lifestyle leader

(The caption by National Geographic reads: “A truck travels along the highway leading to the Taklimakan oil field in the Xinjiang region. The rows of vegetation on either side keep sand off the road. The buildings that appear every few miles house workers who maintain the greenbelt.” Photo by George Steinmetz. Source.)

1) The Guardian on the “Eight Blunder” of the World. Is the Palm Jumeirah merely experiencing some growing pains or will it be a gangrenous toe that will infect the rest of Dubai, its future amputated?

2) Next American City on disaster urbanism in the wildfire country of Southern California and in the flood valleys of the Mississippi River.

3) The New York Times on cleaning the toxic landscapes of Fort Bragg, California with bioremediating mushrooms.

4) The Guardian on climate change, wasted money in the billions, doomed flood defences and abandoned villages on Britain's changing coastline. (See also Climate Ghettos and The Retreating Village.)

5) Der Spiegel on Berlin's Tempelhof a.k.a. the Mother of all Airports. Meant to be one of the centerpieces of Germania, Hitler's future capital, but actually completed by the Americans who used it as an army base, the site of the Berlin Airlift and photo-ops of arriving Hollywood stars, this mythic “inland sea with the yearning for faraway places” is now on the hands of voters who will decide today whether to keep it open or close it.

6) BBC News on gardening with moon soil. (See also Fake Moon Dirt.)

7) The New York Times on outdoor “living rooms” in Central Los Angeles.

Armed with grant money, hammers and some technical help, residents around the city have gone about spiffing up bus stops, among a number of other outdoor spaces, into something known as community living rooms.

The idea began several years ago in Oakland, where community organizers and residents got together to improve places where neighbors tended to congregate — the corner store, outside the barbershop — amid a decidedly downtrodden environment.

“The idea was to enable low-income communities to create their own social spaces and improve their neighborhoods without bringing on gentrification,” said Steve Rasmussen Cancian, the landscape architect who helped introduce the living rooms.

8) The Economist on shrinking eastern German cities.

(More on del.icio.us/pruned.)