Curbed November 2017 Small businesses and streetscapes, boulevards and bodegas: These aren’t the typical aspirations of up-and-coming architecture firms. But the self-described “scrappy Angelenos” at the helm of LA-Más, a nonprofit architecture and policy practice, see things differently. The name alone—which translates to “Los Angeles more,” as in, amplify the characteristics, personalities, and businesses at […]
Curbed December 2019 Enrique Jaime moved to Bloomington, California, in 2008 seeking something different. The 75-year-old retiree was sick of the traffic and pollution that came with living in Lynwood, near the ports, freeways, and refineries of Long Beach, and decided to move with his wife, Carmen, 64, to this more peaceful and rural area […]
Curbed August 2019 Like many American cities, Houston is encircled by rings of highways—nine major radial freeways, three ring freeways, and a 180-mile fourth outer ring on the way. But Houston isn’t just encircled by roads, it’s symbolically, and literally, being choked by cars. It’s consistently ranked as a top city for traffic congestion, ninth-worst for ozone pollution according […]
Curbed December 2017 Dallas is a booming city within a booming region. The epicenter of the Metroplex—a constellation of cities, including Fort Worth, that saw its population grow 35 percent between 2000 and 2014 and added 717,000 jobs—Dallas, and its surrounding cities and suburbs, is swelling with new arrivals from coastal cities and other countries. The region […]
Curbed February 2020 Bernardy and Tiblanche St. Fleur have seen a lot from their perch on Miami’s Second Avenue, where they have run a modest grocery store for the last 25 years. Down the block from the famed Mache Ayisyen, a marketplace in the center of the city’s Little Haiti neighborhood, the couple sells food […]
Curbed February 2020 If you think you have meeting fatigue at the office, try attending a public meeting. Last September in a Brooklyn church basement, a meeting over new bike lanes spiraled out of control when cycling advocate Doug Gordon was shoved by a guest speaker and filmmaker. In October, during a hearing over a proposed homeless shelter in […]
Curbed April 2018 Ask Carlos Morera about succulents and cactuses, and their current dominance of interior design and social media, and he’ll talk to you about the planters at weddings. Morera’s reflections on this particular cultural moment—”everyone’s become a treehugger, or, I guess, a cactushugger”—matter, because many see him as a trendsetter. Along with fellow […]
Curbed New York March 2020 Concerns over contracting or spreading the novel coronavirus have changed how New Yorkers get around—and, according to Uber and Lyft drivers, present serious challenges to their income and livelihood. The ride-hailing industry, which employs roughly 80,000 drivers in New York City, is grappling with how to care for drivers and help […]
Curbed May 2017 It begins with boxes. For most people who order goods from Amazon—with nearly half of U.S. households enrolled in the company’s Prime program, that’s quite a few of us—interactions with the Seattle e-commerce giant start with a search and a click, and end with a delivery. While the ubiquitous company—a retail and shopping juggernaut […]
Curbed San Francisco March 2020 Canceled events, lost work, shuttered stores, empty public spaces, and panic shopping: Life during coronavirus has rapidly, and overwhelmingly, changed. Now San Francisco, which was one of the first cities to declare an emergency over the spread of the disease, and the greater Bay Area have become the first to […]