Can robots build new towns — and other blue-sky thinking ft.trib.al/8zOtZkQ

Quiet & cobbled, the former service lanes, stables & garages run behind the grand brick & stucco-fronted houses of Georgian & Victorian west London: Kensington & Chelsea, Notting Hill and Holland Park. Their appeal is their paradox: discreet, modest & manageable but....

Paris has boulevards. Vienna has its Ringstrasse. Rome has piazzas. New York has its avenues slicing down Manhattan. Venice has its fondamente besides canals and its sottoporteghi under buildings. But surely the quintessential London street is the mews?

The Remitly graphic, based on @LifeAtPurdue University’s Income Satiation Study, offers a fascinating perspective on global wellbeing by estimating the income level at which additional earnings no longer produce meaningful gains in happiness. Australia ranks as the second most expensive country in the world for achieving this ‘happiness threshold,’ at approximately A$245,000 per year (US$161,300)…just behind Iceland and ahead of Switzerland, New Zealand and the United States. linkedin.com/posts/mike-day-…

Financial Times | Forest City is one of the most audacious urban propositions to emerge in Britain since Milton Keynes. linkedin.com/posts/mike-day-…

But isn't there quite a concentration of cities in the bottom-left section of the graph (eg Chicago) where the price-to-income ratio is low and the average housing starts are also low? #housing

From the company set to redevelop Murphy Crossing on the #ATL Beltline. 👀

A new town was built in the Netherlands and it’s not what you’d expect… A thread🧵

8/ Criticism: A Copy of the Past? Critics argued that Brandevoort was just a nostalgic copy of old towns. But in reality, it’s not about nostalgia at all: it’s simply a new town using time-tested principles, proving once again that learning from the past can go hand in hand with modern living and contemporary desires.

Gen Alpha is the ebike generation!

If it’s modelled on a contemporary interpretation of the Chautauqua Institution @devonzuegel…it’s destined to be sought after. @chq

Financial Times | Deyan Sudjic In the Lon­don Soci­ety’s new book about the future of Lon­don, which is pub­lished this month, clouds of fly­ing taxis, ran­dom out­crops of super-tall, swirl­ing glass high-rises and a plan­ning regime that might have been con­ceived by Elon Musk are all con­spicu­ous by their absence. ft.pressreader.com/v99c/2023… The most enga­ging con­tri­bu­tion is in the form of three ima­gin­ary scen­arios sug­ges­ted by Kat Hanna, a plan­ner…. Hanna’s most optim­istic pro­gnosis for Lon­don is that it becomes a more bal­anced series of neigh­bour­hoods: no longer a mono­cul­ture or a place in which City of Lon­don author­it­ies dis­cour­age house build­ing for fear of ham­per­ing the mas­ters of the uni­verse as they go about their money mar­ket busi­ness, but the focus for a diverse mixed eco­nomy. In this ver­sion of the future, the res­id­en­tial pop­u­la­tion of the City of Lon­don grows from just 8,000 to 20,000, as subprime office space is turned into flats. In turn this makes it a more attract­ive place to work, shop and eat out… ft.pressreader.com/article/2…

Based on the analysis from Archistar.ai, Blackfort and CoreLogic granny flats have the ability to quickly and affordably address some of the current housing crisis. lnkd.in/gmdDnp_b Across Australia’s three largest capital cities there is the capacity to introduce 655,792 self-contained two-bedroom units as an addition to existing dwellings, providing an immediate opportunity to address the severe shortage of housing in these cities.

Unfortunately the graphic’s not a compelling portrayal of the human habitat we are all attempting to deliver.

Public Square | Timeless walkable N/Hoods need safe and interesting places to walk…and useful destinations. That's where mixed-use centers come in… Discernible centres and well defined edges are the hallmarks of timeless neighbourhoods…. cnu.org/publicsquare/2023/07…

Rose Wilder Lane through Earl’s Court, Mt. Pleasant, SC

It’s not just Tampa. Everyone is waking up to how deep the demand for walkability is. 92% of Gen Z would pay more to live in a walkable neighborhood. Every city is in a dogfight to become more walkable before the others do. Even if they don’t know it yet.

Every generation wants to live in a walkable neighborhood. But what I want to know is why the gap between Millenials and Gen X is so much bigger than the gap between Gen X and Boomers?

Paris now has 180 gorgeous ‘school streets.’ They are pedestrianized and landscaped streets around schools - to mitigate crashes, prioritize walking to school, reduce noise and air pollution. No brainer, really.

WSJ | Before the pandemic, San Francisco’s California Street was home to some of the world’s most valuable commercial real estate… wsj.com/articles/san-francis… The corridor runs through the heart of the city’s financial district and is lined with offices for banks and other companies that help fuel the global tech economy… One building, a 22-story glass and stone tower at 350 California Street, was worth around $300 million in 2019, according to office broker estimates… That building now is for sale, with bids due soon. They are expected to come in at about $60 million, commercial real-estate brokers say. That’s an 80% decline in value in just four years… #SDGs #HybridWorkplace #WFH #WFA