Tag: urbanism

City Microbiomes

Researchers took 4700 samples from mass transit systems in 60 cities across the world, swabbing common touch points like turnstiles and railings in bustling subways and bus stations across the world. Using metagenomic sequencing, they created a global atlas of the urban microbial ecosystem, the first systematic catalog of its kind. The results suggest that no 2 cities are alike, with each major metropolis studied so far revealing a unique molecular echo of the microbial species that inhabit it, distinct from populations found in other urban environments.

2023-10-12: Dark matter

Metagenomes encode an enormous diversity of proteins, reflecting a multiplicity of functions and activities. Exploration of this vast sequence space has been limited to a comparative analysis against reference microbial genomes and protein families derived from those genomes. Here, to examine the scale of yet untapped functional diversity beyond what is currently possible through the lens of reference genomes, we develop a computational approach to generate reference-free protein families from the sequence space in metagenomes. We analyse 27k metagenomes and identify 1.17b protein sequences longer than 35 amino acids with no similarity to any sequences from reference genomes. Using massively parallel graph-based clustering, we group these proteins into 106k novel sequence clusters with more than 100 members, doubling the number of protein families obtained from the reference genomes clustered using the same approach. We annotate these families on the basis of their taxonomic, habitat, geographical and gene neighbourhood distributions and, where sufficient sequence diversity is available, predict protein three-dimensional models, revealing novel structures. Overall, our results uncover an enormously diverse functional space, highlighting the importance of further exploring the microbial functional dark matter.

Mapping Angkor

Most people don’t realize that Angkor Wat is just 1 of more than 1000 temples in the greater Angkor region. This settlement may have been home to 900k people at its height in the 13th century. Angkor was comparable to the 1m people who lived in ancient Rome at its height. Researchers were able to map 10Ks of archaeological features at Angkor. Because Angkorian people built their houses out of organic materials and on wooden posts, these structures are long gone and not visible on the landscape. But lidar revealed a complex urban landscape complete with city blocks consisting of the mounds where people built their houses and small ponds located next to them. This work has created one of the most comprehensive maps of a sprawling medieval city in the world, leading us to ask: How did the city develop over time, and how many people lived here?

Outdoor Dining arms race

What started as a haphazard collection of tables and chairs set up in blocked-off parking spaces has evolved into a seemingly non-negotiable extension of running a restaurant in NYC. There are local construction companies dedicated to building outdoor dining shelters. New restaurants are baking outdoor dining setups into their startup costs. For those who can afford it, the constant upgrading of outdoor dining — still only a temporary allowance in the city — hasn’t showed any signs of slowing down as indoor capacity restrictions have loosened. “It’s like the face of the restaurant now”

Did NIMBYs Save Cities?

When the city is surrounded by suburbs that make new development even harder, that can make those undertakings more attractive.

Once investment is forced back into the city, NIMBYism continues to serve a useful purpose, keeping property values high, providing the city with higher tax revenues that can be invested into schools and improvements. One problem cities like St. Louis or Akron have is that their homes aren’t valuable enough for banks to lend money to the owners and produce very little in tax revenue. Detroit has one of the highest tax rates in the country.

Makes the strange argument that NIMBYism in the suburbs should lead to YIMBYism in the cities, creating a “green belt” around cities. Interesting theory, but I see no evidence that there’s really a YIMBY trend in cities.
2022-06-01: And YIMBYs are extremely ineffective because they pretend.

The notion that resistance to development is driven by rich white people is absurd on its face. It’s a joke, a farce. It’s just not true. YIMBYs have to decide if they want to be an authentic political force, which means accepting complexity and the inevitability of moderation and compromise, or if they’d rather just keep flinging shit on the internet. The latter is certainly more fun. But we desperately need a mature, goal-oriented YIMBY movement. We’re in a housing crisis, and while “just build!” has always been an inadequate philosophy, we must build and build a lot to get out of this housing hell. To do that YIMBYs have to be willing to look working-class Black and brown NIMBYs in the eye and, when appropriate, say “your objection to this project is misguided and wrong.” That’s less fun than dunking on Twitter. But it’s a necessary next stage of their project, if it’s to succeed.

Car-free NYC

The huge subsidy of free parking in NYC needs to stop. article is nicely visual to make the point how the city could look like instead.

2021-11-12: Curbed as a very nice breakdown of various topics like garbage, delivery, safety etc.

we tried to imagine what a comprehensive transformation would produce on a generic Manhattan block, to the extent that one exists. We chose Third Avenue between East 33rd and 34th Streets because of its concentration of terriblenesses and virtues. It is congested, dense, torn up, noisy, and lively. Lined by towers and tenements, plied by trucks and fed by tunnels, it’s a short walk from offices, hospitals, and trains. Yet we also embraced its frenzy. Our goal was not to impose the serenity of a provincial Dutch city or to streamline the block into anodyne efficiency. New York without friction wouldn’t be New York.

Singapore policy

Nothing fails like success. Singapore has been spectacularly successful over the past half-century in achieving the goals its government set out and that the people overwhelmingly endorsed. But having crossed the finish line for victory at high speed, the place doesn’t seem to know what to do next except to keep on driving, pedal to the metal—which amounts to overdoing it on a higher level. Individual and social life both are pocked with unannounced tipping points, after which a productive course becomes counterproductive. Centralizing government management functions, for example, is a great idea until it isn’t, until increased transactional costs more than offset incremental efficiency gains.

Ancient suburbs

Beneath the surface of Nebelivka’s surrounding landscape and at nearby archaeological sites, 6 ka remnants of what were possibly some of the world’s first cities are emerging from obscurity. These low-density, spread-out archaeological sites are known as megasites, a term that underscores both their immense size and mysterious origins. Now, some scientists are arguing the settlements represent a distinct form of ancient urban life that has gone largely unrecognized. Megasites were cities like no others that have ever existed.

are suburbs the cradle of civilization?