Tech News

Four Glamorous New Penn Station Designs (That We Shouldn’t Build Yet)

This year, for the first time since it was built in 1968, Madison Square Garden’s operation permit is up for renewal. Which means that the fate of New York’s most-loathed transit clusterfuck, Penn Station, is also suddenly up for discussion. This week, four architecture firms presented sparkling, well-rendered concepts for the Penn Station of the … Continued

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The Most Horrifying Industrial Disasters of All Time

Natural disasters have claimed countless human lives throughout history, with their unexpected waves of destruction. But there’s still something uniquely terrifying and heart-breaking about an industrial disaster, when our best precautions fail and our achievements turn deadly. Here are the worst industrial catastrophes ever. Fukushima Daiichi nuclear disaster, Fukushima, Japan, March 11, 2011 The largest … Continued

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The Dark History Behind Earth Day’s Murderous, Girlfriend-Composting Co-Founder

As you step outside today to breathe in the fresh air and note our planet’s lush, life-giving fauna, take a minute to appreciate the fact that this whole day exists thanks to the hard efforts of Earth Day’s environmentally conscious, murderous conspirators. Because even though this day is founded on the vision of an Earth … Continued

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Kowloon Walled City: Remembering Hong Kong’s Chaotic City of Darkness

It’s been 20 years (to the month) since Kowloon Walled City was demolished, but amazingly, it remains one of the most dense structures ever built. As many as 33,000 people crammed into the seven-acre plot, known in Cantonese as “the city of darkness,” before they were relocated in 1993. This diagram, from the South China … Continued

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How We’ll Live in a Future Where Cities Have Become Forests

Tomorrow’s cities may be constructed partly out of living materials that produce energy without destroying the environment. But what will transportation look like in a world where you can’t tell the difference between cities and forests? We get some hints in these gorgeous images of freeways built over forests in today’s world. Imagine that these … Continued

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This Chinese house sits in the middle of a brand-new road

What happens when you refuse to sell your house to make room for a new construction project? Lacking the balloons and helium to make an Up-ward escape, 67-year-old Luo Baogen of Xiayangzhang village and his wife decided to stay put, refusing the government’s offer to purchase their property. So the government simply went ahead and … Continued

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Chicago comes up with a plan to get rid of pedestrian deaths within a decade

If you’re a pedestrian in a major city, then you live in fear of your life every day. To cross the street is to be reminded that your life is cheap, and traffic rules are often viewed purely as suggestions. Even if you don’t jaywalk. So it’s amazing to hear that Chicago is taking the … Continued

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The Anti-Skyscraper Law That Shaped Sydney, Australia

When we look at visions of the future from the 20th century we often imagine the lone inventor or solitary artist concocting the fantastical world of tomorrow in isolation. But it’s amazing how frequently both government regulation and the lack of regulation can influence the future of a given city in ways we don’t often … Continued

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Houses built on a shopping mall roof give residents a yard in the middle of the city

In Zhuzhou, Hunan’s second-largest city, a developer has come up with an innovative way to let some people enjoy the yard and isolation of a freestanding house in the middle of a quickly growing city. These four villas sit on the roof of a five-story shopping mall, enjoying both airy views of the city and … Continued

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Urban Gardens that Are Also Beautiful Art Projects

The cities of the future will need to incorporate greenery, and most cutting edge architecture includes a space for urban gardens and vertical farms. But the real cutting-edge designers and artists are taking it one step further — with projects that are half garden, half-sculpture. Here are some new urban green spaces that are also … Continued

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Witness decades of urban growth as photographed from space

In 2008, for the first time in history, as many humans were living in cities as in rural areas. Over the decades, many cities have swelled to accomodate the growing human population as well as the growing trend toward urbanism. These are changes so extreme that they can be seen from space. Wired collected these … Continued

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Watch Spider-Man’s epic clash with Batman on a Toronto subway train

Among the highlights of this battle between Spider-Man and Batman on a subway in Toronto the other day: 1) Batman attempting to do the Christian Bale growl while Spider-Man claims he could stop the train with his bare hands. 2) Spidey taunting Batman about his dead parents, and Bats retorting that Spidey’s parents weren’t international … Continued

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Amazing curving “Spiral Garden Museum” could have been Taipei’s mothership

This Spiral Garden Museum concept was entered in a competition for Taipei’s new art museum. The design, by French firm Influx Studio, didn’t make it into the final competition, but it’s still astonishingly beautiful. It looks like a corkscrew that’s drilling down into Taipei. The sloping walkways lead up and around, ending up with an … Continued

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What happens if you die on a cruise ship?

Cruise ships are floating cities. They carry thousands of people from port to port, while life passes on the shore. And with that many people on board, it’s inevitable that sometimes, someone dies. But what happens to your body, if you die on board a cruise ship, days away from port? What kind of problems … Continued

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10 Weirdest Urban Ecosystems On Earth

Cities are havens for weirdness. From communities built around garbage to dogs that ride the subway, urban environments have fostered all manner of weird patterns. Here are the 10 freakiest urban ecosystems on the planet. The other day, we showed you the Kowloon Walled City — a bizarre, super-dense development that arose as an accident … Continued

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Detroit plans to shrink by leaving half the city in the dark

Detroit’s population is shrinking. The city boasts 60% fewer residents today than it did in 1950, and, as we’ve seen, many of its grand buildings have been left to rot. Now Detroit Mayor Dave Bing wants to concentrate the population in a smaller area by reducing the number of streetlights and leaving nearly half the … Continued

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A Map Reveals How Much of London Actually Lurks Below the Earth

Much of a city’s history is written in its architecture, its infrastructure, and even its natural geographical features. Over time, however, much of that history is lost. Buildings are leveled, and rivers and subway lines are entombed in the ground, interred forever to make room for taller buildings, wider roads, and longer passages. That’s what … Continued

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Cities of the Future Will Make a Place For Wilderness

All around the world, cities are spreading out into the surrounding land — but nature is unexpectedly asserting itself in the heart of the metropolises, as well. A number of carnivores are not just adapting to cities around the globe, but actually thriving. And meanwhile some urban trees can grow as much as eight times … Continued

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Venice is sinking faster than we originally thought

Sadly, this is not an April Fool’s prank. We’ve long known that the city of Venice is slowly sinking into its own watery grave. While city officials thought they had halted Venice’s descent, it turns out that the city is still sinking — and five times faster than originally believed. While some coastal regions of … Continued

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Hong Kong engineers want to expand the city by building parts of it underground

While other cities grow by building out or up, Hong Kong is looking to increase its usable space by building down. An urban planning initiative is exploring the possibility of burying some of the city’s more unsightly facilities underground, freeing the above-ground land for future development. Hong Kong’s Civil Engineering and Development Department is currently … Continued