When we think about the dams that are reshaping our planet and its waterways, the projects that come to mind are the massive ones, such as the Three Gorges Dam in central China (as captured in the gif above).

This is one of the largest of many. According to a new report, there are now 48,000 "large" dams (15 meters or taller) around the planet, which works out to a construction rate of one new dam every single day over the last 130 years. Over email, Owen Gaffney of the International Geosphere-Biosphere Programme in Stockholm said that another 1,600 are currently under construction. As journalist David Biello wrote on Twitter, "You know what says Anthropocene like almost nothing else? Water."

Ours is a planet and a time deeply shaped by one species -- us. Our waterways bend and bloat to meet our needs. Our atmosphere bears the emissions wrought by our fossil-fuel habit. Even in the depths of the remotest jungles, scientists are now finding our buildings. We are, of course, not the first species to have a dramatic effect on our planet -- cyanobacteria beat us to that punch more than 2 billion years ago -- but we are the first to do so knowingly, and that makes a world of difference.

This post originally appeared on The Atlantic.

As Luis Ubiñas, the president of the Ford Foundation, put it today at a Brookings event releasing a new book on the topic by Alan Berube and Elizabeth Kneebone: "Today's poverty is no less painful. But it looks different."

Primarily, it looks different because so many of the people experiencing it don't live in densely populated inner-city neighborhoods, where they have, if nothing else, community. Poor people who live in high-rise apartments and dense urban blocks have neighbors who can pool childcare, or point each other to social services, or share rides to work. They have access to public transit, because transit follows density, too.

There is a land-use component to the shape of poverty (and the kinds of solutions we can build to address it): Poor people who are spread out from each other, and from the kinds of services that grow up to serve concentrated poverty, have the least resources of all. Neighborhood Centers, Inc., the largest non-profit in the state of Texas, serves 400,000 people every year in the Houston area, a region where even "urban" living looks suburban by standards elsewhere. More than 90 percent of all those people are auto-dependent, a fact that dramatically changes their relationship to each other, to services, to job opportunity. And this speaks to a point Ubiñas made today about how the new kind of poverty in America will be not only more difficult for governments and advocates to solve but also potentially even harder on the people who live it.

"That isolated poverty is a kind of hopeless poverty," Ubiñas said. It is also considerably less visible to the rest of us. "We won't run into it on the subway or in the park," he says. "We’ll drive past it on the highway."

Bill Shore, the founder of Share Our Strength, a non-profit fighting childhood hunger in the U.S., offered this related point about why poverty has been such an intractable problem in the U.S.: "Some problems affect people who are so vulnerable and so voiceless that there simply are no markets to solve them," he says. "There are no economic markets. There are no political markets."

What will this mean, then, for the suburban poor who find themselves vulnerable, voiceless, and also isolated? The below chart, from Berube and Kneebone's work, suggests their numbers will continue to rise:

Top image: trekandshoot/Shutterstock

The arrival of Lululemon is a fitting apotheosis of gentrification for a corner that has been morphed beyond recognition since I moved to this part of Brooklyn almost 13 years ago. Back then, the storefront in this spot – in a building owned by the Metropolitan Transit Authority, whose subway tracks run underneath the street — was a branch of the Texas-based retailer Rent-A-Center, which offers a “rent to own” option on furniture and electronics to people who can’t afford to pay for them outright. (That company, which has 3,000 outlets around the country, has faced repeated charges of price-gouging over the years, and in 2010 reached a $343,000 settlement with the Washington state attorney general’s office over allegations of harassment and inflated prices).

After Rent-A-Center moved out, the MTA closed up the storefront in cinderblocks, and the building became known locally as "the bunker," winning the sad distinction of being named one of the ugliest structures in New York.

Then, in 2011, the MTA finally sold the thing, and it has been undergoing a total makeover ever since. Now cased in brick and featuring a series of setbacks going up three stories, it will have residential units on the upper floors and, as mentioned before, some pricy workout gear at ground level.

Founded in 1998 in Vancouver, Lululemon isn’t just selling sports bras and crop tops, but also an aspirational lifestyle. In case you’re not familiar with the company’s marketing materials, Lululemon (which recently faced its own mini-scandal over see-through yoga pants) promotes itself with a manifesto of bromides about how to live a better life, printed on bags and posters. For the company’s founder, Chip Wilson, the aspiration thing has worked out great. Wilson is now worth about $2.9 billion.

Here's part of the rags-to-riches story from the company’s website (lower-case styling theirs):

The idea was to have the store be a community hub where people could learn and discuss the physical aspects of healthy living from yoga and diet to running and cycling as well as the mental aspects of living a powerful life of possibilities. …

Although the initial goal was to only have one store, it was soon obvious that to provide a fulfilling life of growth, family, salary and mortgage for our amazing staff, we would have to provide more opportunities. It was really a matter of grow or die because active minds need a challenge.

The training program was such a success that the lululemon people have created a life for themselves that most people could only dream of. lululemon is a company where dreams come to fruition.

Wilson, whose dreams have undeniably borne fruit, has cited Ayn Rand as an influence, and for a time in 2011 the company’s distinctive red-and-white bags featured the opening line from Atlas Shrugged, Rand’s 1957 paean to the free market: “Who is John Galt?” Some customers were not amused.

The aphorisms that scream out at me every time I walk past the Lululemon construction site are more generic than Randian, but I confess I find them annoying nonetheless. "Dance, sing, floss and travel." "Jealousy works the opposite way you want it to." "Stress is related to 99% of all illness." (What’s that 1 percent?) "Friends are more important than money." (But money sure is nice, isn’t it?)

I’m not the only one who’s irritated. Next to the pronouncement "The pursuit of happiness is the source of all unhappiness," someone has scrawled, with a black Sharpie, "False."

The Rent-A-Center that used to occupy this place sold its own brand of aspiration, of course: that company's website leads with the slogan "Everyone’s pre-approved to start buying without credit!" (follow the double asterisks for the fine print on that promise). At least the people buying Lululemon gear probably have the disposable income to spare, as well as a high tolerance for self-righteous affirmations. And Lululemon does have a community philanthropy program in place.

Reaching even further back in time, a commenter on the Brownstoner website linked to a picture of what Smith Street looked like back in the day when streetcars dominated. The Lululemon site was occupied then by a furniture store, doubtless an emporium of that era's middle-class must-haves. The more things change.

I know that worse things can happen to a neighborhood than a Lululemon. Worse things can happen to a neighborhood than gentrification. Still, Lululemon’s arrival here feels like it's heralding yet another new era of loss in a city where income inequality is rampant and even "affordable housing" is often unaffordable. If it weren't for the huge public housing complex just a block to the east, this neighborhood would likely soon be completely gutted of anything even resembling economic or racial diversity – the very kind of texture that has drawn so many people to this part of Brooklyn in favor of Manhattan.

The Lululemon manifesto counsels you to "Breathe deeply and appreciate the moment. Living in the moment could be the meaning of life." When I pass that sign each day, I find myself holding my breath, and wondering what will happen when this moment turns into the next.

Many towns were basically demolished, like Beichuan, where dozens of massive buildings toppled or collapsed. Those that remained were stabilized and converted into a town-wide memorial. Below are some photos of the region. See other shots over at The Atlantic's In Focus blog.

An aerial view of the ruins of Beichuan, viewed on Google Earth.

An ethnic Qiang man carrying a basket of grass walks towards his home in Luobo village in Wenchuan county, Sichuan province May 9, 2013. The entire Luobo village was reconstructed after a 7.9 magnitude earthquake in 2008 killed nearly 70,000 people in Sichuan. (Reuters)

A child stands next to tents that serve as dwellings for local residents after the April 20 earthquake, in Longmen township of Lushan county, Sichuan province April 27, 2013. The earthquake has left 196 dead, 21 missing and more than 11,000 injured, according to Xinhua News Agency. (Reuters)

Children gather around cakes on a table as they celebrate their birthdays at a temple in Shifang, Sichuan province, on May 12, 2013. According to local reports, the children were born shortly after May 12, 2008, the time the Wenchuan Earthquake struck. A Buddhist abbot took in 108 pregnant women in his temple, and helped them deliver their children. On the fifth anniversary of the earthquake, the children came back to celebrate their birthday as well as expressing their gratitude to the temple. (Reuters/China Daily)

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Property prices in China are rising relentlessly, according to new government data, and not even strict property controls have been able to stop them.

Average house prices in 70 Chinese cities climbed 4.3 percent in April from a year ago, based on calculations from the Wall Street Journal, or 4.9 percent according to Reuters, which would be the fastest pace since April 2011.

High demand fuelled by easily available credit has pushed prices up, making it harder for first-time buyers to get on the housing ladder and raising concerns that a property bubble is developing. In mid-2012, China’s central bank cut interest rates in an attempt to reverse a slowdown in the economy, but the knock-on effect on housing has been hard to control—not that the government hasn’t tried.

In February the State Council said it would ask cities with rapidly rising prices to implement restrictions on the housing market, particularly in places where prices are being pushed up by property investors. In March Beijing and Shanghai took up the call (paywall), declaring that unmarried individuals would only be allowed to purchase one residence. Beijing also announced that deposits on second homes would be higher, and capital gains tax for selling a second home would rise. Both cities also said they would build thousands of new affordable apartments. But despite all this, prices in Beijing rose 10.3 percent in April from a year earlier and in Shanghai were up 8.5 percent.

Liu Jianwei, from the Chinese National Bureau of Statistics, said the controls were still at an early stage and would need time to work. But he admitted that “expectations of [further] home price increases haven’t been fundamentally eliminated.” Translation: more price rises are looking likely.

This post originally appeared on Quartz, an Atlantic partner site.

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Mother nature isn't going to give the Midwest a chance to breathe today: after a pack of tornadoes tore through the region on Sunday, the National Weather Service warned of more severe weather on the way this week, with Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Arkansas expected to take the next round of brutal thunderstorms and possible tornadoes. The National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration's National Weather Service writes:

After over 300 reports of severe weather on Sunday,another round of dangerous severe weather is expected Monday with the greatest threat once again in the southern Plains targeting Oklahoma and parts of Kansas, Missouri and Arkansas. However, severe weather is possible much further north towards Chicago and Madison as well.

Oklahoma to Arkansas to Chicago is a large swath of the country as this map shows: 

What's worrisome is that this is the second round of brutal storms for the states who saw the most damage on Sunday. "Damaging winds greater than 60 mph, large hail and tornadoes are possible with the strongest thunderstorms that develop," reads the report from Accuweather. Oklahoma saw multiple twisters touch down with an estimated 300 homes damaged or destroyed CNN reported on air this morning. Tractors trailer flipped, and so much damage was dealt that "Oklahoma Gov. Mary Fallin declared a state of emergency in 16 counties," NBC News reported. And here's what Oklahoma has to deal with today: 

And the small town of Rozel, Kansas, saw these two monster tornadoes touch down: 

Part of the reason the storms seem to be focusing on the Plains region is due to a dip in the jet stream. This combined with moisture from the Gulf of Mexico, the Weather Channel reports, is pulling the turbulent weather into the Midwest states: 

According to CBS News and the AP, a 79-year-old man was killed and 21 were injured during the slew of storms and officials are trying to go from home to home to this morning to assess the damage. Officials told the AP, that "many times in such situations, people who are not found immediately are discovered later to have left the area ahead of the storm." The severe weather is expected to continue into this week.

This post originally appeared on The Atlantic Wire.

It will soon do just that with Michigan Modern, a planned four-day symposium (June 13 through 16) and four-month design exhibit (June 14 through October 13) put together by the state's office of historic preservation and the Cranbrook Art Museum. The exhibit and symposium will highlight the role Michigan played in the history of American Modernism, one that's largely been under appreciated. America's modernist legacy is more often associated with Los Angeles, a city that came of age during the middle of the 20th century while embracing car culture, high design homes and Herman Miller furniture — all ideas that, along with the Eames lounge chair and those iconic Cadillac fins, originally germinated in Michigan.

"When it comes to modern design, Michigan often gets left out of the conversation," says Michigan Modern's project manager, Amy Arnold.

The image collection below, released in advance of the upcoming event by the Cranbrook Art Museum, lets Michigan's design influence speak for itself.

Mount Clemens Savings and Loan, Mount Clemens, Designed by William Kessler. Photographer: Balthazar Korab, Courtesy of the Library of Congress. 

General Motors advertisement for the 1959 Buick Electra 225 on Cranbrook Academy of Art campus. Photo courtesy of General Motors 2013. 

Hilda Longinotti reposing on the Marshmallow Sofa, designed by George Nelson. Photo courtesy of the Herman Miller Archives. 

Herman Miller founder DJ De Pree sitting in an Eames Lounge Chair, surrounded by a Noguchi table and an Eames walnut stool. Photo courtesy of the Herman Miller Archives. 

The Herman Miller Furniture Company’s founder and designers. From left to right: Robert Propst, Alexander Girard, George Nelson, DJ De Pree, Ray Eames, and Charles Eames. Photo courtesy of the Herman Miller Archives. 

William Muschenheim House, Ann Arbor, designed by William Muschenheim. Photographer: Rob Yallop for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office.

Alden B. Dow Home and Studio, Midland, designed by Alden B. Dow. Photographer: Steve Vorderman for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office. 

William Kessler House, Grosse Pointe Park, designed by William Kessler. Photographer: Balthazar Korab courtesy of the Library of Congress.

Reynolds Metals Regional Sales Office, Southfield, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Photographer: Balthazar Korab. Courtesy of the Library of Congress.

McGregor Memorial Conference Center, Wayne State University, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Photographer: Balthazar Korab. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. 

Lafayette Park, Detroit, designed by Ludwig Mies van der Rohe. Photographer: Steve Vorderman for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office. 

Michigan Consolidated Gas Building, Detroit, designed by Minoru Yamasaki. Photographer: Steve Vorderman for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office. 

Cranbrook Academy of Art Orpheus Fountain and Peristyle. Photographer: Balthazar Korab. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. 

General Motors Technical Center. Photographer: Balthazar Korab. Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress. 

Michigan Modern: Design that Shaped America, runs from June 13 to 16 at Cranbrook Educational Community, in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Registration for the event end on May 31. The Michigan Modern art exhibit runs from June 14 to October 13 at the Cranbrook Art Museum.

Top image: Grand Rapids City Hall and Calder Plaza, designed by Skidmore, Owings & Merrill. La Grand Vitesse by Alexander Calder. Photographer: Steve Vorderman for the Michigan State Historic Preservation Office. 

The data charted by Campante and Do reveal the role of geography in political corruption (as measured by federal convictions). States like New York and Florida are seen at the more corrupt end of the spectrum, in keeping with their rather remote capitals of Albany (roughly 130 miles from New York City as the crow flies) and Tallahassee (about 400 miles from Miami). Meanwhile, corruption is relatively low in states where the capital and the population centers are either near one another or one and the same (as in the case of Denver, Colorado).

Traditionally, social scientists and political scholars have considered two contrasting theories about political corruption at the state level. The first (called the "accountability view") says capitals will be more corrupt if they're far from population centers, because the usual instruments of public accountability will be weakened. The second (the "capture view") holds that capitals will be less corrupt if they're isolated from a state's major centers, because economic interest groups won't be able to capture political votes.

Campante and Do report "very robust" evidence for the "accountability view" through a number of measures. They first looked at the relationship between capital geography and media influence; after all, government accountability relies on public awareness. The researchers found that newspaper coverage of state politics increased around state capitals, and by extension, was greater in states with less isolated capitals.

Take recent state government scandals in New York, with its remote capital in Albany, and Massachusetts, with its capital and major center both in Boston. The situations were the same, with high-profile state legislators convicted of corruption, but the media coverage wasn't, according to Campante and Do. They pulled up 154 articles in the New York Times on the New York scandal (involving Joseph Bruno) and 238 in the Boston Globe on the Massachusetts scandal (involving Salvatore DiMasi) — a big difference, they believe, especially considering the Times is a larger paper.

"In sum, it seems that newspapers do tend to give state politics greater coverage when their audience is more concentrated around the capital," the researchers write.

Next Campante and Do judged political accountability by voter interest in the electoral process. They found that people who lived farther from a state capital were both less informed and less concerned with state politics in particular, but not with American politics in general. So even though voters who lived near state capitals were more likely to turn out for a state election, they were no more likely to vote during a presidential election. Again, accountability seemed to be lacking at the state level alone.

Finally, the researchers found no evidence for the so-called "capture view" of corruption. In fact, they found evidence against it. When Campante and Do measured how geography influences political contributions from special interest groups, they discovered larger contributions in states with isolated capitals. In other words, working in a remote location doesn't inoculate state legislators from financial corruptibility.

So geography may very well encourage political corruption by limiting public accountability. But what happens as communication technology moves us all closer together? Campante and Do aren't so sure anything will change; if anything, they wonder whether a push for online media will lead to newsroom cutbacks that only increase the isolation of state political coverage.

In any event, they believe their research warrants heightened vigilance from the public — especially in states with remote capitals. They conclude:

Put simply, watchdogs need to bark louder when there is a higher chance that people are not paying much attention.

Top image:  luxorphoto/Shutterstock

It's not as far off as you think. In just the past several weeks, the Kansas legislature passed a sweeping new bill that says life begins at conception. This follows on the heels of North Dakota's ban on abortions after a fetal heartbeat is found (typically about week six, before many women know they are pregnant), Arkansas's prohibition of abortions after week 12, and Alabama's tightened regulations on abortion providers. On the other side of the issue, a federal court in New York ordered that the so-called "morning-after pill" be made available to women and girls of all ages, instead of requiring a prescription for girls under a certain age. (This is currently being appealed by the Justice Department.)

The word "choice" presumes that women actually have options. While the right to have an abortion is still protected by Roe v. Wade, in practical terms, it has become a privilege that is reserved for the residents of relatively affluent states. In more than half of all states, 90 percent of counties lack any abortion providers. Women in almost nine in 10 (87 percent) of U.S. counties (a third of U.S. women of reproductive age) lack access to any abortion services at all, according to a 2011 study in Perspectives on Sexual and Reproductive Health.

The upshot is that more and more women who are determined to obtain an abortion must travel great distances and out-of-state to do so. A 2005 study in the Annual Review of Public Health found that "nearly one-quarter (24 percent) of women seeking an abortion travel 50 miles or more to find a capable physician."

Not coincidentally, two of the states imposing the harshest new restrictions are the very states that women travel to. Roughly half of the abortions in Kansas were performed on non-residents and approximately one third in North Dakota, according to statistics compiled by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. The new laws in these states will have consequences for women far beyond their own borders, cutting off access to abortion services not just for their residents but for women in surrounding states.

When it comes to abortion, women in America occupy two completely different worlds depending on where they live. Women in less affluent, more working class red states in the South and Midwest occupy a world where access to abortion services is for all intents and purposes unavailable to them. Women in more affluent, more highly educated blue states in the Northeast and on the West Coast continue to have the "right to choose."

Abortion's opponents see the world entirely through a moral lens; they contend, for example, that abortion and declining moral standards go together. Restricting access to abortions, they insist, can only strengthen marriage and families.

That's largely a myth. While it is true that abortion rates are lower in states in which more people claim to be very religious, marital stability is certainly not. States with the highest levels of abortion also have the most stable marriages, according to my previous analysis here on Cities. States with higher divorce rates have lower rates of abortion, while abortions are more frequent in states where the divorce rate is lower. A similar pattern holds for people who engage in multiple or so-called "serial marriage" (those who have been married three times or more). Abortions are more frequent in states where serial marriage is less common, while the abortion rate is lower in states where more people have been married multiple times. Though correlation does not imply causation, it would seem that stronger, longer-lasting marriages and abortions go together, at least when comparing states.

Couching abortion in moral terms deflects attention from the bigger issue at play. It's not just morality that affects women's right to choice, but economic circumstance. It's not just more affluent women who have more choice, but women who live in more affluent, more educated states. Women in poorer, less advantaged red states find themselves facing an environment that looks a whole lot like that before Roe v. Wade.

Morality is subjective by definition, but a women's right to choose increasingly reflects the stark reality of economic circumstance, class and politics that divide America today.

Top image: Anti-abortion marchers argue with pro-abortion rights activists during the annual March for Life rally in Washington on January 25. (Jonathan Ernst/Reuters)

Sir Pileous McPecwhiskers may have won the unofficial best costume at the 2013 Bay to Breakers – a century-old footrace in San Francisco featuring serious runners and dressed-up (or plain naked) freaks – but he had competition from a roller-disco granddad, human Sriracha bottles, a horse demon and a depressed narwhal. As with past years, it was a wonderfully sketchball throw-down, with drunken Whooooos! echoing through neighborhoods long after authorities cleared the roads with truck-mounted fire hoses.

Sadly, I did not get a picture of chesty Smiley Face, only heard about him from a friend. But a couple attendees have started flooding Flickr with shots from Sunday's event, giving the world a good idea of the extent of the fabulosity. (Good, but not comprehensive – just look at the immensity of this throng.) Oh, and if you actually care about who won the race, the Bleacher Report says it was Tolossa Gedfa Fufi from Ethiopia for men and Burundi's Diane Nukuri-Johnson for the women. Now, to the much more important costume ball (Livefyre has more, although it also has private parts).

Tom Hilton/Flickr

Kevin Edwards/Flickr

Kevin Edwards/Flickr

Tom Hilton/Flickr

Tom Hilton/Flickr

Kevin Edwards/Flickr

Kevin Edwards/Flickr

Kevin Edwards/Flickr

Tom Hilton/Flickr

Kevin Edwards/Flickr

Tom Hilton/Flickr

Top photo by Kevin Edwards on Flickr

"We think about suburbs in one way," says Elizabeth Kneebone, a fellow at the Brookings Institution's Metropolitan Policy Program. "We have a very stereotypical view of suburbs as middle-class, affluent, Leave-It-To-Beaver type places."

And yet, over the last decade, suburbs have increasingly become home to America's poor. Between 2000 and 2011, the population living in American cities below the poverty line increased by 29 percent. During that same time, across the country in the suburbs of metropolitan areas as diverse as Atlanta and Detroit and Salt Lake City, the ranks of the poor grew by 64 percent. Today, more poor people live in the suburbs (16.4 million of them) than in U.S. cities (13.4 million), despite the perception that poverty remains a uniquely urban problem.

As Kneebone and colleague Alan Berube have written before for Cities, this geographic shift has been no quirk of the recession. It began before the housing market crashed, and will inevitably tax communities unaccustomed to housing the poor well into and beyond the recovery. The changing shape of poverty is more systemic than an economic downturn, as Kneebone and Berube document in a new book that corrals several years of research on the topic, Confronting Suburban Poverty in America.

"Often when we talk about rising suburban poverty, people automatically think about, 'Well, who’s moving into these neighborhoods?'" Kneebone says. "But it’s not just people moving in. There have been two downturns in the last decade, and long-running structural changes in the economy, finding a lot of long-time suburban residents growing poorer, slipping down the economic ladder."

The pattern does vary, though, across the country: El Paso, Texas, has a suburban poverty rate of 34.6 percent; Des Moines, Iowa has the lowest among America's 100 largest metros, at 5.7 percent. These cities have seen some of the most dramatic changes in a decade:

Kneebone and Berube

Kneebone and Berube have built individual profiles of suburban poverty for each of the country's 100 largest metros, underscoring that a problem many keep at arm's reach is closer than people expect.

"These are really shared challenges," Kneebone says. "The more people can recognize that their community is a part of this trend, that maybe their neighbor is affected by growing poverty, that hopefully would help galvanize some action around this."

Until now, though, elected officials, service providers and federal programs have yet to catch up to this new picture. And regions will swiftly realize that poverty programs designed for dense urban neighborhoods transplant poorly onto suburbia. "We’ve seen that the suburban safety net – it’s much thinner, it’s much patchier, and it’s spread over greater distances," Kneebone says.

Many suburbs, for instance, don't have the kinds of public transit networks that can connect impoverished neighborhoods to job opportunities. And it's significantly harder to address poverty through transportation when low-income households in need of it live dispersed over larger areas. Suburbs also simply lack the built-in networks of service providers that have grown up over decades in inner-city communities.

All of this means that if the geography of poverty has dramatically changed over the last decade, we'll have to spend the next decade (and likely more) thinking about how to address it in its newest forms.

"This really isn’t about shifting resources away form cities to suburbs, or saying 'Oh look here, now the problem is in suburban communities,'" Kneebone says. "It is understanding that this is a regional issue, that suburbs face the same challenges that cities have been facing for decades. But we have an opportunity now to change the way we tackle these challenges so we don’t create the same mistakes in the suburbs that have led to concentrations of poverty in cities."

Top image: Tim Roberts Photography/Shutterstock

The entrance tickets they carry are in the form of a pocket watch – which can only be obtained as a gift – with a reservation number and instructions inside advising against high heels and to be ready for a bit of climbing.

A door opens, and once shuttled inside all are told to turn off phones, refrain from photography or tweeting, and that you are in fact trespassing. While they have done their best, the Night Heron cannot guarantee your safety. Follow me.

Photos: Yoni Brook

Then it's through a dark hallway with paint curling off in sheets, onto a fire escape, across a chasm onto a low ledge, and through the back door of a building under construction. After climbing twelve dusty flights to the debris-strewn roof, you see it — the icon of the New York City skyline. Not the looming Empire State Building, or the sharpened jewel of the Chrysler. An extension ladder leads 20 feet up to the underside.

Yes, you're going up into a water tower.

After squeezing through a trap door, you are welcomed into a candlelit wooden cylinder outfitted with a bar, drink tables, and chandelier, all made from upright piano parts. You sip an aromatic amber concoction made by a dapper proprietor and survey this cedar jewel box, seemingly constructed by a pauper of exquisite taste.

The Night Heron is not a themed bar riding the broken wave of the speakeasy trend of several years ago, where an air of exclusivity was imparted by lack of signage or a secret entrance. Equal parts art installation, business, and social experiment, The Night Heron is the most recent production by 31-year-old N.D. Austin, who has staged similarly elaborate experiences via Wanderlust Projects, a closely related but separate endeavor which he runs with partner Ida Benedetto. Among other exploits, they've taken an RV full of people to an abandoned honeymoon resort in Pennsylvania for jazz in the wrecked showroom and "couple's time" on circular beds under mirrored ceilings, and organized a 5 a.m. photo safari in a defunct Domino Sugar factory in Brooklyn. Guests are given only the vaguest of notions about activity or final location.

Photos: Yoni Brook

Urban exploration is usually considered the realm of thrill-seeking bridge climbers and sewer-spelunkers, but there is a small contingent who use abandoned, hidden, or otherwise odd spaces as a creative medium. In New York, there’s been the 2010 Underbelly Project, a collection of works by over a hundred street artists in an unused subway station organized by artists Workhorse and PAC, and a year later the elaborately staged Sweet Cheat, a dystopian musical production created by Jeff Stark, and held in a decommissioned power plant an hour outside the city.

"Actually, urban exploration is just a small part of what we do," says the mustachioed and articulate Austin. He and Benedetto call it "transgressive placemaking," a term they feel indicates a more complex, curated experience, as opposed to what Benedetto describes as the simpler act of "surveyance."

The Night Heron is a departure from Wanderlust's one-time, usually profitless productions, but shares the same approach to designing experiences in line with the historical context of a space. Even the name is precisely tuned – a creature of both sky and water, active primarily in darkness.

Austin chose an accessible, nightlife-free part of Manhattan's Chelsea neighborhood, specifically avoiding Brooklyn. "It's too easy to write you off – y'know, dudes with curly mustaches in Brooklyn," he says. "I wanted to circumvent the part that makes people think, 'I know what that is.'" He then zeroed in on a location using a combination of online research (including satellite photos) and a solid two weeks of legwork, in the literal sense. "I started with a list of at least fifty buildings, and climbed to the top of about thirty water towers."

The buildout of the space took two months, with Austin and crewmembers Myric Lehner and Mike "Dirby" Luongo going through an elaborate process each night to lug materials up the stairs, diligently avoiding notice and covering their tracks. The original plan to send guests up the tower's outside ladder with climbing safety gear was kyboshed when safety-and-logistics man Lehner realized the fire exit plan was untenable, and so a trap door was cut. And the overhead stage, a ludicrous idea at first, proved a fantastical addition. By the end, the wooden barrel that seemed tiny and uninhabitable from the outside had become the wardrobe entrance to a Prohibition-style Narnia. But one important issue remained.

How does one invite people to an illegal establishment that holds perhaps fifteen individuals comfortably and will only operate for six weeks? A sidewalk sandwich board? Facebook?

Pocket watch.

"One of the things I wanted to do," says Austin, "was give people the ability to share the experience itself. Exposure had to be limited for security reasons, so the only way you could share it was by passing it on to a person." Guests could attend the Night Heron only once, and entrance had to come in the form of a gift from one who'd already been. At the end of a seating, a letter thanked guests and explained that gifts of watches providing entry for two were available for purchase if desired. The price was $80 at the beginning of the run and capped out at $300 by the end, with the average price hovering around $160, according to Austin.

The system was supremely practical for vetting guests, as anonymous channels like the Internet can easily bring thieves, groping drunkards, or gossip column reporters, potentially jeopardizing the experience for all. But beyond mere practicality, says Austin, "The effect was more powerful than anything I would have expected."

After several "seeding" nights of invited guests, the scheme took its own course, growing into a garden of surprises and insights.

Photos: Yoni Brook

In one example of synchronicity, a watch found its way into the hands of Christine Jones, a Tony-award winning set designer and self-described "theatrical experience junkie." "Because you don't know what's happening," she says, "you start looking at everything around you with this heightened awareness. And you make the investment of risk, doing something that's illegal and maybe dangerous, and inside the tower you feel their investment, which is incredibly moving. Everything was done with such artistry, and you just couldn't wait to buy a watch so that you could gift it to a friend. The hard part was figuring out who you were going to give it to."

The secret became a gift of an unfolding surprise, one that people often added to with their own dramatic flair. Lehner relates the story of a business owner who sent an office-wide hoax request for a volunteer to come in on a Sunday, rewarding the helpful employee who did with a watch instead.

"The hipster quotient was very low," says Austin, describing a Mulligan stew each night of types and classes, from struggling artists in threadbare jackets to hedge fund manager couples in matching pink sweaters. Actor Ed Norton sipped a bourbon and amaro with bitters next to a union jet engine mechanic from Queens. Amanda Palmer belted out vocals in the tiny space as ecstatic house musician and fan Matt Dallow accompanied her on accordion, while husband and author Neil Gaiman scribbled furiously in a notepad at the table. An office manager and a freelance set builder listened to an animated Damian Kulash, lead singer/guitarist of OK Go, talk about the stunt driving lessons he had to take for the band's well-known music video.

In a quieter moment, one guest climbed the interior ladder to the top hatch so he could take in the view of the Empire State Building and the cubist jumble beyond. He drew in the night air, gazed at the scene in the human-sized diorama below, and began to cry.

"I'll never look at the skyline the same way again," says Night Heron bartender Lindsay Cooper at the end of a weekend-long stint. "I can't tell you how many times I've heard people say that."

Photos: Yoni Brook

"Yes, it reminds me of that question in The Little Prince," Austin adds, helping the crew clean and stow away evidence of their existence. "'Why is the desert beautiful? The desert is beautiful because somewhere it hides a well.'"

Seven hundred people came through the establishment, now sealed, since it opened at the end of March, and the expressions of gratitude have been overwhelming. Austin recalled one email in particular from a guest mentioning people he intended to pass the gift to, saying he was "happy to contribute to the cause as fits custom - to a few folks who were born in the water tower, and a few that need to see the water tower to be born."

The Night Heron from Brooklyn Laboratories on Vimeo.

So you'd think they have a little compassion for an outsider who tried to give the statue his own fashion makeover. But nope, the shining-gold effigy that artist Petro Wodkins recently swapped for the Manneken was taken into police custody, and Wodkins himself is being pursued across Europe by legions of pike-bearing grenadiers thirsting for his head on a platter (well, not really).

Wodkins is a Russian performer who's on a mission from God to revolutionize the global art-scene. Apparently God told him that he should craft a little model of himself urinating, and then put it on a fake pedestal to obscure the real peeing boy. Why? As Wodkins explains:

Let's face it. Belgium is a boring little country. And Brussels is a boring city. Filled with boring tourists.

In the center of Brussels there is a horrible little statue. A small pissing boy. Where the tourists gather.

What would happen if we changed the horrible little statue for something beautiful?

Like a statue of Petro. Would the tourists even notice?

What I first came across this bit of street art, I thought that Wodkins himself had painted his body gold and then climbed in front of the statute, which would have been bold. Sadly this was not the case, although he did give the artwork an air of verisimilitude with a tube dribbling water from the effigy's nether regions.

Have a look at "PISSING PETRO," as the artist calls his intervention. You'll find better pictures of it at his website, which may or may not be NSFW depending on your boss' tolerance for metallic private parts:

Top photo courtesy of Niels Mickers on Flickr

"The Unlikely Ascent of Palestine’s Green Architects," Joseph Dana, Next City

Amid a stalled peace progress and an increasingly hopeless political atmosphere, a growing number of young Palestinians are betting that they can design their way into a better future. In Ramallah, the de-facto Palestinian capital, young designers are making furniture out of trash in hopes of reducing landfill waste while increasing their country’s self-reliance. In East Jerusalem, Jews and Palestinians are working together to provide basic services to a Jerusalem neighborhood that ended up on the wrong side of the Israeli separation barriers. In villages across the region, people are working to preserve and reintroduce life to traditional Arab villages, even as the country begins its first stab at a planned California-style development. Middle-East based journalist Joseph Dana talks to these proactive architects and designers to find out how Palestine’s unlikely sustainability movement came into being — and where it is likely to go.

Children participate in a fancy dress competition in the southern Indian city of Hyderabad. (Krishnendu Halder/Reuters)

"Dividing Lines: The Battle Over Hyderabad's Metro," Mark Bergen, The Caravan

NINE YEARS SINCE IT WAS FIRST ANNOUNCED, the Hyderabad metro remains marred by controversy over its design, execution, funding and cost. It is also far from complete. To hear Kapoor speak on their campus, Akshay and his friend had crossed the crowded old city, where the metro’s three proposed lines will some day cross. From there, their bus route had taken them on one of the lonely roads of suburban Hyderabad, through a rocky, sparsely populated landscape shaped by nature and Chandrababu Naidu. More than a decade ago, the then-chief minister of Andhra Pradesh had conceived of a metro for the fast-growing state capital that would carry 2.5 million commuters per day by 2025 and be the most modern transit system in the world. His vision has had a troubled journey since.

"Tough Laws Do Little to Slow Calif. Gun Rush," Scott Detrow, KQED

California has some of the toughest gun laws in the United States. They don’t appear to be stopping people from purchasing firearms.

Despite 10-day waiting periods, expansive background checks, a limit on one handgun purchase every 30 days and a broad “assault weapons” ban, California experienced a 180 percent increase in attempted gun purchases over the last decade.

Illegal immigrants walk out of a restaurant. (Eric Thayer/Reuters)

"Rust-Belt Reaches for Immigrant Tide," Mark Peters and Jack Nicas, Wall Street Journal

Worries over immigrants potentially taking jobs from native-born Americans run high in parts of the nation, but some U.S. cities are taking a different view: Wooing immigrants can reverse long-term declines in population.

Cities, mostly in the Midwest and mid-Atlantic states, are betting that attracting foreign-born residents can spur business creation and revive neighborhoods. Steps vary from proclamations welcoming immigrants, to adding staff focused on attracting newcomers and translating government websites, to efforts to connect international students with local companies.

"Why Is China Stealing Cities, Towns, and Buildings?" Ryan O'Hanlon, Pacific Standard

Hallstatt, Austria, is in China. So is the Eiffel Tower, the Taj Mahal, Christ the Redeemer, and a soon-to-be-completed Manhattan. There are others, too, and it’s all part of this weird (at least to us Westerners, or this one Westerner who is writing this) proliferation of what are being called “copy towns.” They’re villages and buildings and cities in China that are being constructed as replicas of non-Chinese places from around the world—and people are living in them. Hallstatt, China, has an artificial lake, and they imported doves to make it more Hallstatt-like.

But a 7-million-pound building, dating from 1898, in the shadow of the Wasatch Mountains? That's what is floating 40 feet in the air in Provo, Utah, at the behest of the Church of Jesus Christ and the Latter-Day Saints.

When the Provo Tabernacle caught fire in 2010, much of the inside was ruined, but large parts of the facade remained standing. To reconstruct the building as a Mormon temple, engineers had to suspend the facade on stilts while digging out the ground around it to create room for a basement and a solid structural foundation.

Top image via MormonNewsroom.

HT: Colossal.

In many ways, where you live is a significant determinant of your health, influencing whether you have opportunities for exercise, or sources of healthy food, or access to health care. It makes sense to wonder: Would all of that fried food (and the allure of a fast and affordable dinner at the end of a hectic day) eventually come to impact your health, too?

We'll pause here to emphasize that the following research proves no causal connection between burger proximity and body weight. But a new study published in the American Journal of Public Health does find some strong correlations: African-American adults in Houston who live closer to fast food restaurants were found to have higher Body Mass Indexes. And the link was particularly strong for lower-income people.

Researchers at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center studied about 1,400 adults from a local Methodist church, most of them female and well-educated, and referenced their home addresses against the proximity and density of nearby fast food restaurants. The study controlled for other factors that might impact BMI, like gender, age, education, employment status, and time spent watching TV. The researchers then measured the density of restaurants within half a mile, one mile, two miles and five miles of a person's home. Within a two-mile radius, the data suggested that the higher the fast-food density, the higher the BMI (the five-mile radius, not surprisingly, showed no relationship).

Conversely, each additional mile a subject lived from the nearest fast food restaurant was associated with a drop in BMI of 2.4 percent. As the researchers write:

This study does not mean that whites or Hispanics or other groups may not also experience a link between fast food proximity and Body Mass Index. Rather, the study focused specifically on a sample of the black community given nationwide racial disparities in obesity rates and related health complications. Previous research also suggests that fast food restaurants cluster in higher densities in black communities than predominantly white ones, and that minorities may be more likely to consume fast food when it's available to them.

These latest findings among low-income people are particularly noteworthy: For them, fast food may be the best option available. As the researchers hypothesize:

Top image: Andrei Zarubaika/Shutterstock

Thanks to a group called Robin Hood of Keene, some 4,000 Keene drivers have avoided parking tickets entirely for at least four years. That's because the Merry Men are always a step ahead of the meter maid with a few quarters, leaving only a small note: "Your meter expired; however, we saved you from the king's tariffs, Robin Hood and his Merry Men. Please consider paying it forward."

Parking enforcers of Keene have not found the Merry Men so merry. In a lawsuit filed by the City of Keene against six members of the group, the city alleges that the parking meter vigilantes "regularly, repeatedly and intentionally taunted, interfered with, harassed and intimidated" the city's employees, even touching them. One parking enforcement officer alleged in an affidavit he was called "bitch," "coward," and a "murderer of brown babies," in reference to his military service. Another claims to have suffered heart palpitations as a result of similar harassment. 

The city is seeking an injunction to keep the Robin Hood crew at least 50 feet away from its on-duty parking officers; James Cleaveland, a Robin Hooder blogging at libertarian blog Free Keene, says the suit is "ridiculous."  

"Most importantly, according to the job description for a city of Keene parking enforcer," Cleaveland writes, "'This position requires a person' to 'relate with the general public' and 'Endure verbal and mental abuse when confronted with the hostile views and opinions of the public and other individuals often encountered in an antagonistic environment.'

See? They had it coming!

Top image: Flickr/Mechanikat.

As our own John Metcalfe reported, this "bizarre" series of storms brought "madly shifting winds" and at least 10 tornadoes to the Dallas/Fort Worth area. Below, some scenes of the aftermath.

A trailer blown into a home on Lindsay Lane in Cleburne rests on a car after a tornado touch down in Cleburne, Texas. (Richard Rodriguez/Reuters)

A stop sign lies among debris May 16 after tornados swept through the town of Granbury, Texas. (Richard Rodriguez/Reuters)

Rescue workers comb through debris May 16 after tornados swept through the town of Granbury, Texas. (Richard Rodriguez/Reuters)

An aerial view shows the damage after tornados swept through Hood County, Texas. (Brandon Wade/Reuters)

But there are urgent questions about how this for-profit enterprise will displace the ordinary New Yorkers who currently use the park in huge numbers. How much should cities should be willing to give up when it comes to encouraging private investment? Is it worth trading away the core of a neighborhood’s vital park?

The plan for the stadium, which I first wrote about late last year, is now apparently riding on money from Sheikh Mansour bin Zayed Al Mahyan, the billionaire deputy prime minister of the United Arab Emirates and scion of the ruling family of Abu Dhabi. Mansour’s investment group owns the Manchester City team in England, and is said to be willing to pony up $100 million for rights to an expansion team. The stadium for the franchise would be privately financed to the tune of $340 million, but it would be built on 13 acres of public parkland smack-dab in the middle of one of the city’s most heavily used parks. The stadium site is “at the heart of public space in a park that has already been chopped up for private use,” according to Holly Leicht, the executive director of New Yorkers for Parks. Her group came out in opposition to the plan earlier this week.

Bloomberg has pooh-poohed every concern that members of the public and the media have brought up. It has become almost a cartoonish manifestation of the mayor’s now legendary disregard and disdain for criticism, well chronicled by Capital New York, among other local publications.

The mayor’s much-touted PlaNYC "for a greener, greater New York" has as one of its goals that every New Yorker should live within a 10-minute walk of a park. But when it comes to Flushing Meadows, a 1,255-acre facility that suffers from lack of maintenance and yet is hugely popular with the low-income immigrant population of the surrounding neighborhoods, the mayor is dismissive. From an article in the New York Post:

"It’s not irreplaceable," the mayor said of the 13 acres in Flushing Meadows that soccer promoters are trying to acquire for a 25,000-seat stadium.

"In fact, there’s an old airport, Flushing Airport, which is going to be turned into a park. So the total parkland would be the same," added the mayor.

But that proposed fix has drawn strong criticism from Flushing Meadows advocates. The Flushing Airport site is in College Point, a mostly white neighborhood that has little public transit access and is effectively worlds away from the working-class immigrant neighborhoods that surround Flushing Meadows.

Leicht told me that her group had conducted an experiment to see just how far the College Point location is from the neighborhoods that now use Flushing Meadows as their backyard. From the heart of the Corona neighborhood, she said, it takes about 10 minutes to walk to the edge of Flushing Meadows, and about 25 minutes to get to the proposed stadium site. Walking to the College Point site more than three miles away, she said, takes at least an hour and 15 minutes, through a bleak industrial area and a maze of highway ramps. In other words, no one will do it. And even if they did, the site is on a wetland that floods frequently.

Javier Valdes, co-executive director of Make the Road New York, issued a statement on the College Point proposal through a group called the Fairness Coalition of Queens: “What the Mayor said is outrageous. His plan to force working class people of color to rent their park away to a billionaire for $1 a year in exchange for parkland in a wealthier, white neighborhood is insulting. It's out of touch and it's unjust. We are calling on all elected officials in New York City to denounce this."

Leicht wrote an op-ed detailing New Yorkers for Parks’ opposition to the plan:

Building a stadium on this site will alter not just the site itself, but the nature of the park altogether. The footprint of the arena would be up to 13 acres, but the directly affected acreage, as defined by MLS’s proposed circulation roads and pathways, would be at least double that. …

It’s important to recognize who would be most negatively affected by this proposed project. This section of the park is predominantly used by residents of the surrounding park-starved communities of Flushing, Corona, Elmhurst and Jackson Heights – low- and middle-income neighborhoods that fall well below the city’s standard of 2.5 acres of open space per 1000 residents.  Nearly 23 percent of the people living in these neighborhoods are 18 or younger. Childhood obesity in Corona, on the park’s western edge, is 51 percent, the highest in the city. 

Leicht says her group thinks that the city should reopen the search for a different location, as the potential loss to the public would be too great if construction went forward on the Flushing Meadows site. But the league has said the alternatives are all cost-prohibitive.

MLS gave a statement to Capital New York expressing its position:

"M.L.S. has committed to replacing the parkland acre for acre and making significant investments in the park beyond the fields," M.L.S. spokeswoman Risa Heller said in a statement. "The dialogue with the City, electeds and community leaders regarding those commitments will continue throughout the approvals process."

On thing everyone agrees on is that Flushing Meadows–Corona is in rough shape. That’s in large part because it is understaffed, with only 18 full-time workers paid by the city to maintain its vast expanse. Central Park is about two-thirds the size, but has nearly 300 people on staff, almost all of whom are paid for by the Central Park Conservancy.

You might think that the major sports powers that already run major stadium facilities within Flushing Meadows — the New York Mets and the United States Tennis Association, sponsor of the U.S. Open — would have to contribute to the upkeep of the park. You would be wrong. It’s not surprising that community advocates are skeptical that this time would be different, especially since the construction of the stadium would wipe out the very space that needs improvement.

Opposition to the MLS plan has been getting more vocal. Architecture critic Justin Davidson wrote an eloquent piece in New York magazine in which he declared, “…parkland is different. It is the opposite of real estate, an abiding corrective to a rapacious market.”

But will this be the proof that parkland isn’t different at all? That if you have enough money, you really can buy anything in New York? Even the scarce recreational space of the working class?

Mansour’s deep-pocketed involvement in the deal is pressing that issue. One elected official has questioned whether the city should be dealing with a leader of a nation with a spotty human rights record that’s been called out just in the last few months by the U.S. State Department.

That may be a worthy concern. But the way this deal is being handled, we might need to get our own house in order before worrying about someone else’s.

Top Image: Soccer fields that would be affected by the proposed stadium construction. (Courtesy of New Yorkers for Parks)

That's what the entire city of Toronto is wondering this morning, after three reporters -- Gawker's John Cook and the Toronto Star's Robyn Doolittle and Kevin Donovan -- claim to have watched a video of the portly, controversial mayor of North America's fourth-largest city lighting up and inhaling from what appears to be a crack cocaine pipe. 

The only response from Ford himself, so far, is that the situation is "ridiculous." We agree. Ford's lawyer, Dennis Harris, told Radio-Canada that the mayor denies the allegations. Other politicians are taking a wait-and-see approach. "He's a bad mayor because he makes bad decisions," councilman Adam Vaughan told the CBC.

Donovan and Doolittle have been investigating substance abuse allegations against Ford for several months, and say they watched the video three times in the back of a car. Here is their report from the Star, with details compiled from notes each of them took separately:

It appears to show Ford in a room, sitting in a chair, wearing a white shirt, top buttons open, inhaling from what appears to be a glass crack pipe. Ford is incoherent, trading jibes with an off-camera speaker who goads the clearly impaired mayor by raising topics including Liberal Leader Justin Trudeau and the Don Bosco high school football team Ford coaches.

“I’m f---ing right-wing,” Ford appears to mutter at one point. “Everyone expects me to be right-wing. I’m just supposed to be this great.…” and his voice trails off. At another point he is heard calling Trudeau a “fag.” Later in the 90-second video he is asked about the football team and he appears to say (though he is mumbling), “they are just f---ing minorities.”

The video, Donovan says, ends with Ford looking at the camera and saying, "That thing better not be recording."

The people who screened the video for the journalists have been pretty up front that they want to sell it for six figures. (Gawker's Cook says he heard that an unnamed Canadian news organization -- possibly the Star? -- had offered $40,000 and been rejected.) Cook called various American media outlets trying to raise the money for its purchase, but when word reached Toronto City Hall that said video was circulating, Cook went public with a screenshot, a story, and the headline: For Sale: A Video of Toronto Mayor Rob Ford Smoking Crack.

So, is it real? All three reporters say that the figure in the video is, beyond doubt, Mayor Rob Ford.

As anyone who reads this site regularly knows, Ford has a history of odd behavior. In February, the Star reported that he was asked to leave a gala dinner after appearing intoxicated and acting inappropriately, a story that Ford called "an outright lie." He likes to read while driving, and earlier this week ducked out of a community meeting to slap refrigerator magnets on parked cars. He was nearly removed from office last fall for procedural misconduct stemming from trouble with campaign contributions. His policies, including the removal of a prominent Toronto bike lane, have made few friends among urban planners, and his dealings with the media have been explosive. 

Here's what Ford tweeted earlier this morning:

The long weekend is here! Catch a ferry to Toronto Island Park for a scenic picnic. Details here: toronto.ca/parks/island/f… #LongWknd #Topoli

— Mayor Rob Ford (@TOMayorFord) May 17, 2013

Whoops! And while we wait to see if anyone decides to shell out for the video, here's another good one of Mayor Ford hiking the ol' pigskin:

Top image: Toronto Mayor Rob Ford speaks to the media as he leaves his home in Toronto, May 17, 2013. (REUTERS/Mark Blinch)

LOUISVILLE, Ky.—The most important economic sector in Louisville is one you may never have heard of: logistics. What is logistics? It started out simply as shipping when United Parcel Service opened a hub at the Louisville International Airport in 1980, and then made Louisville the site of its worldwide air hub in 2002. But as other companies relocated to the area to take advantage of UPS's distribution network, the sector has branched out to include a wide range of industries that provide services or products—and want to deliver them fast.

"What UPS did was brilliant, and we've benefited from their scouting," says Bob Marino, CEO of the e-commerce company CafePress, which moved its headquarters from Silicon Valley to Louisville in 2012. In its search for a worldwide hub, UPS determined that two-thirds of U.S. cities were less than 24 hours from Louisville by ground, and three-fourths of domestic cities could be reached within a two-hour flight. It didn't hurt that Louisville had a good but not terribly busy airport, and few regulations regarding noise that would impact overnight flights. And the local workforce was relatively cheap, with plenty of college students willing to take on part-time or third-shift work. 

Now UPS employs more than 20,000 workers in Louisville and has invested $2 billion in two expansions of the airport and its facilities. The result is a massive 5.2 million-square-foot facility—and a magnet for other companies. 

"Getting UPS Worldport here has had a long-lasting and profound impact on our economy," says Ted Smith, Louisville's director of economic growth and innovation. "You can see that in the number of companies that continue to move here to be near that distribution center." He estimates that more than 140 other employers have relocated to Louisville in order to take advantage of UPS Worldport, bringing approximately 10,000 jobs to the area. 

Some of those companies are obvious—big online retailers like Amazon and Zappos (now owned by Amazon) have giant fulfillment centers in nearby Shepherdsville, and the location lets them promise next-day or two-day delivery to customers. Cheggs.com, an online textbook-rental service, keeps its inventory in a Shepherdsville warehouse as well, and can ship books to students within 24 hours.

Other companies are newer to the logistics world. Several fine-food distributors operate out of Louisville, giving area chefs access to some of the world's freshest sushi ingredients that touch down at the airport en route to the East Coast. Geek Squad, which provides computer repairs, built a 165,000-square-foot site called "Geek Squad City" in Louisville to make the process of receiving, fixing, and shipping devices more efficient. Toshiba went one step further, contracting with UPS to repair its laptops. Technicians perform the work onsite at Worldport and return the computers without the need for anything to leave UPS grounds.

Even biotech firms are coming to Louisville to take advantage of the location. The city's newest import is the Belgian company Eurofins, which does biological-tissue sequencing. The equipment required for that work is extremely expensive, so rather than establishing labs in several major markets, Eurofins decided to set up a U.S. base near UPS so that the company can obtain tissue samples quickly, sequence them, and get data packets out to hospitals across the country. 

The dream of city leaders is that more companies will do what CafePress has and locate their entire operation in Louisville. Inside the company's sprawling facility on the southwest side of the city, production workers print customized t-shirts, mugs, and other items as a catwalk above them leads to several corporate offices. The company is moving its customer service operation in-house, which will bring on 50 new employees, and another 400 full-time workers are supplemented during the holiday season by as many as 700 temporary workers. The move from CafePress's old headquarters in San Mateo, California, has allowed the company to integrate all of its departments, says CEO Marino. But it's also improved quality of life. "Louisville," he says, "is the place where I want to live until I die."

Top image: United Parcel Service aircrafts are being loaded with air containers full of packages bound for their final destination at the UPS Worldport All Points International Hub during the peak delivery day in Louisville, Kentucky. (John Sommers II/Reuters)

"At some point, I just began folding the prints, folding way the sky, folding away the sides, until I basically had an image that looked like a supermarket bar code," Wolf says. "I somehow had the feeling this was the right way of doing it, this was the gut decision."

This was the best way to capture life amid extreme density, in a compact city of 7 million people jammed full of 80-story apartments and infinitely replicated facades. Wolf's own 300 square-foot studio looks out on such patterns of stacked homes, with maybe 10,000 other units in view. Collectively, they form a kind of geometric art that appears in Wolf's tightly cropped photos as simultaneously stunning and claustrophobic. The images have recently been reprinted in the book Architecture of Density. Each photo produces the disorienting sense that these buildings could stretch into the sky forever.

"I realized it was a very effective way of communicating density exactly for those reasons: You had no idea how big these buildings actually could be because there were no real references," Wolf says. Most of the images are cropped near the tops of buildings, although they look like they could continue for another 30 floors. "It’s an illusion which I’m creating," Wolf says. "It gives you an idea of an unlimited scale."

The images invite a kind of ambivalent reaction: They make dense city living look almost inhumane – as if people were living amid computer chips – despite the implied mass of humanity behind all these windows. At the same time, these photos capture endearing glimpses of private lives seen through all that geometry.

"The primary statement is about life in cities, it’s about the living conditions in mega cities," Wolf says. "But on the other hand, if you look at these photographs at a distance, at 10 or 15 feet, they look very beautiful, they have a beautiful aesthetic. They could almost be like op art, with very geometric patterns. But when you go closer, you realize each one is an apartment, each one is inhabited by a human being – you see that from the curtains, and from the objects which people hang out to dry."

That very geometric beauty has made these images popular among collectors at the blown-up scale of a living room wall ("The irony," Wolf says, "is most of these collectors have 5,000 or 10,000 square-foot apartments").

In a parallel project, Wolf has also photographed the interiors of people living within 100 square-foot apartments. And some 80 percent of those residents told Wolf they were happy with their homes. The reason? The sense of community, density's greatest benefit.

"The important lesson to be learned is that it’s not space which is important for humans," Wolf says. "It's your neighbors."

All images courtsey of Michael Wolf.

"I felt very, very enthusiastic about diner preservation, since they're cornerstones of Americana," says Perlman. "I think the last remaining diners in New York City deserve landmark status."

The 30-year-old Perlman, a lifelong Queens resident, says he dedicated himself to historic buildings back in 2005, when he saw a construction crew demolishing the old Trylon Theater — a movie house that dated back to the 1939 Worlds Fair — in his native Forest Hills. "Witnessing that jack-hammered pretty much awakened the dormant preservationist within me," he says. Afterward Perlman established the Rego-Forest Preservation Council, which he still chairs, and a career was born.

Perlman says his foray into diner preservation began in early 2007 when he read that the Moondance — a celebrated Depression-era joint located near the Holland Tunnel — was slated for closure and destruction. Since the new developers had no intention of incorporating the diner into their plans, Perlman bought some time to try to find a buyer who could relocate the entire establishment. He did, and in August of 2007, the Moondance left SoHo in the hands of its new owners, en route for Wyoming.

"It doesn't occur daily — witnessing a diner 'to go,' " says Perlman. "It was a bittersweet moment in New York City history. People were happy it was being saved physically, but it was sad, too."

A few months later Perlman learned that the Cheyenne Diner, just west of Penn Station, was headed for a similar fate. Once again he convinced the new landowner to give him some time to find the old place a good home. After a plan fell through to take the Cheyenne just across the East River into the Red Hook section of Brooklyn, Perlman found a pair of investors from Birmingham, Alabama, who brought it south (in two pieces) in late 2009.

The Cheyenne Diner. Images courtesy of Flickr user Tiffany Terry

Perlman is a genuine diner savant — capable of describing a particular establishment down to, say, the frosted windows or the original manufacturer. He's partial to freestanding diners, especially converted railroad dining cars, dating back to a boom period between the 1930s and the 1960s. He reserves his preservationist instincts for "distinctive" diners with key period features: an Art Deco style, a clever stainless steel configuration, wrap-around windows, and of course a glowing neon sign.

"I wouldn't try to preserve a diner that's like a box devoid of character," he says.

Not all of Perlman's efforts have ended in a storybook fashion. For starters, he would prefer that vintage New York City diners remain in their hometown. The Cheyenne Diner, which is supposed to become the centerpiece of a blast-from-the-past type entertainment village, has yet to be restored in its new location. Perlman's name has been attached to several other diner preservation attempts in recent years — among them the Forum Diner, in Paramus, New Jersey, and the Empire Diner in Chelsea — but success has been elusive.

Still, Perlman vows to keep fighting for a space at the counter. His most recent project is finding the rightful owner of an old diner structure at 357 West Street that's reportedly been called the Terminal Diner, the Lunchbox Diner, and the Lost Diner at various times in its existence. The inside has been ransacked, as recent pictures from Untapped Cities attest, but the building itself still holds promise in Perlman's eyes.

He also says he's willing to expand his mission beyond the New York metro area if some old diner out there needs him. "If the diner is brought to my attention and other people feel very enthusiastic about it, and if it's a great example of architecture, I'm open to the possibility," he says.

"I consider them alternate public institutions."

Top image courtesy of Flickr user Mitch Altman.

The King has "instructed" that Riyadh, Saudi Arabia's fast-growing capital city, build its new six-line Metro system in just four years. To compare: it took New York's MTA four years to renovate one station.

For Riyadh's biggest station, a three-way interchange in the city's financial district, the King has chosen this airy hub designed by Iraqi-British architect Zaha Hadid. Its facade is designed to let in light while keeping out the harsh desert sun, while the overall shape is meant to recall wind-blown sand dunes.

We note that there's a bare-haired woman ascending the escalator in this last rendering -- a gesture of subversion from the architect's studio? Either way, King Abdullah seems to like what he sees.

All images courtesy of Zaha Hadid Architects.

The latest instance of heroic cop-duck action comes from Portland, Oregon, a city known for its everything-bird obsessiveness. This Mother's Day, Officer Mark James clocked a speeder doing 52 mph in a 35 zone and zoomed off in pursuit. He must've been an eagle-eyed fighter pilot before picking up a badge, because somehow he noticed on the gloomy asphalt ahead a fluffy, ankle-high movement. Duuuucks!

"It was pretty good vision on his part to even see them in the road, with the gray weather we had that day," says Sgt. Pete Simpson, a spokesman for the Portland Police Bureau.

Officer James stopped his cruiser right there on Northwest Bridge Avenue and guided the ducks – a mother and her waddling progeny – onto the grassy shoulder. He did so despite there being "no regulation about stopping for ducks," says Simpson, and also risking a chewing-out from the Chief. Which wouldn't happen, actually, because he seems to love ducks, too.

"I think the chief would definitely side with officer," says the spokesman. "While traffic enforcement is important to save lives, running over a mama duck and her ducklings is not going to fare well for the agency."

Would this story have turned out differently if the officer was motoring down upon a family of smelly skunks? Or, say, a frothing-rabid possum?

Nope. "It wouldn't be all right to drive over animals," says Simpson. "We would discourage the intentional ramming of any fauna in the neighborhoods."

As it happens, this isn't the first time Portland's finest have interrupted their normal duties to pluck a hapless animal from doom's snapping maw. When a juvenile red-tailed hawk fell from its building perch in 2011, an officer was there to scoop it from the sidewalk and take it to the animal clinic. And this May, cops rescued a three-foot-long snake slithering around downtown that "looked scared."

Sometimes this animal love can cause problems. Last year, the Audubon Society of Portland reported getting "way too many" ducks "dumped at their door," according to this TV news spot. If you skip ahead to 0:35, you'll find yet another cop going beyond the call of duty to save ducks, this time in Ohio:

Top photo courtesy of thieury on Shutterstock