“Drag or swipe the slider to see how Austin’s downtown skyline has changed over time.”
Tags: urban, planning, urbanism.
Source: projects.statesman.com
“We have a myth today that the ghettos in metropolitan areas around the country are what the Supreme Court calls ‘de-facto’ — just the accident of the fact that people have not enough income to move into middle class neighborhoods or because real estate agents steered black and white families to different neighborhoods or because there was white flight. It was not the unintended effect of benign policies, it was an explicit, racially purposeful policy that was pursued at all levels of government, and that’s the reason we have these ghettos today and we are reaping the fruits of those policies.”
Tags: economic, race, racism, historical, neighborhood, podcast, urban, place, poverty, socioeconomic.
Source: www.npr.org
We’ve grown good at making many things in the modern world – but strangely the art of making attractive cities has been lost. Here are some key principles for how to make attractive cities once again.
Source: www.youtube.com
While we can’t objectively measure beauty, in this video from the School of Life, London-based Swiss writer Alain de Botton offers a cheeky, thought-provoking, six-point manifesto on the need for making beauty a priority in urban architecture and design. Alain de Botton feels that tourism can be seen as helpful proxy variable for what the general public perceives as good urbanism that makes for beautiful cities. The six main points of this article are:
- Order and Variety
- Visible Life
- Compact
- Orientation and Mystery
- Scale
- Local
Tags: urban, planning, urbanism, culture, architecture, tourism.
“The U.N. Security Council. What’s Up With That? And 9 other truly absurd features of contemporary geopolitics.”
Source: foreignpolicy.com
“Some of these absurdities persist because they’ve been around a long time, or because powerful interests defend them vigorously, or because they align with broader social prejudices. Some of them may in fact be defensible, but we should still bring such oddities out into the open air on occasion and ask ourselves if they really make sense.”
Tags: political, geopolitics.
The May 12 7.3 magnitude aftershock was one of many that followed the April 25 earthquake that shook Nepal. Why is this part of the world such a hotbed of tectonic activity?
Source: video.nationalgeographic.com
This video is in a series by National Geographic designed to show the geography behind the current events–especially geared towards understanding the physical geography. Check out more videos in the ‘101 videos‘ series here.
Tags: physical, National Geographic, tectonics, disasters, video.
The U.S. Department of Defense’s latest assessment of the Chinese military provided new detail on China’s land reclamation efforts on several of the islets that it occupies in the South China Sea. These include Fiery Cross Reef, Gaven Reef, Johnson South Reef, Mischief Reef, and Subi Reef in the Spratly archipelago. By December 2014, the report estimated that China had reclaimed as much as 500 acres of new land, creating full-fledged islands where only coral reefs or sand spits existed before. Since then, China has only accelerated its efforts, expanding the total land area that it has reclaimed to 2,000 acres and building military facilities, ports, and at least one airstrip on the islands.
Source: www.fpri.org
We’ve heard in the news recently that China is reclaiming land from the South China see to presumably construct an air strip to strengthen their claims in the region. China is not alone in this…
Tags: borders, political, conflict, water, China, East Asia.
Thousands of widows have been making their way to the holy city of Vrindavan in northern India to spend the rest of their lonely lives. Cast out by their families, or simply alone in the world, some travel hundreds of miles to get there.
Tags: gender, India, SouthAsia, culture.
Source: www.youtube.com
Multifamily dwellings in high-density areas are changing the concept of neighborhood.
Tags: housing, urban, place, neighborhood, spatial, density.
Source: www.startribune.com
An interactive map showing nationwide migration patterns in the United States since 1900.
Source: www.nytimes.com
An oldie, but goodie. This incredible series of interactive charts from the New York Times show where the residents of every U.S. state were born and how that data has changed over time (update: now available as an interactive map). This graph of Florida shows that around 1900, most people living in Florida were from the South. Around the middle of the 20th century more people from other parts of the U.S. and from outside the U.S. started moving in. What changes in U.S. society led to these demographic shifts? How has demographics of your state changes over the last 114 years?
On the flip side, many people have been leaving California and this article charts the demographic impact of Californians on other states.
Tags: migration, USA, visualization, census, unit 2 population.
GEOGRAPHY EDUCATION 