#CityLab

[detroitography]

Map: Close City Amenities in Detroit

A new tool to measure accessibility and walkability in cities is out called Close from Nat Henry. The tool relies on supermarket and libraries data points in order to assess closeness. Oddly the data sources are not listed, so it is tough to measure supermarkets against our annual updated list of grocery stores and the data clearly doesn’t account for Detroit’s trouble with library funding and…

[mapsites]

Elizaveta Basov, BArch

MAPsite

[biglisbonnews]

AI Invades Urban Planning and Design, With Mixed Results When designers laboring away on a virtual cityscape began observing and tweaking their creation, one of the first things that jumped out at them, … https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2023-09-16/ai-invades-urban-planning-and-design-with-mixed-results

[formisthemaskofspace]

Bloomberg CityLab 2024

Mexico City, Mexico October 14 – 16, 2024

Organized by Bloomberg Philanthropies in partnership with the Aspen Institute, Bloomberg CityLab brings together global mayors alongside prominent city innovators, business leaders, urban experts, artists, and activists to discuss and discover replicable solutions to pressing issues.

Bloomberg CityLab was founded on the principle that the most important innovation is happening at the local level and that global impact can be achieved when cities share solutions.

Mayors Coming Together to Change the World

For over a decade, CityLab summits have crisscrossed the globe, gathering the most influential mayors and voices from hundreds of cities worldwide. Summits have made international headlines, and generated tangible takeaways for attendees. Past CityLab conferences have been hosted in New York, Los Angeles, London, Miami, Paris, Detroit, Washington D.C., and Amsterdam.

[wilwheaton]

"Musk/X has slapped a spam/dangerous content warning on this NPR link," wrote Tom Watson, a professor at the Columbia University School of Professional Studies. "This shows just how damaging this explosive story is to Trump. Let's get it wide, folks." "Marking US public broadcaster content as 'unsafe' is the sort of revenge move the KGB has fantasized about for decades — and it tells you everything about what Musk and X actually are," wrote journalist Dave Troy. "Twitter/X is now running a warning that NPR's story about Trump's TikTok video at Arlington National Cemetery is a malicious link," wrote CityLab editor Kriston Capps. "I've never seen this once in the thousands of years I've spent on this site."

X's move on cemetery news shows 'how damaging this explosive story is to Trump': experts

[lemonton2]

Trump’s to Make Home Insurance Even More Costly

Enjoying the high prices you “voted” for? #idiots

#TrumpDisaster

#VoteDemocrat2026

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/newsletters/2025-04-09/trump-s-tariffs-to-further-raise-us-home-insurance-rates-citylab-daily

[hoursofreading]

Embracing the mundane also means making sure that our solutions actually work for the people who need them. When I was attorney general of California, for example, and I went after the for-profit Corinthian Colleges, I was concerned about what would happen to students who’d been defrauded. The students had the right to transfer to another school, get their loan discharged, or get their money back, but the paperwork involved was quite complicated. Most students had no idea how to begin, or even that they had these options in the first place. We had prevailed in the case, but the students wouldn’t actually receive the benefit of the financial relief unless they could navigate the bureaucracy. So my office created a website that walked students, step by step, through this complex process. I wanted to make it as simple as possible for someone to exercise their rights and get actual relief. As we were developing the website, I’d often have our team show it to me, and I’d literally click through the process myself. More than once, I hit a snag. I’d tell them, “If I don’t understand it, how will the students?” That meant the team had to rework the interface and the text. But as frustrating as the exercise might have been, it resulted in a better product. Taking the time to perfect the details made the tool more relevant for the students who needed it. My point is: you have to sweat the small stuff—because sometimes it turns out that the small stuff is actually the big stuff. I read a story once about a principal at a St. Louis elementary school who wanted to take on rampant truancy in her school. When she talked to parents, she realized that many of the kids didn’t have clean clothes. Either they didn’t have access to washing machines or their families couldn’t afford detergent or the power had been shut off. Students were embarrassed to show up at school in dirty clothes. “I think people don’t talk about not having clean clothes because it makes you want to cry or go home or run away or something,” a student explained. “It doesn’t feel good.” So the principal had a washer and dryer installed at her school, and she invited students who had missed more than ten days of class to do their laundry on campus. According to CityLab, in the first year of the initiative, more than 90 percent of the students they tracked boosted their attendance.

Kamala Harris

[jessicafurseth]

Get in, the water is good: The surge in urban city swimming across Europe - Bloomberg CityLab

This is one of my favourite stories I've written in a long time - I loved working on this. For Bloomberg’s CityLab I went deep into the urban swimming revival across Europe, with all the red tape and legitimate safety issues that goes along with securing a city swim spot for the public - but city swimming it's a lot safer and easier than most people think. And the water's surface is the best vantage point you'll ever find.

[sarkos]

Musk/X has slapped a spam/dangerous content warning on this NPR link," wrote Tom Watson, a professor at the Columbia University School of Professional Studies. "This shows just how damaging this explosive story is to Trump. Let's get it wide, folks." ADVERTISEMENT "Marking US public broadcaster content as 'unsafe' is the sort of revenge move the KGB has fantasized about for decades — and it tells you everything about what Musk and X actually are," wrote journalist Dave Troy. "Twitter/X is now running a warning that NPR's story about Trump's TikTok video at Arlington National Cemetery is a malicious link," wrote CityLab editor Kriston Capps. "I've never seen this once in the thousands of years I've spent on this site."

X's move on cemetery news shows 'how damaging this explosive story is to Trump': experts - Raw Story

[fellhellion]

Feeling things about how relatively quickly Xina accepts Miguel back into her life as something like a friend. The way she slips into fucking w him or teasingly calling him sweetheart, or even, hell. either Xina was lost in the sauce of reconnecting w a childhood friend and genuinely forgot him being an Alchemax employee meant he couldn’t see anything in Angela’s citylab, or she trusted him enough even w that knowledge to think maybe Angela would reconsider.

[chocoholicbec]

[Image description:

Image 1: The top of a CityLab Perspective article, "My Fight With a Sidewalk Robot", subtitled, "A life-threatening encounter with AI technology convinced me that the needs of people with disabilities need to be engineered into our autonomous future." Below is a photo of a delivery robot, captioned, "A Starship Technologies commercial delivery robot navigates a sidewalk. Wolfgang Rattay/Reuters"

Image 2: A Tweet (user not visible) of a photo of a sidewalk with five small delivery robots trundling along it. Reply by Adrian Lopez (@ PaladinZilch): "Wow. Imagine being in a wheelchair and seeing that." Reply by I (fire heart emoji) You (star) (@ iAm444x): "oh God the tech bros made traffic for sidewalks (weeping emoji) (distraught emoji)"

Image 3: A Tweet by Will Jackson (@ GeologyWill) replying to @ HistoryMatt: "A few weeks ago….. it took 5 minutes for their sensors to figure out how to get out of this standoff…. Enjoyed every second of it" with a photo of three delivery robots at a bus shelter, standing in a triangle.

End ID.]

[mapsites]

Eduardo Delgado, Barch

MAPsite

[creativemorningssantiago]

CreativeMornings x Pablo Bahamonde

En marzo de 2025 recibimos a Pablo Bahamonde, cofundador de JOIA Magazine, JOIA Estudio y JOIA Market. Desde hace más de una década, Pablo ha sido parte fundamental de este proyecto editorial independiente que, desde Chile, ha documentado el arte y la cultura visual contemporánea en el mundo. La charla se realizó en el espacio Citylab del GAM, donde compartió su historia personal y profesional a través de los paralelos que ha recorrido en su camino creativo: entre lo editorial y lo comercial, lo colectivo y lo individual, lo local y lo global. Habló de intuición, consistencia y del valor de sostener una visión propia a lo largo del tiempo. 🎥 Ver la charla completa: https://youtu.be/D9MBCGphvP4?si=CpbLlWySijdk9ZOm

[aman-acan-andacityplan]

The Death of Local Progressivism

I happen to come across this article in Bloomberg's CityLab on Portland's recent struggles and it prompted me to write an article on what I would call the death of local progressivism. Growing up in the early 2000's, there were a number of blue cities that were perceived as great places to live, work and play. Portland dominated the planning literature of the time, but one could also point to smaller places like Burlington, Vermont, home to Ben and Jerry's Ice Cream. Taxes may be high, one might say, but there are beautiful parks and quirky companies here, which place people ahead of profits. Perception and reality aren't the same thing, but I think one could have said this 20-25 years ago and advanced a credible argument for this. In 2025 though, urban progressivism seems to be down for the count. The fact that Bloomberg feels the need to write about a Portland comeback is proof positive that something is deeply wrong with urban progressivism. Blue cities in the 2010's and 2020's have been dominated by a high cost of living, low service model. A lack of affordable housing, chronic homelessness and crime have become major problems in many of America's biggest blue havens.

2010s Prosperity Gives Way to a 2020s Malaise

Though many blue cities appeared to become fat and happy in the early 2010's as Millennials flocked to dense, urban centers, the resulting prosperity only serve to hide problems in urban governance. Conversely, the rise of globalism in the 90's served to sever business interests from the communities in which they live. Its hard to develop an adequate social safety net if elites don't have physical interests in the cities in which they live. San Francisco may be the butt of many conservative complaints, but it is truly shocking how a city with so much tech might can be such a tough place to live. By comparison, Wal Mart has invested heavily in its home city of Bentonville, Arkansas, giving money to build a world-class museum and an exemplary trail system. It may just be cynical opportunism and a desire for good PR, but it would appear when a company has a considerable financial interest in Americans purchasing their goods, they are more inclined to be a good benefactor.

Blue cities have been beset with comically inept, and sometimes criminal, leadership. With public servants and elite leadership more divorced from the mundane and ordinary rhythms of city life, mayors and elected officials become little more than clout chasers, people who float from one catchy trend to another. Ideas promulgated in the 90's such as the creative class by Richard Florida have also led to the mistaken idea that city success could simply be defined by the number of cool kids you can cultivate to your warehouse district.

Consider the example of Kyle Maclachan's mayor from Portlandia. He is an affable, genial fellow, but one who is completely obsessed with image and optics over efficient government administration. This skit from Portlandia I think speaks volumes about progressive governance today as festering social problems are swept under the rug in favor of a kind of lazy consumerism masquerading as social awareness. Leadership in large, blue cities have taken their own ideological proclivities as confirmation that they are heads and shoulders above America's rural enclaves and small cities. Its not enough to say and think the right things though. A great city has to be a living experience, something seen and felt rather than merely labeled.

Rediscovering Effective Governance in Urban Districts

Another dillema facing urban progressivism is the absence of effective systems of accountability and governance in large cities. The urban political machines of the past best epitomized by Chicago mayor Richard Daley have been replaced by local governance that represents no one and works for no one. In many respects, old cities are still haunted by urban renewal. Urban leadership of the 50's and 60's were generally adept at "getting things done", the problem was the things they generally aimed to do were predicated on a disastrous paradigm that didn't make sense either economically or socially. The tumult of the 60's counterculture gave way to participatory planning techniques and various forms of direct democracy to engage resident in local policy. This has slowed the pace of radical change in cities, but it hasn't made for more effective governance. As Jane Jacobs elucidates below, this approach sentimentalizes community organizing, focusing on the small, but highly active neighborhood over a coherent district representing diverse factions. This end result is no clear urban governance, as communities in large cities are governed by a hodgepodge of community activists, small charities and large NGOs. With the absence of EFFECTIVE accountability in large cities, middle class people flock to newly incorporated communities as a way of generating political clout.

A census report detailing the fastest growing cities in 2022 indicates that of the fastest growing cities by raw numbers, 6 of the 15 were between 40,000 and 300,000 people in size. In modern America, 300,000 people is sizable, but it is by no means large. I think these population numbers generally map on well to the observations of Jane Jacobs, who generally says that if a district is to be effective it must have around 30,000 people on the low end to a maximum of 200,000 people (pages 130-131 of The Death and Life of Great American Cities). Though the cities I speak of are not districts, their proximity to major metropolitan areas and corridors of power means that they serve a similar function. If a community is too small or insular, it can't be an effective political player, so it makes sense to aggressively scale up and consolidate resources. Eventually growth tapers off as the city generates enough political clout to advocate for the shared interests of its citizens (your average exurban community fits this profile).

Though the suburban model is no longer culturally relevant, it retains power because it is much easier to achieve some basic level of self-governance in new communities versus older, established cities. Growth in major American cities is fragile and fickle, always hostage to larger, macroeconomic forces. Young people may flock to a city for excitement or to hit it big in an emerging company or economic sector, but as they age and run up against the hard realities of a closed elite network, many drop off and move elsewhere (more on that below). Young people can bring fresh ideas and renewed energy, but if these ideas exist at the edges of public policy and can't cohere into meaningful action at a large scale, then genuine reform is unattainable.

Some of these places have also suffered from decades of urban renewal, which were a major blow to urban density and resulted in "ineffectual units of power" as Jane Jacobs declared. An urban renewal project like Pruitt Igoe or Cabrini Green, with its high degree of isolation from other neighborhoods, never possessed any political power, it only existed as a problem to be solved or fixed by outside interests. Jane Jacobs put it best when she said: "To plan deliberately, and physically, on the premise that city neighborhoods of less than district size are a worthy ideal, is to subvert self-government; that the motives are sentimental or paternalistic is no help."

I'm not old enough to have experienced the types of district governance, which prevailed in Jane Jacobs' time, nor the type of social mores and attitudes that gave rise to cohesive districts like Back of the Yards, the one she cites in Chicago. I am very familiar though with abstract planning dialogues, various forms of government public outreach and community advocacy. Though well intentioned, my experience tells me that these types of collective actions are wholly ineffectual. They simplify complex systems and tie up resources in abstract planning endeavors catering to elite tastes and assumptions. I was witness to this when I worked in southern West Virginia. Concerns associated with mountaintop mining were deeply contentious and divided. Those who were opposed to the mining organized along traditional activist lines, or at least as I had experienced it: they started a nonprofit, integrated and coordinated vertically with larger non-profits and grant endeavors, and sought the aid of influential people, such as NASA scientist James Hansen.

Concessions were made and there were some early political victories, but once elite interest shifted towards fracking and away from mountaintop mining, funds and outside interest waned. Locals of course didn't appreciate outside hectoring and regional partners who might be sympathetic to their arguments quietly moved to other, less contentious issues. Visions for a life beyond coal were also hinged largely on a new wind farm, which is a pittance compared to the economic value of a productive coal mine. Today, the movement is a shadow of its former self (the Grist article above does a good job of summarizing the key events). A few locals remained committed to the cause of ending mountaintop mining, but the grounds for protest now appear to be completely captured by outside interests.

This type of political advocacy is emotionally cathartic and can achieve some results, but it comes with a fatal flaw: one is unable to form a coherent political bloc that can be a persistent voice for this concern. It is far better and more advantageous to have cohesive urban districts that are sufficiently autonomous to delve into the political muck and do the dirty, but necessary work, of determining who gets what and when.

Small, Red Cities Lead the Way

Contrast Portland's decline to the rise of small, southern cities like Greenville and Charleston, South Carolina. Southern cities have generally played the heel in America's electoral politics, never sufficiently liberal enough to quell the red tide of the hinterlands. This inherent tension between left and right in southern cities though has resulted in places that are more responsive to electoral demands and score well in quality of life marks. For example, Greenville and Charleston have made huge strides in elevating their national profile, pivoting to new industrial sectors and maintaining exemplary public spaces and parks. I went to college in Greenville for four years and have frequently visited Charleston, so the quality of life in these places is something I can personally attest to. The city of Charleston has even emerged as a destination for social influencers, who are drawn to the city's natural and physical beauty. That and Southerners haven't been as shy to buck the prevailing architectural dogma and build pretty things in their communities. One might be tempted to chalk this up to long standing migration trends to warm, Sunbelt cities, but such logic would not explain the success of Carmel, Indiana, another red state city with exceptional civic amenities and an eye for fostering beauty and greatness in its urban fabric.

The Talent Gap

We also have to contend with the fact that elite notions of talent recruitment simply don't work. Should a young student hustle and grind to gain admittance into an Ive League school, only to hustle and grind some more in the slim hopes of become part of the inner circle of some major company or NGO? Such behavior tends to breed generational resentment for the losers or produce elites always primed to maximize their own individual ambitions, whatever the cost may be.

Also, while my education rant is directed toward large cities, the talent problem is one that heavily impacts small cities in blue states. Aaron Renn, creator of the Urbanophile web site, employed the term "hicklib" to describe small city elites who are downwind of the big metropolises and tend to copy the worst ideas from large cities, while closing themselves off from divergent thoughts and opinions. This term may seem harsh, but it speak to a fundamental truth about how a places perpetuates its survival. Dynamic cities tend to cannibalize some of their economic productivity now to produce the elite who will shape the future. If the present-day elite is too small, or its interests are pushed into a few high stakes economic gambles it will not succeed in producing a new, local elite.

I would like to cite this research paper contrasting Allentown to Youngstown, Ohio as a useful case study in how cities can avoid the "hicklib" label. In the late 50's and 60's Youngstown pinned much of its economic fortunes on building a canal to link Lake Erie to the Ohio River Valley through Youngstown. Such a project would have required considerable buy-in from outside interests and it was also prohibitively expense. New, more novel ideas, did come to the fore in later decades, but they did not gain traction with the city's insular elite. Allentown avoided this fate by embracing the power of public-private partnerships and working with emerging firms in the area that were poised to expand by embracing new technologies. I don't mean to single out Youngstown, as many rustbelt cities seemed to be locked in a spiral of what I would term anti-innovation. As someone who has lived most of my life in a fairly prosperous state, I'm shocked to read of redevelopment schemes further north that are decades in the making. Any city with a hint of healthy economic churn would not tolerate a DestiNY style boondoogle as a way of opening new economic opportunities. Cities don't have to be right all the time to succeed, but they need the strong leadership to say no to a money sink.

So, while big, blue cities fail at cultivating native talent, small, blue cities are often too set in their ways to lend a sympathetic ear to the impassioned outsider. Even if raw economic power might suggest that America's future is blue, the average person can't subsist on vague vision statements and elite aspirations. In such an environment, they will move elsewhere. Its much easier to scale your prospects down and settle for currying favor with a regional or local elite than trying to gain a sympathetic ear in a major urban power center. If the choice is between securing the position of a bank branch manager in Mobile, Alabama or chasing the dreams of being a financial power broker on Wall Street, I think most will choose the first option. I have lived in Biloxi, Mississippi for 10 years precisely because of this. Here I feel my talents are honored and recognized and I can move in local elite networks with much more ease than I could if I were in a larger city. The blue states of America are deeply marinated in these elite ideas and have been content to rest on their laurels while sunbelt cities hustle for securing a greater portion of American talent.

Conclusion

If progressives wish to improve their electoral prospects, I think they would do well by substantially overhauling the blue model at the local level. This includes weeding out corruption, reducing crime and developing some kind of political patronage system centered around ward healers and representatives who can focus on improving city services and addressing the immediate needs of local residents. Even if corruption can't be curbed in its entirely, it can still be channeled towards more productive ends, more snow plowing and less stadium subsidies in other words. Embracing outside talent is also a must, as is providing talent with the appropriate elite connections to succeed. Blue states and cities obviously dominate America in terms of overall wealth, but raw wealth is not the only determinant of success. If that wealth doesn't translate into an aggreable way of life: a life of casual leisure, rich cultural offerings, concern for collective welfare and the sense one can be seen and heard within the corridors of power, then what is the point of living there? Blue states have been shut out of politics at the moment because in spite of their big talk, their ability to deliver tangible goods and services is sorely lacking.

[rayhaber]

İmamoğlu, Askıda Fatura ve İstanbul Modelini Dünyaya Tanıttı

Türkiye Belediyeler Birliği (TBB) ve İstanbul Büyükşehir Belediye (İBB) Başkanı Ekrem İmamoğlu, 2024 yılı Ekim ayında, Mexico City’de düzenlenen 11. Bloomberg CityLab Zirvesi’nde dikkat çekici bir konuşma gerçekleştirdi. Bu zirve, dünya genelinden 500’den fazla belediye başkanının katılımıyla, yerel yönetimlerin toplumsal sorunları ele alma becerilerini geliştirmeyi amaçlayan önemli bir platform…

[akaanuar]

Rival Consoles - Gaivotas (Official Music Video) from Erased Tapes on Vimeo.

A film by Vincent Duluc Teenager — Arnoo Abytalypov Teenagers — Jorobek Abytalypov, Yryskeldi Abytalypov and Baeil Baktybekov

Shaman — Burul Usenbaeva Assistant — Baktygul Kaamytova

Production Company — Motion Palace Producer — Louis Arnoux Executive Producers — Neels Castillon, Ariane Cornic & Robert Raths Production Assistant — Raphael Julier

Director of Photography — Adrien Lallau First Camera assistant — Damien Rubinsztajn Camera & Lenses — RVZ

Service production Company — CityLab Local producer — Emirlan Zhakshybaev

Production designer — Nurbek Musaev

Editor — Vincent Duluc-David Colorist — Eudes Quittelier

With the endless help of — Nazira Abylova, Yrysaly Turganbaev, Nuraly Turganbaev, Adyl Jumabekov, Kamil, Elmira Omurzakova, Nargiz Tursunbaeva, Nasiba Alymzhanova, Themis Alzhanova, Rabia Alymzhanova, Firdaus Alzhanov, Khadicha Ismailova, Zuu, Mirlan and Akilbek

Special thanks — Sebastien Rouquet, Pieter Jan Claessens, Pierre Odin, Clarrence Larrivoire, Greg Cohen, Kenza Dhenry-Pages, RVZ and Samuel Renollet

℗© 2024 Erased Tapes Records Ltd.