Cities

Science

Why Would A Company Spend $US200m To Build A Ghost Town?

11:20PM September 7, 2011 | Casey Chan

New Mexico, where people go to cook crystal meth and disappear into the maw that isn’t quite Mexico, is going to get another claim to fame: a brand new, $US200 million 50sqkm city with no residents. A modern day ghost town. More »

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A Video Tour Of London’s Dark And Dank Underground Tunnels

8:00AM July 17, 2011 | Cyriaque Lamar

We’ve seen the urban spelunkers at Silent UK plumb the depths of London’s abandoned mail train. Now they’ve created Crack the Surface, the first in a series of short films detailing their explorations of London’s underground, an experience one spelunker compares to a real-life roleplaying game. More »

Cameras

Shooting Challenge: City

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3:00PM June 15, 2011 | Nick Broughall

Everyone’s got at least one digital camera these days. But how well do you use it? Welcome to The Gizmodo Shooting Challenge, where Giz readers get to pit their photographic skills against each other for the admiration of their editors on a dedicated theme each week. This week’s challenge? City. More »

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What If You Crammed The Entire Human Population Into One City?

8:40AM June 15, 2011 | Kwame Opam

Here’s food for thought: Some cities are considerably more densely populated than others. Imagine packing all 6.9 billion people in the world into a city you know. How much space would that megacity take up? More »

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GPS Data Illuminates Tourists From Space

1:20AM May 27, 2011 | Sam Biddle

It’s usually pretty easy to avoid touristy swamps in New York – just dodge Times Square. But what if you want to be more precise than that? Eric Fischer’s brilliant “Locals and Tourists” maps show a city’s divided hangouts. More »

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The Map That Created New York City

11:40AM March 22, 2011 | Casey Chan

Today is the 200th birthday of the street map that spawned the Greatest City in the World. The New York Times has a revealing story on how the grid, which mapped 11 avenues and 155 crosstown streets, transformed New York into a city of right angles. More »

Online

Interactive Migration Map Shows Where People Are Going—and What They’re Abandoning

9:00AM March 14, 2011 | Jack Loftus

No, a massive earthquake did not also strike the East Coast today and cause thousands of refugees to flee inland. That said, while the lines do not represent refugees, this is still a massive migration of people. More »

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Helsinki’s Underground Shadow City

8:40AM February 25, 2011 | Kyle VanHemert

newVideoPlayer( {"type":"video","player":"http://www.youtube.com/v/jXNyEiw28D0&hl=en&fs=1&hd=1","customParams":[] ,"width":500,"height":332.5,"ratio":0.615,"flashData":"","embedName":null,"objectId":null,"noEmbed":false,"source":"youtube","wrap":true,"agegate":false} ); Bound by buildings on one side and a harbor on the other, the Finnish capital of Helsinki is pursuing a unique direction for its urban expansion: straight down. Thanks to a cooperatively shallow bedrock, building underground is relatively painless and inexpensive, and already citizens enjoy access to a subterranean swimming complex, shopping area, hockey rink, and more. More »

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What If US Cities Had Kept Their Original Names?

5:05AM February 25, 2011 | Brian Barrett

The good people at CrassTalk have whipped up a map with the original names of our most famous cities. What’s it going to take to get Philadelphia back to Shackamaxon? [CrassTalk via biotv]

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The Techno-Future Is Already Here

7:20AM February 8, 2011 | Kyle VanHemert

Christian Stoll’s wide-angle photographs, fittingly used in print campaigns for IBM and Microsoft, look like scenes from Blade Runner but are actually views of our little old planet as you can see it in some of its craziest, most futuristic looking places right now. Go check out the rest of the set, titled “Epic”, at Stoll’s site, and perhaps feel a fleeting appreciation for trees and squirrels and stuff like that. [Christian Stoll]