Picture, for a moment, the buildings you really loathe — the ones you think are such a brutish affront to humane urban life that they should be flattened. The NatWest tower in London, perhaps? Or, if you want to think mendaciously big, what about the whole of the centre of Croydon? Now re-imagine them, but this time encased in giant condoms. The Indepentdent
In its effort to achieve a "greener and greater New York" while accommodating one million new residents, Mayor Michael Bloomberg's PlaNYC2030 embraced transit-oriented development" - the concentration of new housing in neighborhoods with good access to the city's subways and buses. The plan contends that such development will encourage these new New Yorkers to use mass transit rather than cars, helping to improve air quality and transportation efficiency. Gotham Gazette
From afar, the new Pompidou museum in this postindustrial landscape resembles an enormous snow-white toadstool rising out of a wasteland. The avant-garde shape of the building in this otherwise sleepy provincial city of Lorraine, in once German eastern France, has inspired a flood of nicknames. The mayor calls it the Smurf House. Some residents prefer the more elegant Chinese Hat. The New York Times
