During his more than 14 years in Hong Kong, German-born photographer Michael Wolf‘s perspective on his adopted city has boiled down to an essence of density – the hemmed-in, closely built environment which shapes everything from its peoples‘ lifestyles to their outlooks and even dreams. In Hong Kong Inside Outside, Wolf collects the works of his two previous collections – Architecture of Density and 100x100 – into a two-volume set focusing on the visual elements of one of the world’s most crowded cities.

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On November 5, Urban Age will inaugurate an intensive two-day conference on the future of cities in Istanbul, an expanding metropolis and one of the worlds first global cities. 100 innovators of urban change from 15 countries, half a dozen mayors, renowned scholars and authors side-by-side with architects and developers leading major urban regeneration projects around the globe will offer presentations about urban transformations in 25 cities. The conference will engage an invited audience of over 300 urban policymakers, academics, designers, planners and developers to explore the vast and complex challenge of contemporary city making and the interconnected issues of the impact of the global economic condition on world cities, the effect of climate change on urban sustainability and the role of urban design in creating socially cohesive environments.

Ptolemy writes that geography is the study of the entire world or large sections or countries of it, while chorography is the study of its smaller parts--provinces, regions, cities, or ports.

you said: “Especially given the by-now-clichéd recognition that we’ve decisively become an urban species”

It is indeed very interesting to think about urban systems design given there was a major move toward cities. That said I have the feeling that this move comes with, at least, three issues:

1. access to the “thought” urban environment,

2. the space left where 50% of the population is still living,

3. the space of this growth

There are many areas in the world where the growth of the cities is made by people without access or a limited access to the thought urban environment. Poor people living in slums or just in a space which is not part of the work of urban planner per say. In a recent exhibition about slums I went, it was very interesting to see that the organic structure of the slums was making possible for the individuals to create a rich and meaningful space, driving sometimes to less criminality than more traditional areas of the city. The slum is a forced collective creative space for survival.

The rest of the population, the 50% living in deserted areas are the forgotten of this story. It’s indeed more “fun”, interesting for researchers, sociologists to observe and think about the density in urban space (richness of interactions) more than the low level of activities in the “countryside”. Though there are equal challenges there in terms of design and space organization, access to services, etc.

Finally, is it really cities which are growing? What we call urban space often relates to the city center, but I have the feeling that the growth is happening in the in-between space (suburbs), which is again a complete disaster in terms of design, even more so in rich countries. The private space is becoming a space of non-creativity, dead areas of non activities. Someone, who wants to start a small business in between two buildings on the grass of a random suburb of a rich city, will not last for very long. Complete different dynamic than the slum where unregulated areas give the opportunity of creative solutions for surviving or living.

a. This is only just true, in the last few years. So for almost all of human history, most of us have not lived in cities. This would suggest that we're pretty well adapted to not living in cities. I'm not calling for a retreat to a bucolic paradise, but I'm saying this is worth thinking about.

The architecture of science fiction has profoundly changed urban design. When building cities of the future, our best guides may be places like comic book megalopolises Mega-City-1 or Transmet.

The Jeu de Paume in Paris is hosting an exhilarating show featuring the personal collection of Martin Parr along with some of his own series of photographs. Parrworld. The Collection of Martin Parr mixes the everyday absurdities the photographer sees in every aspect of our society with a wonderful taste for contemporary photography and an unusual empathy for the scenes and people he portrayed in "The Guardian Cities Project."

Move most farming into cities, and grow crops in tall, specially constructed buildings. It’s called vertical farming.

The increased activity in the Arctic has already begun to change the content and fabric of the urban north. The continued regional development will involve meetings and fusions amongst an array of cultures and styles, between history and modernization, between civilization and nature, between east and west, between nations looking for resources and towns and cities hoping to get a share, all staged in a vast landscape with widespread urban nodes. The question is how these encounters will play out.

Northern Experiments – The Barents Urban Survey 2009 is a collaborative effort to discuss selected key cities and urban phenomena in the Barents Region, containing the northernmost areas of Norway, Sweden, Finland and of Northwest Russia. The project is directed by 0047 in co-operation with The Barents Triennale and Pikene på broen.

citysounds.fm click a city to listen to its soundtrack

Smarter Cities, a project of the Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC), a non-profit 501(c)(3), is a multimedia web initiative whose mission is to foster a little friendly competition (see Annual Cities Research and Rankings below) as well as provide a forum for exploring the progress American cities are making in environmental stewardship and sustainable growth.

cityLAB, an urban think tank at UCLA’s Department of Architecture and Urban Design, announces a call for entries to “WPA 2.0: Working Public Architecture.” WPA 2.0 is an open competition that seeks innovative, implementable proposals to place infrastructure at the heart of rebuilding our cities during this next era of metropolitan recovery.