegible tweets may have been used for important scientific research. In a study out this week, a group of computer scientists from the University of Rochester analyzed over 11,000 geotagged drunk tweets posted in New York City and … Continued
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EartherClimate Change
An Entire American Community Is Being Relocated Because of Sea Level Rise
Climate change is often seen as a problem for generations to come, but as our freakish winter weather has shown, we’re already living the future we created. Need more proof? An entire Native American community is now going to be resettled, before it gets swallowed by the rising seas. The Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Indians have called the … Continued
By Maddie Stone -
Tech News
Google Will Ask Congress to Create Special Rules for Self-Driving Cars
Google wants its self-driving cars on roads and your driveway as soon as possible, and today it is asking Congress to acknowledge that autonomous vehicles are so radically new that they need a whole new set of rules. Reuters reviewed an advanced copy of testimony from Google X Director of Self-Driving Cars Chris Urmson. Here’s … Continued
By Kate Knibbs -
Tech NewsThese 7 American Cities Will Compete for $40 Million to Create Transportation Utopias
The US government is offering seven cities a remarkable challenge: reinvent urban transportation for the 21st century, with a particular focus on autonomous vehicles. To pull it off, those cities will work with some of the world’s most powerful tech companies, and are eligible to get $40 million from the US Department of Transportation. At … Continued
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Tech News
This Is What Japan Looks Like Five Years After the Tohoku Earthquake
On March 11, 2011 one of the strongest earthquakes ever recorded was epicentered off the coast of Japan. But most of the devastation—including many of the over 15,000 deaths—was due not to the shaking but to the powerful tsunami waves that traveled up to six miles inland. Five years later, many of these communities still … Continued