City Flâneur

http://www.commoncensus.org/maps.php

This map details the cities that people most identify with in different regions of the United States.  Based on my experience with the regions I have lived in, the map is correct.  How does it align with your sense of identity?

Pop Culture and the Suburbs

Suburban Microclimates

A study from 2010 suggests that suburban-style development may accentuate microclimates, particularly related to heating.  It appears that the most spatially dispersed (i.e., sprawled) urban regions experienced more heat than those with denser development patterns.  Ideas about exactly why?

Suburbs Becoming Less Suburban?

This CNN article examines trends in suburbs which buck popular notions of what it means to live in a suburb.  The general trend is that suburbs are becoming more socially, racially, and ethnically heterogeneous.  Diversity in age and living situation (e.g., married, single, divorced, etc.) are also factors.

elzopilote:

Projected tallest buildings by 2020.  Only one will be in the Western hemisphere: the Freedom Tower in New York.  Saudi Arabia will have the tallest, the UAE the second, and China, east Asia, and Arabia dominate the rest.  Things have changed since the 90s when almost all of the tallest buildings were in the United States.

http://ctbuh.org/TallBuildings/HeightStatistics/BuildingsinNumbers/TheTallest20in2020/tabid/2926/language/en-US/Default.aspx

Imagining a City Without Its Public Transportation

What would Washington, D.C. be like without the metro?  This article examines the extra lanes and parking space that would be required in the center of the city to accommodate the additional cars.  Personally, I doubt that Washington would retain its character in such a scenario.

L’Afrique est l’un des centres d’une croissance urbaine rapide dans le monde en voie de développement.  Le pourcentage de la population habitant dans des ville n’a cessé de croître pendant les décennies récentes.  Autrefois un continent largement rural, elle accueille désormais de nombreuses villes importantes, et elle en accueillira davantage dans l’avenir.  Suivez ce lien du journal Jeune Afrique pour en lire plus.

http://www.jeuneafrique.com/Articles/Dossier/ARTJAJA2655p072-073.xml0/JeuneAfriqueJeuneAfrique.html

Liste des plus grandes villes en Afrique aujourd’hui:

Le Caire (l’Egypte): 15 millions d’habitants

Lagos (le Nigéria): 12 millions d’habitants

Kinshasa (la RDC): 9 millions d’habitants

Johannesburg (l’Afrique du Sud): 7,5 millions d’habitants

Khartoum (le Sudan): 5 millions d’habitants

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_metropolitan_areas_in_Africa

City flâneur, d'après Wikipédia

A flâneur is “a person who walks the city in order to experience it.”  The word first gained this meaning from French author Charles Baudelaire in the mid 1800s, and it retains this meaning in architectural and urban planning thought.

This is a collection of images of Kowloon, Hong Kong.  This is a density of population many of us in the suburbs are totally unfamiliar with.

This image makes us remember that predictions are easy to make, but hard to make accurately.