Bloomberg CityLab

We explore the design history of London's "two-up, two-down" row house.

Vietnam’s traditional “tube-houses” combine living and retail space, though new developments are replacing many.

Please stop using the word 'Rococo" when you just mean gaudy, people. Given the current global hellscape, writing about the issues with Trump's interior design risks seeming super-trivial. What provoked me to write this piece nonetheless was actually something else - I am bothered by the constant use of the word "rococo" to describe the Oval Office's new knick-knacks. While I would probably never have a gilt shell-crusted mirror in my house or a god painted on my ceiling, the Rococo is actually one of my favourite styles - in music and painting as well as applied art. It seems incredible that people living in an age where 50 was old, fleas were standard and the flush toilet hadn't been invented still created such sophisticated, profound art. Maybe it was the gap between rococo's frills and pleasure-seeking and the grim reality of 18th century life, even for the wealthy, that gave the style its melancholy. Anyway, it has nothing to do with Trump's interior tastes which, as this piece explains, are really inspired by the American Gilded Age https://lnkd.in/enqybctA

'Free buses' is easier said than done.

Some environmentalists applaud Governor Gavin Newsom’s move to roll back anti-pollution laws for housing and advanced manufacturing. Others are horrified.

Zohran Mamdani has promised free buses as part of his ambitious campaign to make NYC more affordable. But that could come with transit trade-offs.

“Born frees” were supposed to be the first generation of South Africans to access homeownership without restrictions. But new obstacles stand in the way.

The US president’s taste for gilded decor is often dismissed with comparisons to an ornate European style of the 18th century. But the real Rococo deserves better, writes Feargus O'Sullivan.

America has a hot garbage problem.

Massachusetts will shift responsibility for paying for brokers to the person who hired them — in most cases the landlord