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415 posts
Everyone Is Talking About AI—But Do They Mean the Same Thing?
In 2017, artificial intelligence attracted $12 billion of VC investment. We are only beginning to discover the usefulness…
2018-08-29
Why The “Wrong Side Of The Tracks” Is Usually The East Side Of Cities
What do communities on the social, economic and environmental margins have in common? For one thing, they tend…
2018-08-28
America’s Best Food Truck Cities
Over the past few years, food trucks have become ubiquitous in the country’s biggest cities, from Boston to San…
2018-08-24
Plastic Straws Aren’t The Problem
Skipping straws may be hip. But there are much better ways to fight pollution. New York’s top cocktail bars…
2018-08-23
The ‘Crazy Rich Asians’ Guide To Singapore
Clean, green and safe are the adjectives that have long been associated with Singapore. But nowadays, travelers could just…
2018-08-14
The Good & The Bad Of Driverless Cars For Cities
The age of driverless cars is rapidly approaching, and no one seems to know what to do about…
2018-08-13
Yes, Humans Are Depleting Earth’s Resources, But ‘Footprint’ Estimates Don’t Tell The Full Story
Experts widely agree that human activities are harming the global environment. Since the Industrial Revolution, the world economy…
2018-08-02
The World’s 18 Strangest Bridges
Some bridges are engineered with nothing but utility in mind—for these, aesthetic design is secondary to safety and…
2018-07-30
How Polluted Oceans Hurt Us & How We Can Protect Them
Oceans and the life they sustain are vital to humankind. Unfortunately, overfishing, climate change, and pollution threaten these habitats.…
2018-07-17
The Top 10 Best Cities for STEM Workers
Looking for a great city with high-paying STEM jobs? When it comes to promising career paths, STEM (which…
2018-07-13
100 Years Ago, Air Pollution Stained Birds Gray
The dirty feathers of birds in some museum collections are giving scientists clues as to the level of…
2018-07-13
The World’s 30 Most Impressive Bridges
From old stone spans to sweeping modern suspensions, bridges have a way of wowing us. Moving bridges, stone…
2018-07-12
Too Much Noise Really Stresses Birds Out
Birds exposed to noise pollution created by natural gas compressors show symptoms similar to those humans exhibit when…
2018-07-05
Should States Have Their Own Foreign Policy?
A new paper raises crucial legal and political questions about states having their own foreign policy and suggests…
2018-07-02
Cities Offer Hope For Saving Native Species
The rapid conversion of natural lands to cement-dominated urban centers is causing great losses in biodiversity. Yet, according…
2018-06-29
We Made Plastic. We Depend On It. Now We’re Drowning In It.
The miracle material has made modern life possible. But more than 40 percent of it is used just…
2018-06-11
What Each Of The G7 Countries Wants, And What They Need
With many of the Trump administration’s recent decisions running directly counter to the other members’ interests, the summit…
2018-06-11
The Tech That’s Changing How Cities Help The Homeless
Every day, a team of community health paramedics in Austin, Texas, fans out across the city to provide…
2018-06-04
NASA’s Building New Tools To Manage Water As Climate Dangers Grow
After an unusually dry winter, a late-season storm finally soaked California in early March, piling up several feet of…
2018-06-01
How Your Mind, Under Stress, Gets Better At Processing Bad News
Some of the most important decisions you will make in your lifetime will occur while you feel stressed…
2018-05-18
This “Duck Curve” Is Solar Energy’s Greatest Challenge
Electricity is very difficult to store. But most consumers use it in a very predictable pattern. So utility…
2018-05-17
Love The Bus, Save Your City
Talk of the transportation future is focused on the next shiny thing. But one old technology is central…
2018-05-10
How Cape Town Was Saved From Running Out Of Water
Late last year, as the South African government faced the prospect of its largest city running out of…
2018-05-09
The Tech Bias : Why Silicon Valley Needs Social Theory
In the summer of 2017, a now infamous memo came to light. Written by James Damore, then an engineer at…
2018-05-08
Dungeons & Dragons, Not Chess & Go : Why AI Needs Roleplay
Everyone had died – not that you’d know it, from how they were laughing about their poor choices…
2018-05-04
Why Silicon Valley Billionaires Are Prepping For The Apocalypse In New Zealand
How an extreme libertarian tract predicting the collapse of liberal democracies – written by Jacob Rees-Mogg’s father –…
2018-04-19
The Global Housing Crisis
Scarce, unaffordable housing is not a local problem in a few places, but is baked into the 21st-century…
2018-04-18
It’s Time To Regulate ‘Smart City’ Technology, Too
This isn’t just about Facebook: When Google is building cities and cars are turning into data-harvesting machines, the…
2018-04-17
Martin Luther King And The Battles That Outlived Him
50 years on, the three evils MLK talked about -racism, militarism and economic exploitation – still plagues the…
2018-04-06
Why Can’t Everyone Do The ‘Asian Squat’?
All the way down! Not on your toes! Among the more practical advice that can be offered to…
2018-03-28
The 100 Million City : Is 21st Century Urbanisation Out Of Control?
Projections suggest cities will swell at an astonishing pace – but whether that means our salvation or an…
2018-03-27
How Long Can The World’s ‘Least Sustainable’ City Survive?
Set deep in the Valley of the Sun, the lush and sprawling ‘megapolis’ has a problem – the…
2018-03-23
Empty Half The Earth Of Its Humans. It’s The Only Way To Save The Planet
There are now twice as many people as 50 years ago. But, as EO Wilson has argued, they…
2018-03-22
The Best Countries To Escape The Worst Effects Of Climate Change
Using research from the University of Notre Dame, Eco Experts created a map ranking the countries that would…
2018-03-16
Russia vs. U.S: Where Is Life Better?
Russian President Vladimir Putin is expected to win the March 18 election by a wide margin, but that doesn’t mean…
2018-03-16
San Francisco’s Ships Sailing Underneath The Sea
Beneath the streets of San Francisco’s financial district lie the remains of dozens of sailing ships that once…
2018-03-13
These Savvy Cities Are Using Tech To Spark Citizen Engagement
In the spring of 2017, the doors to a new type of community center swung open in Louisville,…
2018-02-26
When Technology, Empathy, And Accessible Design Meet In These Good Cities
Most cities are utterly unfriendly to people with disabilities – but with almost one billion estimated to be…
2018-02-19
The Tricks Propagandists Use To Beat Science
A model of the way opinions spread reveals how propagandists use the scientific process against itself to secretly…
2018-02-19
The Seven Deadly Sins Of AI Predictions
Mistaken extrapolations, limited imagination, and other common mistakes that distract us from thinking more productively about the future.…
2018-02-16
Top 15 Cities With The Most Trees
There’s a global movement encouraging cities to grow more trees and plan more parks. But which ones have the most green…
2018-02-01
What Would An Earthquake-Proof City Look Like?
Earthquakes don’t kill people (generally), collapsing buildings do – meaning it is cities where the most lives can…
2018-01-22
Google & Others Are Building AI Systems That Doubt Themselves
The most powerful approach in AI, deep learning, is gaining a new capability: a sense of uncertainty. Researchers…
2018-01-11
A Machine-Learning Census Of America’s Cities
Millions of images of public streets offer a cheap, sweeping view of America’s demography. “WOULD it not be…
2017-12-24
10 Misconceptions About Christmas That Get Repeated Every Year
Christmas is a time for friends, family, cheer, giving, and general annoyance. After centuries of history, a lot…
2017-12-20
Could Intelligent Machines Of The Future Own The Rights To Their Own Creations?
Intellectual property may be the legal term for creations, including literary or artistic, but there is something inherently human about…
2017-12-13
Asgardia: The World’s First ‘Space Nation’, Takes Flight
The world’s first “space nation” has taken flight. On November 12, Asgardia cemented its presence in outer space…
2017-11-21
In These Small Cities, AI Advances Could Be Costly
A new MIT study finds that larger cities are more resilient to technological unemployment. It’s long been clear…
2017-10-31
How Migration Will Reshape Our World
Arguments rage, but what does immigration really mean for jobs, economies and cultures? The evidence suggests we could…
2017-10-10