Dredd
Dredd is an upcoming British science fiction film directed by Pete Travis.
Plot:
The future world is an irradiated waste land. Off an eastern coast, lies Mega City One- a vast, violent metropolis where criminals rule the chaotic streets. The only force of order lies with the urban cops called "Judges" who possess the combined powers of judge, jury, and instant executioner. Known and feared throughout the city, Dredd (Karl Urban) is the ultimate Judge, challenged with ridding the city of its latest scourge -- a dangerous drug epidemic that has users of "Slo-Mo" experiencing reality at a fraction of its normal speed.
more here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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Dredd Exclusive Trailer Debut [HD]
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
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Dredd (2012) Mega City One
Judge Dredd "America is an irradiated wasteland. Within it lies a city. Outside the boundary walls, a desert: The Cursed Earth. Inside the walls: the cursed city, stretching from Boston to Washington, DC. An unbroken concrete landscape. 800 million people living in the ruin of the old world and the mega-structures of the new one. Mega-blocks, mega-highways, Mega City One..."
visual detail here:
http://www.wired.com/geekdad/
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A sense of Dredd
BY: DAVID STRATTON From: The Australian October 27, 2012 12:00AM
DREDD, the second screen adaptation of the John Wagner-Carlos Ezquerra graphic novel, has been widely praised because of its accurate representation of its source, unlike the 1995 Judge Dredd.
Fair enough: fans of the book will be well served by Alex Garland's adaptation and Pete Travis's direction. They'll also appreciate the fact that, unlike Sylvester Stallone, Karl Urban never removes the helmet that obscures most of his face.
For non-fans, however, the new film doesn't offer a great deal we haven't seen a great many times before. It's set in the future when Earth is divided into overcrowded mega-cities that are policed by so-called judges -- actually, heavily armed law officers who act as cop, judge and executioner. Judge Dredd is on a tour of Mega-City One with a newly appointed Judge, Cassandra Anderson (Olivia Thirlby), who has psychic powers.
They enter a 200-storey high-rise building in an attempt to arrest members of a gang of drug manufacturers and distributors led by Ma-Ma (Lena Headey) and find themselves trapped there, after which the film consists of an almost non-stop series of gun battles and ultra-violent action.
more here:
http://www.theaustralian.com.
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this is how they are going to fit 20+ million people in such a small area.
New York Population (2011 United States Census estimates
• City 8,244,910
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/
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Why Micro Apartments Are The Next Big Trend In City Living
Meredith Galante | Nov. 1, 2012, 11:52 AM
With big city dreams come small city apartments.
Urban dwellers must face the reality that cities are becoming increasingly over-crowded which means that housing is in short supply.
In New York City, 1.8 million one- and two-person households exist, but there are only 1 million studio and one-bedroom apartments in Manhattan, leaving a housing shortage.
The surge of tech wizards descending on San Francisco and the Bay area has caused rent in the city to skyrocket 22 percent since 2008, according to The New York Times.
London, too, is dealing with a housing crisis, where 1 in 10 people are on housing waiting lists, according to The Guardian.
In China, the firm Dragonomics estimated nearly 50 million of China's 230 million urban households live in "substandard quarters often lacking their own toilet and kitchen." To combat this issue, China would have to build 10 million apartments a year until 2030.
Clearly there is an urban housing crisis happening around the world, and it's forcing cities to rethink their approaches to real estate. But there's a solution: micro-apartments.
A global trend
New York City's housing shortage prompted Mayor Michael Bloomberg's administration to commission 80 300-square-foot apartments in Manhattan this past summer. These prospective apartments, which are expected to rent for $2,000 a month, are so small that Bloomberg will have to amend zoning laws, which currently states that all apartments must be at least 400 square feet. The apartments in New York City will be just four times the size of a standard prison cell.
"People from all over the world want to live in New York City, and we must develop a new, scalable housing model that is safe, affordable and innovative to meet their needs," Bloomberg said in a statement announcing the apartments.
San Francisco has an influx of aspiring tech workers, but not nearly enough units to accommodate them. So the city is considering legislation that would change the city's building codes to allow developers to build micro-apartments as small as 220 square feet--even smaller than New York's. The legislation will be voted on in November.
“We have a housing affordability crisis here; rents are through the roof,” Scott Wiener, the city supervisor who introduced the legislation for the micro apartments in San Francisco, told The New York Times.
The city of San Jose, California, has already built 220-square-foot micro-units, while other cities across the country, like Seattle, Chicago and Boston are also considering the idea, according to the New York Times.
Similarly, several international cities like London, Warsaw, and cities in China have all adopted a micro-apartment model, where residents pay high prices to live in tiny, but optimally-located, living spaces.
An 8' X 10' apartment in London was originally on sale for $145,000, but because of its prime location, next to Harrod's department store, more than 12 bids have been put on the apartment. The real estate agent selling the property guessed the place will sell closer to $500,000.
The city of Dongguan, in southeast China, is considering building apartments that measure a mere 160 square feet--about the size of a parking space, according to the Wall Street Journal. These tiny apartments would provide an affordable solution to the city's housing crisis.
In Warsaw, Poland, micro-apartments are more of an art form and an experiment. A five-foot-wide "home" opened last week, where artist Etgar Keret plans to live for six months, and then eventually rent out. The bathroom is so small in the home that the shower head hovers above the toilet.
Paris, Tokyo and Singapore are also known for having tiny apartments.
more here:
http://www.businessinsider.
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October 17, 2012, 1:20 PM ET
China, Like NYC, Considers Micro Apartments
A Vanke 160-square-foot model apartment
Tiny living quarters aren’t just a trend in New York and other U.S. cities. China is embracing micro-apartments as well, the Journal reported Wednesday.
As officials with the Bloomberg administration review proposals to build and manage micro-units in the Manhattan’s Kips Bay neighborhood, firms in China are also seeking to find suitable small housing for urban professionals. But the 275- to 300-square-foot abodes being considered in the city are downright roomy compared to the model apartments being shown in Dongguan, a Chinese factory town:
At the research center of China’s largest property developer, China Vanke is an apartment that measures 160 square feet, about the size of a parking space. The bed folds to make seating. The shower is a vertical tube by the front door.
While the goal in New York is to test the market for homes that are smaller than zoning law currently allows, China’s small apartments are an effort to address the substandard living conditions of 50 million Chinese city dwellers and provide an affordable options for young workers. Larger apartments that have been developed there could cost as much as 40 years’ income.
In New York, 33 developers submitted applications by the end of September, which was about three times as many applications as the city typically receives for a project this size. Officials are expected to select a winning proposal early next year.
here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/
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NYC 'micro maximalist' turns teeny-tiny apartment into work of art
Sherry Smith has lived in her tiny New York apartment for twenty years. The above interactive panorama is a composite of 16 separate images blended together with software to give an immersive view of Sherry Smith’s small home. Smith’s cat, Chloe, appears three times in the panorama because she moved around during the photography. (John Makely/ NBC News)
In Manhattan, most folks manage just fine in tiny spaces. Then there’s Sherry Smith’s apartment: 242 square feet, one cat, 50 pairs of shoes, wall-to-wall tchotchkes, stacked suitcases stuffed with designer clothing for her side business and, just for grins, a piano.
Friends can squeeze into her home – the current record is 10 – but “they can’t wrap their heads around it,” Smith said.
“People are astonished. They can’t believe there’s this room and nothing else,” she added.
Nothing else? How about, say, everything else? Including: “Reservoir Dogs” action figures, a Jack Bauer doll (from TV’s “24”) poised in a shadow box, a framed and autographed photo of Pee Wee Herman, an Eiffel Tower replica and a see-through, headless female manikin. But really, that’s the mad genius of Smith’s pop-funky style and her zany (we’re using that as a compliment) skills at putting all those odds and ends (and odds) in tidy, if not fascinating, order in an ultra-versatile room that is something of a walk-in art piece.
“It is attention-deficit wonderland,” said Smith, who works as a publicist. “I frequently refer to it as ‘Pee Wee's Playhouse for Girls.’
“While I've seen smaller, most people haven't.”
But in some real estate markets, little is big.
Sherry Smith has lived in her tiny, 242-square- foot apartment in New York for 20 years.
more here:
http://www.nbcnews.com/
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ALLISON ARIEFF October 19, 2012, 9:00 PM
How Small Is Too Small?
By ALLISON ARIEFF
Another iteration of the parking space: The “upLIFT” (a project from designers Lawrence Zeroth, Jack Phillips, Brian Schulman and Eugene Lubomir), which proposes that small, pre-fab “housing pods” be mounted on vertical car-lift slots in increasingly less car-centric New York City.
Most people see a parking space and promptly back up into it; Tim McCormick sees one and thinks, “I could live here.”
Who would willingly choose to live in something with the footprint of a parking space (8x10x16 feet)? Millions already do, argues McCormick, a communications consultant: bedrooms, dorm rooms, motel rooms, hostels, mobile homes and the like. “I myself live comfortably in a converted one-car garage of 200 square feet,” he says, “which allows me to live inexpensively near downtown in super-expensive Palo Alto.”
In cities where space is at a mind-boggling premium, McCormick’s idea of taking up residence in a parking space — in what he refers to as a “Houselet” — isn’t all that far-fetched. It may in fact be more appealing than the so-called “hacker hostels” that got a lot of buzz earlier this summer. Essentially apartments that house herds of would-be startup entrepreneurs willing to pay market rate to live in near-migrant-worker conditions, hacker hostels are proliferating in cities like San Francisco and New York where work culture calls for 24/7 commitments and lots of food-truck takeout (which no doubt inspired upLIFT’s prefab parking pods for the city).
These apartments are less living spaces than crash pads with a social networking component.
A tiny space proved to be no problem for the architect Jakub Szczęsny and his son, shown here in their Warsaw pied a terre.
The table and chair can collapse when not in use.
Consider Cubix, a 98-unit condominium building that opened in San Francisco in 2008. Billing itself as “your small piece of the big city,” Cubix’s largest unit was 350 square feet, its smallest 250. Curbed SF referred to the project as “SF’s favorite dorm-room condos.” Though the units ($279,000 to $330,000) were a bargain relative to San Francisco’s median home price at the time ($749,000) and the building was close to downtown, transit and Whole Foods, the project tanked. Just a year after opening, the entire building could have been had for $5 million — or just $80,000 per unit. No takers.
Typical floor plan of a Cubix unit.
300 square-foot units like this one are being proposed for San Francisco by a developer, Panoramic Interests.
more uses of tiny spaces, here:
http://opinionator.blogs.
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Would You Live In This 182-Square-Foot Micro-Micro Apartment?
There are small apartments, and then there is Steve Sauer's pico dwelling, bringing the concept of compact living to new heights. Sauer's vision: an entire luxury apartment building full of them.
You may have heard of the microapartment trend, a 200-to-300-ish square foot dwelling for people looking to decrease their space and consumption footprints. But have you ever heard of someone living in a pico-dwelling? If you haven’t, that’s because there’s only one man (to our knowledge) who does.
Steve Sauer is an engineer and a dad who lives part-time in 182 square feet of converted storage space in Seattle, informal capital of American micro-housing. “Pico-dwelling” is a term he coined, with a prefix that means exponentially tiny (all the way to the negative 12th factor). His space, which you can tour below by video, thanks to faircompanies.com, contains three levels, with an open kitchen, a bathroom, a bed space, two bikes, and a dining room table that can seat six.
“I found the space that I needed kind of on a lark,” Sauer tells Co.Exist. “I needed a storage space and found that I could make an experimental small dwelling in it.”
Sauer’s pico-dwelling is a feat of engineering, to say the least. Unlike Graham Hill’s famous 420-square-foot Soho microapartment that can transform itself into different rooms depending on how you flip the walls, Sauer’s features are static, yet stacked. Still, Sauer says his biggest challenge wasn’t actually living in the space or even designing it--it was his “frightened” neighbors who sent a city engineer to inspect what Sauer was doing. After all, the space that Sauer found belonged to a co-op (and a city) with its own rules about living in the building. Eventually, Sauer got his pico-dwelling approved by the city, but the process took a full two years.
It wasn’t cheap, either. Sauer invested upwards of $50,000 in the materials used to build up the place, which he did himself. They include custom powder-coated steel shelves and fixtures, a single dishwasher drawer, and a fiber EcoTop counter. Sauer also raised the ceiling from eight to 10.4 feet, and installed a soaking tub beneath an inch-thick lid made partly of recycled plastics on the floor. His bathroom has a shower, a toilet, a sink, and steel towel racks, but lacks a door.
video and more here:
http://www.fastcoexist.com/
Walmart's China Expansion Aims to Tap Urbanization
By Dexter Roberts October 24, 2013
A Wal-Mart store in Chongqing, China
Wal-Mart Stores plans to ramp up operations in China’s smaller cities, adding as many as 110 stores during the next three years as the world’s largest retailer faces stiff competition from local players. Other key changes to make it more competitive include expanding its fresh foods and adding new distribution centers like the one in Shenyang set to open next month.
“Of all the individual countries we have the opportunity to grow in, China would be the top of the list,” said Doug McMillon, president and chief executive officer of Walmart International, during a press briefing in Beijing on Thursday. “We have a tremendous opportunity given the population and the size of this market and the continued growth over time.”
Already, Walmart (WMT) has about 400 stores in China staffed with 90,000 employees. The expansion will see as many as 19,000 retail jobs created during the next few years.
Even as it expands operations mainly in China’s third- and fourth-tier cities, with 13 new Walmart supercenters and Sam’s Club to be opened this year, the Bentonville (Ark.)-based retailer is closing underperforming outlets.
As many as 30 could be shuttered over the next 18 months. While closures amount to 9 percent of total stores in the country, they represent only 2 percent to 3 percent of total sales through next year, according to Greg Foran, CEO of Walmart China. Until 18 months ago, Walmart had not done “any significant closures in China,” Foran said on Thursday. “So this is a little bit of a catch-up here.”
Even with the closures, Foran estimates a net increase of 60 to 80 shops in China over the next three years. Also in the mix: renovating 45 stores this year, 55 more next year, and 65 in 2015. We want to “get the portfolio shipshape,” he said.
more here:
http://www.businessweek.com/
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Shanghai's Insane, 26-Year Transformation Summed Up In Two Photos
ASHLEY FEINBERG
Today 12:20pm
What happens when you give Shanghai's financial district 26 years and a few billion dollars of makeover money? This miraculous transformation, which hit a staggering 2,073-feet-high just this past Saturday when the Shanghai Tower became the world's second tallest building.
This first photo of Pudong, which is just east of the Huangpu river, was taken in 1987 and shows what's barely recognizable as a city. You can see clear across to the horizon over a land that's still speckled with patches of green.
The second photo, taken just last week and from exactly the same location, tells a very different story. Though plans to develop Shanghai's "Pudong New Area" into a "Special Economic Zone" were only launched by the Communist Party in 1990, a short amount of time was all the city's financial district needed to become an area steeped in towering, steel-coated futurism.
This area is now the proud home of Shanghai Tower, the world's second tallest building, which was just completed this past Saturday. But China isn't done yet—they have every intention of taking the number one spot, too, with a planned 2,749-foot "Sky City" that would outrank the current champion, Dubai's Burj Khalifa, by a full 33 feet.
Regardless of whether or not they succeed in that particular goal, these photos prove that Shanghai has done just fine in securing itself as one of the World's great cosmopolitan cities.
source(s)
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/asia/china/10220444/Shanghais-26-year-mega-city-transformation-captured.html
larger images, here:
http://gizmodo.com/shanghais-insane-26-year-transformation-summed-up-in-1041901244?utm_campaign=socialflow_gizmodo_facebook&utm_source=gizmodo_facebook&utm_medium=socialflow
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Communal living is as old as civilization itself, but this is in the context of creating a false utopia.
This will become more common place in the future when housing is sparse, and Agenda 21 laws are in full effect.Bay Area's Steep Housing Costs Spark Return To Communal Living
by ELISE HU
December 19, 2013 3:04 AM
Ben Provan, co-founder of a co-living home in Berkeley, tends to a sprawling vegetable garden that grows enough food to feed the residents.
Housemates use software to keep up with events and one another.
It's no secret rents have skyrocketed in the San Francisco Bay Area, fueled by tight housing stock and the latest tech boom. But some young professionals have turned the situation into an opportunity with a return to communal living, or "co-living," as it's now called.
"It's absolutely a modern commune, but we prefer the term co-living," Derek Dunfield says, as he tours a 7,500-square-foot San Francisco Edwardian mansion he shares with a dozen others. "I think what it really is is an example of what the sharing economy can actually do."
He lives in this space with other professionals in their late 20s and early 30s. The housemates include an architect, a tech entrepreneur and someone who works in the mayor's office. They all work during the day, but at least once a week, they come together to cook a huge meal together for one another and any guests who want to show up. They share groceries, household responsibilities and decision-making in who gets to move in, should a spot become available.
"We live here, but we also host events. We have hackathons, and we have salons, and we have concerts," says Jessy Schingler, a co-founder of the house.
She says co-living creates economies of scale, but, more importantly, it creates community.
There's an emphasis on creating connections among people who live in the homes with big family-style dinners and amenities like huge outdoor vegetable gardens, basement bowling alleys and music rooms. And keeping the order isn't a hassle as long as everyone abides by the one sacred rule: no dishes get left in the sink.
audio and more here:
http://www.npr.org/blogs/
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One Answer to San Francisco's Overpriced Housing: 'Co-Living'
JENNY XIEDEC 02, 2013
Allegedly popular in San Francisco: Investor-backed individuals turning mansions into modern-day communes, in which a couple dozen residents share meals, chores, entrepreneurial ideas, deep discussions, and maybe, one day, babysitters.
According to the San Francisco Chronicle, there are over 20 of these communal living estates in the Bay Area, with more on the way. Stripping away the tech influence and large estates, these groups look like the average roommate situation, only bigger. But is "collaborative housing" really a brewing movement?
If a new Bay Area real estate firm called Open Door Development Group is any indication, it very well might be. Open Door is dedicated to developing "co-living" properties that emphasize common space over private space.
The Embassy, a 7,500 sq.ft, eight-bedroom mansion in San Francisco, is one of two properties currently operating under Open Door. Living in the Embassy is kind of like living inside the so-called "sharing economy" 24/7. Residents cook meals together and share amenities like a music room, craft room, 3-D printers and a bowling alley. The house also hosts weekly dinners and other events open to the public.
more here:
http://www.theatlanticcities.
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from earlier this year:
Understanding the world's urban future
August 27th, 2013 | 05:55 PM ET
Today, more than 50 percent the world's population lives in cities. By 2030, 60 percent will be urban...70 percent by 2050. China alone is planning to move a quarter of a billion people from rural to urban areas by 2025. But this isn't a phenomenon happening just in emerging markets or developing countries. Even in a country like the United States that is already 80 percent or so urban, people are still moving to the cities – at a rate of more than 1 percent each year.
What does it all mean? Fareed speaks with Bruce Katz and Jennifer Bradley from the Brookings Institution, who co-wrote “The Metropolitan Revolution," Leigh Gallagher, an assistant managing editor at Fortune, and Joel Kotkin, a distinguished fellow in urban futures at Chapman University and the author of The Next Hundred Million: America in 2050.
the video:
cnn.gps - fareed zakaria - future of cities, urbanism, urbanization, mega-cities - America 2050
August 30, 2013 3:34 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
population stuff:
cnn - the borderless level playing field, will world population reach 11 billion?
July 11, 2013 5:00 PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?
fareeds blog:
http://globalpublicsquare.
The Dynamic Potential of Urbanism Without Effort
CHARLES R. WOLFEMAY 02, 2013
Urban stakeholders like to discuss and debate how cities should change to meet new challenges. But when we talk about urbanism, I think we often forget the underlying dynamics that are as old as cities themselves. As a result, we favor fads over the indigenous underpinnings of urban settlement and personal observation of urban change. We focus too literally on plans, model codes, transportation modes, building appearance, economic and population specifics, and summary indicators of how land is currently used. While we might champion the programmed successes of certain iconic examples, we risk ignoring the back story of urban forms and functions, and failing to truly understand the traditional relationships between people and place.
I believe it is critical to first isolate spontaneous and latent examples of successful urban land use, before applying any prescription of typologies, desired ends, or governmental initiative. "Urbanism without effort" is the the basis for a clean, multidisciplinary slate for reinvigorating the way we think about urban development today.
This premise needs a definition and reference point, for all that follows here and in future inquiry. "Urbanism without effort" is what happens naturally when people congregate in cities—based on the innate interactions of urban dwellers that occur with one other and the surrounding urban and physical environment. Such innate interactions are often the product of cultural tradition and organic urban development, independent of government intervention, policy, or plan.
more here:
http://www.theatlanticcities.
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The Potential Perils of Rapid-Fire Urbanization
ANTHONY FLINT10:10 AM ET
Former mayor of Barcelona Joan Clos has an easy manner and tousled white hair, like an amiable uncle. He seems too laid-back to be delivering such a harrowing message. But as he surveys the world’s fastest growing cities, he sounds the alarm about the millions of people suffering in terrible living conditions -- and the millions more on the way that could turn the metropolis into powder keg.
As executive director of UN-HABITAT, the United Nations organization concerned with helping developing world cities establish basic services, housing, and infrastructure, Clos has come to terms with the numbers: half the world’s population of 6 billion lives in cities, and in the years ahead roughly 6 of the anticipated 9 billion people on the planet will be concentrated in urban areas, primarily in Asia and Africa.
The peril lies in the fact that the cities accommodating these many millions of mostly poor, rural migrants seem to be almost completely unprepared – barely hanging on under current conditions, let alone ready for expansion. Those moving to cities in search of a better life are going straight to the slums. In sub-Saharan Africa, Close says, 65 percent of the urban population is in informal settlements. Slums in general, he says, range from 200,000 to 750,000 in size; for comparison, the entire city of Boston is a bit over 600,000. Families live in 10 by 10-foot spaces with a crude cooking stove and no toilet, and wait in – or more often bail out of -- long lines for public restrooms.
"The urbanization taking place is spontaneous and unplanned," Clos said at a symposium last week at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology honoring the SPURS fellowship at the Department of Urban Studies and Planning. The fellowship takes mid-career professionals from around the world for a year of training and recharging batteries at MIT. “Governments are overwhelmed."
Rapidly growing cities in the developing world must start with the basics, Clos said, thinking about just one thing to start: the street grid and the public realm. In New York City, planning commissioners laid out “the streets in 1811 that we’re still walking on today.” The zoning and regulations and real estate development changed many times over in the two centuries that followed; Manhattan was designed before there was such a thing as a car. Yet the grid has been a remarkably resilient and enduring feature of the city. “The street pattern is the foundation of urban planning."
more here:
http://www.theatlanticcities.
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read about how China is handling this, here:
http://globalistnews.blogspot.com/2014/04/chinese-urbanization-lead-to-wwiii.html
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