Suburbanizing the City & New Bridges, New Destinations

Apparently IKEA (the build-it yourself Sweedish furniture store) is demolishing five historic buildings in Brooklyn to build a parking lot. A lot has been said about the wave of big-box retail on small towns and suburban locales, but these new places are now locating in (or very near) large cities. Allowing these stores to build to the same dimensions as their rural and suburban counterparts clearly disrupts the urban fabric and creates a new, suburban sense of place.

via A Daily Dose of Architecture

(there's more, keep reading...)

Planetizen brought my attention to the "Third Golden Age of Bridges." With new attractive super-structures could these new public works become serious attractors of tourism and economic development? After all, bridges naturally connect important points on either side of an obsticle (river, lake, gorge, etc.) why shouldn't businesses and tourists be attracted to these elegant engineering marvels?

Finally...

An article about SOM's work on the RenCen. Michiganders (and midwesterners) should know that Detroit's most (in)famous building has undergone some major changes.