Satellite Images Can Harm the Poorest Citizens
In Ho Chi Minh City, computer analysis of orbital images overlooks some urban communities. To represent them, cities will have to put boots on the ground.
Metropolis Now
METROPOLIS NOW
Technology is transforming city life, for better and worse
Porn’s Uncanny Valley
The San Fernando Valley was once the bedroom community of the adult industry. Now technology hopes to disrupt traditional pornography—and the city it calls home.
Power Lines Are Burning the West
Human technology is responsible for more loss from fire than any other cause. But reducing fire’s impact will require changes to how people live, not just to the infrastructure that lets them do so.
Los Angeles, America’s Future Spaceport
The city of stars was once a major hub for aerospace. Soon it might be again.
Ancient Rome’s Collapse Is Written Into Arctic Ice
Scientists can finally track the civilization’s economic booms and recessions—thanks to the exhaust of its massive coin-making operation, preserved for centuries in Greenland’s ice sheet.
The 'Black Hole' That Sucks Up Silicon Valley's Money
A fast-growing type of charitable account gets big tax breaks but little oversight.
New Mexico’s Sad Bet on Space Exploration
Spaceport America was supposed to bring a thriving space industry to the southern New Mexico desert—but for now it’s a futurist tourist attraction, not an operational harbor to the cosmos.
The Design Bible That Changed How Americans Bike in Cities
A movement has brought safer bicycle lanes to the United States. But it took a manual to spread them.
The City of Coordinated Leisure
A short story imagines an entirely different way for cities to schedule people’s lives.
The Cute Robot That Follows You Around the City
Piaggio, the Italian company that makes Vespa scooters, is building cargo droids for city pedestrians.