Art

Metropolis II, on display now at the LA County Museum of Art, features a futuristic model of Los Angeles in which cars and trains zip around super-efficiently (and, reportedly, loudly).

San Francisco's Coit Tower is one of the city's historic and iconic buildings, and it's also home to a collection of historic fresco paintings of Depression-era California. But the building and its paintings are falling apart.

Elizabeth Currid-Halkett examins the viability of arts driven urban revitalization and finds that the strongest predictor of success is the nature of the art being produced and exhibited in the neighborhood.

Mera Rubell, one of America's premier art collectors, explains to Richard Florida why she loves collecting her art in Miami, and which is the best American City for artists.

Google Maps searches include a pinpoint of what the search engine has determined are the centers of cities. One artist has built sculptures of those pinpoints in their real-life locations.

A recent art project in Peru utilizes a robotic vehicle to trace a scale outline of a city into the empty desert, raising questions about urbanization in deserts and the formation of cities.

The photographic distortions of architect and photographer Murat Germen take cities as their target, and transform them into single-axis representations of urban form and history.

Candy Chang is using public art installations to spark community involvement and input on land use.

Community gardens are popping up all over Detroit. This post from Model D takes a tour through three of them, and explores how they balance art and nature.

Public art plays a role in cities across the world. But what role exactly, and for what purpose? Glass House Conversations explores these questions in this series.

A variety of unsanctioned urban art projects are scattered throughout Toronto, bringing life and energy to otherwise underused spaces.

A recent bid to lease the land that houses Spiral Jetty, the iconic piece of landscape art by Robert Smithson, has raised questions about whether art on land can be owned and where the line between the two should lie.

This post from The Urbanophile highlights some of the best videos focused on cities.

The legacy of Los Angeles murals has all but left the city, buried under sign ordinances, billboard policy and tagging. Tanner Blackman in the Dept. of City Planning Code Studies Section is working to free up the knot of regulation.

Artist Candy Chang has taken an old building in Fairbanks, Alaska and turned it into a public idea board that asks locals what they think should be done with it.

Photographer Daniel Kariko focuses on issues of land use in sensitive environments. His latest work looks at stalled suburban housing developments in the U.S.

This video from Public Architecture looks at three outdoor lighting displays and their impact on the public realm in San Francisco.

This essay from Pop Matters explores the connection between street art and urbanism.

Through a rule that allows landlords to financially benefit from allowing charities and non-profits to use their spaces, empty office buildings in the UK are being utilized by groups for a variety of projects, including an art exhibition.

In an effort to encourage thinking about the future of the city, a new group of urban planners/artists has created a series of posters depicting imagined urban developments in New Orleans and posted them around town.