John McPhee’s classic essay, The Control of Nature: Atchafalaya is now available online at The New Yorker’s web archive.

Operating since 1997, the Telecom-Cities mailing list is sponsored by the Taub Urban Research Center. Its mission is to focus “on practical and theoretical aspects of the changes advanced telecommuications and telematics are rendering on our urban centers.” You can browse Telecom-Cities via a web interface.

This is a fantastic idea. The BBC reports on a squirrel to handle your cell phone calls.

Greg Goldin reviews AUDC’s newest installation, “Ether,” in the AUDC exhibit space at 6128 Wilshire in this week’s LA Weekly.

CNN carries an article on how “Monster Homes Are Under Attack” in communities nationwide. The most interesting part of the article is the section of statistics.

“Back in 1950, according to the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB), the average new house clocked in at 963 square feet. By 1970, that figure had swollen to 1,500 square feet.

Today’s average: 2,400 square feet. One in five are more than 3,000 square feet.

Oddly, as houses expanded, the number of household members shrank, from 3.1 people in 1971 to 2.6 people today. The average building-lot size contracted also, to about 8,000 square feet from 9,000 in the 1980s.”

The outline for my current book project,”Network City” for the Networked Publics program at the Annenberg Center for Communication? is on the web. Read it [here]. Comments welcome.

Slashdot carries a story on the FCC’s reclassification of DSL as “information service” instead of “telecommunications.” The result is a major blow to America’s communications infrastructure. Without competition on copper from companies like Sonic.net, the US will slip further and further behind places like Korea and Hong Kong as they move towards connections of 100 megabits per second or faster. See FCC Reclassifies DSL, Drops Common Carrier Rules.

Are Los Angeles and New York merely year-round versions of Quartzsite, Arizona?

After reading Joel Kotkin‘s The Rise of the Ephemeral City, I am tempted to think so.

McMansions aren’t just limited to the United States. On the contrary, they are spreading like wildfire throughout many countries, including Ireland. Three photos from County Claire can be found full-size [here].

An article on the destruction of the Irish landscape by Mark Lynas can be found here on the Guardian’s web site [read more].

I think we need to call them MacMansions in Ireland, though.

Today, I received my long-awaited copy of Future City, edited by Stephen Read, Jurgen Rosenmann, and Job van Eldijk.

The book describes itself as follows: Future City mixes the experience of particular urban places with a more general discourse about the nature of urbanism today. Well-known urbanists are asked to look at sixteen cities around the world and the different ways they are changing and discuss their vision for the future. The book features a widely exhibited collection of images by NEXT architects comparing and contrasting eighteen metropolitan cities around the world. Interleaved throughout the book, are short theoretical pieces on issues relating to urban change written by leading urban theorists, offering a series of critical perspectives. This unique book links practical examples and theory though its accessible visual and writing style. It provides a stimulating source of ideas and vision for both student, practitioner and the general reader.

Contributors: Stefano Boeri, Ramesh Kmuar Biswas, M. Christine Boyer, Lindsay Bremner, Gary Chang, Penelope Dean, Dirk Frieling, Andreas Huyssen, Jim Masselos, NEXT Architects, Stephen Read, Jurgen Rosemann, Saskia Sassen, Richard Sennett, Abdou-Maliq Simone, STEALTH Group, Erik Swyngedow, and Kazys Varnelis

My own contribution is the essay, “Los Angeles, Cluster City,” first presented at TU-Delft in 2000.