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When electric power was in its infancy, there was a debate on how exactly to light up a city. Today we have settled on streetlights lining the sidewalks, but once upon a time, they had giant towers that re-created the moon. More »
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Cities are dirty, noisy warrens of closely-packed humans. Now scientists from Tel Aviv have gathered evidence that suggests we cope with the stresses of urban life by breathing carbon monoxide, an odorless poison gas found in car exhaust. More »
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When hurricane Irene failed to flood Manhattan as predicted over the weekend, many called the evacuation an overreaction to media hype - one local told the New York Times he was "embarrassed." But scientists and civil engineers say the city's response made good sense. More »
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When adapting the Ghost in the Shell manga into an anime film, director Mamoru Oshii chose to turn the real-life streets of Hong Kong into a hyper-stylized, dreamlike city of the future. What's astonishing is that Oshii captured the real Hong Kong so well in his submerged metropolis. More »
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In the year 79 AD, Italy's Mt. Vesuvius erupted with superheated ash that rained fiery death on several Roman cities nearby. But none was hit harder than vacation town Pompeii, which was buried in a thick layer of broiling ash in a matter of seconds. More »
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We've seen the urban spelunkers at Silent UK plumb the depths of London's abandoned mail train. Now they've created Crack the Surface, the first in a series of short films detailing their explorations of London's underground, an experience one spelunker compares to a real-life roleplaying game. More »
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In a huge city, lighting the streets is a necessary but pricey precaution. Pedestrians and motorists are no doubt safer when streetlamps, not just car headlights, illuminate roadways and sidewalks - but streetlamps are expensive and inefficient to run. More »
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When you're in the city that never sleeps, you might want to keep one eye open at all times. Many of the best futuristic cities and urban fantasy stories take place in dark, dystopian cities. More »
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Ever since I read Iain M. Banks' The Algebraist, about creatures who live on gas giant planets, I have dreamt of gas giant cities. Luckily, the amazing site ConceptArt.org issued a challenge a couple of years ago to design one. More »
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Could Detroit's dilemma be the wave of the future for other atrophying U.S. cities? The New York Times reports that the Motor City is facing an urban planning crisis nobody expected: how to make the city smaller. More »
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The future of architecture is lightweight, streamlined, and sleek as a cat on a hot photovoltaic roof. But sometimes, you can't help looking at these futuristic architectural designs, full of space-age supports and gravity-defying structures, and think, "No way would I ever actually go up to the top of that thing." More »
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Laser scanning techniques reveal elaborate cave systems under the town of Nottingham. Some are mines, some are dungeons, and part of this closed-off one was once used as a stable. More »
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These Rotterdam houses function as living quarters and as challenges to physical reality. They were built in the eighties by architect Piet Blom. Downstairs are shops and offices. Upstairs are private apartments, full of weirdo Escher fans. [Via Polyglot Travel.] More »
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As you may have noticed, we're obsessed with the Kowloon Walled City. Prior to the labyrinthine city's demolition, a Japanese research team drew up this huge cross-section map. It's in Japanese, but it's nonetheless astounding. [Deconcrete via William Gibson] More »
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Northern China sparkles at night, in this photograph taken aboard the International Space Station. That's Beijing on top, and Tianjin at bottom right. When you read how China's tripled its electricity usage in a decade, think of this image. [NASA] More »
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Want to live in a home that would put Ariadne's dreamscapes to shame? This Tokyo microhouse by Atelier Tekuto, "Reflections of Mineral," is filled with enough twisting walls, reflective surfaces, and off-kilter windows to outwit any murderous subconscious projections. More »
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The cities of the future will be huge and super-dense — but will they also be alive? Could the increasingly complex systems needed to manage the next generation of megacities become our first true artificial intelligence? More »
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China and India are two of the most rapidly urbanizing areas of the world. In a fantastically interesting article over at Foreign Policy, Richard Hobbs breaks down the numbers on how big cities will be in both countries by 2030. More »
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In scifi heist Inception, mind hackers build dreams where they con their marks into giving up valuable information. The most important mind hacker is the Architect, who creates dream cities. Where have we seen great scifi dream cities before? More »
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This postcard from 1925 imagines future New York City, "The City of Skyscrapers." Utopian New York of the 1920s had a lot of levels, with a system of elevated trains, beautiful flying contraptions, and towering skyscrapers reaching toward the heavens. More »
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For much of the 20th century, New York's "Freedom Tunnel" was an unused rail tunnel that housed a homeless community and the occasional graffiti tagger. Trains run through the tunnel nowadays, but metro-spelunkers still venture down into this underground cathedral. More »
]]> http://io9.com/index.php?op=postcommentfeed&postId=5581659&view=rss&microfeed=true A great essay over at Crosscut.com explains why two different schools of utopian city planning in Seattle both try to ignore the city's present-day realities and historical features: More »
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We've been drooling over the work of artist Sebastien Larroude all week. His futuristic city-scapes are gorgeous. Plus this talented designer is senior concept artist for Tron Legacy, and we wonder if his city-worlds will influence Tron City at all? More »
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At the blog Narrow Streets: Los Angeles, self-proclaimed "urban planning geek" David Yoon takes the yawning boulevards of La-La Land and shrinks them to a scale on par with European cities...and manages to create an amazing change in perspective. More »
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In 1947, Life magazine published an article on how to atomic bomb-proof America: by spreading the entire population across the nation checkerboard style and burying all industry underground. The cost in 2010 money? $5 trillion. [via Ptak Science Books] More »
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Shanghai opened its 2010 World Expo to the public for a test run today, and everyone got a better look at the amazing futuristic architecture, much of it made with sustainable materials. Take a virtual tour below. More »
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A parody site created back in the 1990s claims there's a giant underwater city within "the crystal clear waters of the Minnesota River." And people have been visiting from as far away as Texas to discover the Atlantis of Minnesota. More »
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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. More »
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A dystopian megacity, in which buildings merge together to become a single solid block, is the stuff of science fiction — but it already happened, in Hong Kong. The Kowloon Walled City was packed so tightly, it became an arcology. More »
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You might not be able to judge a book by its cover, but you can judge a city by its front door — and the metropolis behind this tagged behemoth has gotta be a hoot. More »
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In the near future, we'll all live in tightly packed arcologies, including ocean cities — where we'll shoot at each other and fire rocket launchers in the air. This gorgeous "seagoing eco-city" comes from the first-person shooter Brink. More »
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In the future, cities will have no single location. Mounted on huge vehicles, skyscrapers will roam the steppes of Russia, forming temporary citiscapes then wandering on. This gallery of fantastical cities includes atmospheric purifiers beyond Earth and a waterfall metropolis. More »
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Charlie Huston's new novel Sleepless is the most science-fictional thing he's ever written. And he partly credits the influence of moving from New York to Los Angeles, because L.A. is a more science-fictional city. Let the debate begin! More »
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John Berkey is famous for doing concept design for the original Star Wars movie, including a breathtaking poster of the Death Star. When he wasn't imagining space battles, he designed cities of the future - on Earth and in space. More »
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Since many Americans spent part of the last few days traveling home for Thanksgiving on trains, Scientific American chose to mark the occasion with an in-depth report on the future of rail travel. The future looks promising... and fast. More »
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These glowing images look like a kind of luminescent jellyfish at the bottom of the ocean, but they're actually the trails left by an LED attached to a RFID tag. These tags create invisible patterns as they move through cities. More »
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Life in the cities of tomorrow is filled with stressful encounters involving flying cars and Robopocalypses, so where can you find a nice place where everyone knows your designation? Here are seven science-fictional bars we wish we could visit. More »
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What will the New Yorks, Londons, and Tokyos of tomorrow look like? Will they be technological Edens, grim dystopias, or entirely obliterated? We look at science fiction's take on the future of today's cities to gauge our urban future. More »
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You think your city's leadership is bad? Just look at these 10 stand-out examples of terrible mayors and awful city leaders from science fiction and urban fantasy. They steal, they kill, they won't give the people air! More »
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