Travel back in time to New York City

http://www.theguardian.com/cities/2015/may/29/travel-back-in-time-to-new-york-city

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This week’s top city stories from around the web take a look at bike share schemes facing trouble, an addictive interactive mapping project from New York City, and how Beirut is ready to reveal the scars of its war-torn past. We’d love to hear your responses to these stories and any others you’ve read recently, both on Guardian Cities and elsewhere: share your thoughts in the comments below.

Big Apple time capsule

Have you ever wondered what your city street looked like a century ago? Well if you live in New York City, there’s a simple way to find out. Software engineer Dan Vanderkam recently launched OldNYC, a collection of some 40,000 images of the Big Apple dating back to the 1920s and even earlier, each plotted on an interactive map at their point of capture.

The images come from New York Public Library, where Vanderkam has been working with library staff since early 2013. Users of OldNYC click on a point on the map to bring up a list of images showing what was once there. The software engineer told CityLab that he hopes that users will flag up inaccuracies and add their own anecdotes about the snapshots on the map, crowdsourcing personal insight into the city’s history. His only guides were the original typewritten notes on the back of each photograph.

Beirut is ready to embrace its scars

Almost 25 years after the Civil War ended in Lebanon, Beirut’s built environment is still marked by reminders of war. In this NextCity feature, David Lepeska explains how, in the years following the conflict, the government sought to leave the trauma behind: “post-independence history is not taught... textbooks never mention the civil war due to fears of sectarian tensions”, he writes. “The silence shaped Beirut’s built environment as well”.

The piece reveals how, after the government’s raze-and-rebuild ethos demolished as much as 80% of the city’s architectural heritage, Beirut is finally finished hiding its battle wounds and is working to preserve what’s left in a city where the past has been erased.

Berber brutalism

When thinking about brutalist architecture, certain examples might spring to mind – Montreal’s Habitat 67, Marseille’s Cité Radieuse, and the suburbs of Russia’s great cities, perhaps. But in Agadir on Morocco’s southern coast – known for sun, sea and surfing – we find a city that wholeheartedly adopted the teachings of Le Corbusier, after an earthquake in 1960 “stepped on the city and squashed it flat”.

This beautiful photoessay in Brownbook Magazine captures the bright, concrete optimism of a city reconstructing itself in the wake of a disaster, which presented architects and planners with a tabula rasa upon which to experiment.

Bike sharing hits a road-block

Brussels, London, Montreal, Amsterdam, Paris – they’ve all got cycle sharing schemes, but will they last? Vice News reports that soaring costs of running the initiatives are forcing some cities to rethink their programmes. Paris’ Vélib’ system requires €4,000 (£2,800) per bike annually to keep it running, but 60 schemes elsewhere have reportedly been scrapped due to rising costs. In Montreal, a city with over 600km of segregated cycle tracks, the BIXI hire service was saved by the city, who bought the service out after it filed for bankruptcy last year.

But in London, the popularity of the Santander cycle hire scheme – or “Boris Bikes” – continues to grow, with 3,400 new bikes and 300 new docking stations added to the scheme since it launched in July 2010. And slowly but surely, while the city might be a bit behind Montreal’s impressive segregated network, London’s cycling infrastructure is growing by the year, with a the creation of an 18-mile cross-city superhighway currently under construction in the capital.

Design of the year

Earlier this year, Gideon Long visited the Chilean city of Constitución to see how the “dead city” was brought back to life after it was flattened by one of the biggest earthquakes ever recorded. There, Santiago-based firm Elemental collaborated with local businesses, residents and government to develop a “sustainable reconstruction plan” for the devastated costal city.

Following their success in Constitución, Elemental’s latest design for an eco-friendly university building in Santigao has been named the winning project in the London Design Museum’s Designs of the Year Awards.

What do you think of the mapping project? How can cities improve cycle sharing schemes? Share your thoughts in the comments below.