Urban Planet is a daily roundup of blogs from around the world dealing specifically with urban environments. We’ll be on the lookout for websites outside the country that approach themes related to urban experiences and issues.
Luo Baogen’s house is the last holdout on the new highway outside of Wenling, China. The highway required the demolition of an entire neighbourhood to provide access to a newly built railway station. According to the article posted on Archinect, these so called ‘nail houses’ “occasionally have resorted to violence. Some homeowners have set themselves on fire in protests. Often, they keep 24-hour vigils because developers will shy away from bulldozing homes when people are inside.”
Cities can be very noisy places to live. As the decibels rise, from cell phone chatter, loud music, traffic and more, we tend to raise our voices to compete. Tim Kreider at the New York Times writes about how hard it can be for those who love the sound of silence. Especially, as it turns out, when you are simply too loud for those who love silence even more.
Image from Archinect
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