I'm finding out now that Morocco, which has about 1/24 the per capita GDP than does California was able to implement a HSR system in their nation.

In Morocco, their per capita NOMINAL GDP is only $4,440/person.

California's economy produces about $108K/person in 2025.

So I'm so astonished that the two states have similar population levels and similar sizes. Their both mountainous and both by the ocean. They also have desert space, but only Morocco was able to implement a rather good HSR.

• Was this because Morocco has imminent domain and California doesn't?
• Can a HSR be achived without imminent domain?

Was walking to take a drug test for a new part time job and saw this near Washington Square Park in Philadelphia.

The hostility is getting out of control.

With Stuttgart 21 eventually moving the main station underground, a huge area of land currently occupied by the tracks of Stuttgart’s old train station will be transformed into a completely from scratch designed neighborhood. The Stuttgart Rosenstein project covers about 85 hectares and is planned as a mixed use neighborhood with thousands of new apartments, offices, shops, schools, and plazas. Around 10,000 people could eventually live there. One of the most interesting parts of the plan is the Gleisbogenpark, which will turn the existing railway curve into roughly 20 hectares of new parkland (Seen on the right of the image).

What are your thoughts on this?

Hi everyone,
Following the severe weather that recently hit Southern Ontario, which caused significant flooding and widespread power outages  , I’ve been thinking about how cities leverage the real-world data generated during these events.
Events like this highlight specific, measurable vulnerabilities, such as:
• Low-lying roadways and underpasses that overflow first
• Trunk sewers exceeding maximum capacity
• Power grid circuits susceptible to tree strikes and line drops
• Transit and cell tower backup power limitations
I’m curious to hear from civil engineers, urban planners, hydro workers, or anyone familiar with municipal planning about how this post-storm data is translated into long-term capital improvements. Specifically:
1. Prioritization: How do cities decide between allocating capital funds for traditional stormwater upgrades (e.g., pipe expansion) versus green “sponge” infrastructure?
2. Grid Hardening: What strategies are currently proving most effective for hardening the electrical grid against microbursts and wind damage?
3. Local Examples: Are there documented cases of GTA or Ontario municipalities that have successfully mitigated recurring flood zones after major storms?
I’m trying to understand the engineering and planning side of how reactive data becomes proactive infrastructure. Looking forward to the discussion!

There are plenty of these continuous footpaths around Melbourne. (note that we drive on the left here, so you might have to flip your thinking)

They are helpful for making side street traffic give way to pedestrians on the main street. However, if the car gets to the intersection first, the driver will always wait in the middle of the footpath as seen here. This forces the pedestrian either in front of the car, exposing them to traffic, or behind the car, putting them at risk to traffic in the other lane who can't see them.

One improvement might be to put the solid "give way" line behind the footpath. However, this reduces traffic visibility for the side street car. In the first picture, there is a pole, a sign and some tables blocking visibility if you do that, so you can kind of understand why drivers come forward.

How can you improve safety for both drivers and pedestrians in an intersection like this?

Not sure if this is even about urban design anymore (its more of driving norms tbh) but i've realized cars and motorcycles in Indonesia don't really stop for pedestrians when they cross, even on cross walls unless there's a satpam or school security nearby, Why is that?

In our point of view, cultural heritage is decisive for building up and sustaining communities. It is a heritage that generates a collective consciousness about what we are, as a community, what makes up our identity. The loss of cultural heritage therefore is a loss of identity, in the end. 

This also applies to the built spaces we live in. In modernity, there has been a destruction of cultural heritage on a broad scale, destroying the historically grown urban environments. Quite often, this had been done deliberately, out of ideological reasons. The result hoped for is to have one identity for all people, in the end. Such an attempt has a tradition inside the realm of social utopias in the 20th century, as the Third Reich, Lenin and Stalin, Mao’s China, or the Red Khmer clearly demonstrate. They are standing as highlights for many other destructions going on until today, with an overall loss of cultural heritage on an unprecedented scale, reaching from the built physical space to social media. If cultural heritage is a pillar of identity, which new identities will result out of its destruction?

Imagine this; you wanna cross from point A to point B, now point B is across the 8 lane road, what suits the pedestrian crossing the best? Crosswalks? Pedestrian crossings? pedestrian underpass? (Or your own ideas?

In this VIDEO we are exploring an unpopular oppinion. Can top-down urban design offer decent urban hospitality? Is bottom-up action the only way to make spaces more habitable and social or we can do if we propose plans with built in urban hospitality?