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A roundup of news and articles the Unfamiliar Terrain team is reading this week:

“Versailles in the Valley” (The Economist): What do the new, monumental headquarters of Silicon Valley’s tech powerhouses say about them?

“The Great Rent Squeeze” (CityLab): Households are spending larger shares of their income on rent—does this stifle the economy?

“Can the US economy return to dynamic and inclusive growth?” (McKinsey Global Institute):  Can declining cities fuel economic growth?

“Airbnb, under the gun, is ready to cooperate with SF” (SF Chronicle): Changes are afoot at Airbnb.

“Four trends from state and local elections” (Brookings Institution): What concerns are shaping America’s cities and regions?

“Teslas in the Trailer Park: A California City Faces Its Housing Squeeze” (NYTimes): “We joke that it’s the only mobile home park with Mercedeses and Teslas in the driveway…It’s like the new middle class in California.”

A roundup of news and articles the Unfamiliar Terrain team is reading this week:

“Africa unplugged” (The Economist): How will off-grid solar change patterns of urban and regional development?

“Visualizing the Toughest Challenges Facing Global Cities” (CityLab): Can enhanced data visualization help us tackle complex, interconnected urban problems?

“Is New York Too Expensive for Restaurateurs? We Do the Math” and “Art Dealers Move Out of the Gallery and Into a Taco Bell” (NYT): How can new restaurants and galleries stay afloat in competitive real estate markets?

“The Next Frontier for Energy Savings in Buildings and Cities: Tenant Spaces” (Natural Resources Defense Council): New opportunities for improving energy performance.

“Here’s How Self-Driving Cars Will Transform Your City” (Wired):  8 experts weigh-in.

“Uber’s New Goal: Flying Cars in Less Than a Decade” (MIT Technology Review): On-demand flying cars(!).

“Achieving Lasting Affordability through Inclusionary Housing” (Lincoln Institute of Land Policy): Recommendations on how to craft robust inclusionary housing based on the analysis of 20 inclusionary housing programs across the US.

“Half a House” (99% Invisible): How did slum upgrading and incremental housing techniques from the 1970s find their way into Pritzker Prize-winning architecture?

“Closing California’s housing gap” and “Urban world: Meeting the demographic challenge in cities” (McKinsey Global Institute): New McKinsey reports address housing needs and demographic change.

A roundup of news and articles the Unfamiliar Terrain team is reading this week:

Top-Down, Bottom-Up Urban Design (The New Yorker): Updating Le Corbusier’s Athens Charter at the UN Habitat III conference and charting the course of future cities.

San Francisco Makes a Guerilla Bike Lane Permanent (CityLab): The rise of the San Francisco Municipal Transformation Authority.

A New Typology of Cities (CityLab): New metrics for urban form and productivity.

A Tale of Blue Cities (LA Review of Books): Cities and voting trends.

A Free Place for Designers to Work (NYT): creating a communal design and prototyping workspace in Brooklyn.

Next Big Tech Corridor? Between Seattle and Vancouver, Planners Hope (NYT): A vision to rival Silicon Valley.

Suburbs Will Soar on Wings of Tech (Bloomberg): Will tech propel suburban growth?

The Return of the Utopians (The New Yorker): A brief survey of utopias in America.

Cities Will Change When Cars Drive Themselves (Bloomberg): How self-driving cars might alter land use, traffic, and parking in cities.

A roundup of news and articles the Unfamiliar Terrain team is reading this week:

Uber World (Economist): Uber, self-driving vehicles, and the future of transport.

Jane Jacobs’s Street Smarts (The New Yorker): Examining the strengths and limits of Jane Jacobs’s urban vision.

Self-Driving Cars Gain Powerful Ally: The Government (NYT): New federal guidelines for the burgeoning automated vehicle industry.

In Cranes’ Shadow, Los Angeles Strains to See a Future With Less Sprawl (NYT): Is LA becoming denser?

AS OUR CITIES GROW HOTTER, HOW WILL WE ADAPT? (The New Yorker): Urban planning for climate change.

Obama takes on zoning laws in bid to build more housing, spur growth (Politico): Obama, NIMBY, and YIMBY.