cities

interactive global map below, which contains city-specific highlights from the McKinsey Global Institute’s database of more than 2,600 metropolitan areas around the world. You’ll see why growth strategies focused at the country level may fall short in the future: with new hot spots emerging and household wealth surging in little-known urban centers, companies may have to adopt a much finer-grained approach to tap into the growth that lies ahead.

For Pittsburgh resident Mike Neilson, proprietor of Used to Be a Pizza Hut, the iconic hump-roofed structure brings back happy memories of growing up the 1980s in the suburbs of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. Back then, Pizza Hut pizza was "the de facto standard," he says, to be eaten while playing tabletop Pac Man games. A few years ago, Neilson moved to Pittsburgh, where he works at a company that develops mobile apps. He immediately noticed that when people in his new home gave directions, they often used bygone landmarks to guide the way.

A great real-world version of Bruce Sterling’s “Kiosk” science fiction story from designer Unfold.

Kiosk is a project that explores a near future scenario in which digital fabricators are so ubiquitous, that we see them appear on street corners, just like fast food today is sold in NY style mobile food stalls. A place where you can quickly get a custom made fix for your broken shoe, materialize an illegal download of Starck’s Juicy Salif orange squeezer that you modified for better performance or quickly print out a present for your sisters birthday.

it's increasingly common for a city to have several centres performing different functions.

D'Acci's new model is designed to cope with this increased complexity. His idea is to calculate the benefit of a given location to a resident, taking into account the effect of all the city's various amenities.Having done that, he calculates locations of equal benefit, connecting them with so-called "isobenefit lines".

That gives a simple and immediate visual representation of the structure of the city in terms of the benefits it offers.

These way-finding signs are stamped right into the sidewalk are found in Tampa's Curtis Hixon Park. With all the tourist that visit Orlando it'd be great to see are sidewalks get the same treatment. There could even be a few sponsored ones to help pay for it. Downtown Orlando's could include things like the Amway Center, Lake Eola Park, the History Center, DPAC, the downtown library, Lymmo and SunRail.

The names of streets found in the crosswalks in Orlando is a great start but these way-finding signs would be even more beneficial to visitors.