Tuesday News Roundup

Happy New Year, Broken Sidewalkers! We’re back with another news roundup, but first, congratulations to Veronika, Michael Gardner, and Debra Richards Harlan (via our Facebook page) for correctly identifying our last sidewalk photo as St. Catherine Street looking west from Shelby Street.

Here’s a new photo ready to be identified in the comments below—but there’s a twist to this challenge. Beginning this year, we’re giving away a Broken Sidewalk sewer cover magnet to the first person to correctly identify the view. The official rules: Be sure to include your real email in the comments section so we can get in touch. Only responses left on brokensidewalk.com are eligible. If you won a challenge, you’ll be ineligible for the prize for four months so more people can win, but feel free to guess away. We’ll be switching out the magnet designs every few months to keep the prizes interesting. (Let us know your feedback in the comments below.)

And on with the top urbanism articles of the week:

There is Nothing Natural About Gentrification. Although this piece was published in November, it does a great job exploring what gentrification is, and why the debate has become a web of obfuscation. It’s important to remember this article precedes the recent (and uninspiring) debate about whether entrenched poverty or gentrification is our cities biggest challenge. The New Left Project

The Architecture of Dissent. A great piece about how our cities shape, enhance, or damper our ability to organize and dissent publicly. Aljazeera

What I Want from our Cities in 2015: A Severe Tax on Empty Homes. An intelligent list of urban “wants” by the editors of the Guardian. Pay close attention to number 3, the only way to create permanent affordability in housing. Guardian Cities

The Next UN Conference on Urban Development Will Be Held in Quito, Ecuador. Quito has become the focus of many urbanist collectives and organizations. Can the UN’s Urban Development conference offer anything to the ‘New Urban Question’? Next City

Atlas of Cities—Dissecting the anatomy of cities from around the world. A beautiful new book by Paul Knox dissects the ‘body’ of the city rather than just offering up a series of mapped physical geographies. boingboing

François Schuiten: Imagining the Perfect Cities of Dreams. David Thorpe explores the imaginary urban landscapes of Francois Schuiten, whose stories feature architecture as a driving force and buildings are the characters. Sustainable Cities Collective

Why “smart cities” should be an Internet of People, not Things. “Adam Greenfield proves again that he’s one of the best writers and thinkers on “smart cities,” explaining how the top-down, expensive, tech-centered approach produces unlivable corporate dystopias in which people are just another “thing” to be shuffled around—and showing that there’s an alternative, low-tech, high-touch, human-centered version of the smart city that makes resilient, thriving communities.” boingboing

River map shows which way every river in the US flows. Check out this incredible map which color codes the directionality of rivers in the U.S. inhabitat

Immaculate Ecologies. “This could be the premise of a Hugo Award–winning interplanetary space opera—or it could be the real-life history of the Commercial Pacific Cable Company.” BLDGBLOG

Four Predictions for 2015 City Budgets (Hint: Body Cams Come With a Price Tag). Alexis Stephens lays out here predictions for city budgets in 2015. Next City