Tidbits

Yesterday, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg unveiled the five finalist designs for the proposed 2012 Olympic Village, also located in Queens. Finalists are Henning Larsens Tegnestue A/S of Copenhagen, Denmark; Santa Monica, California's Morphosis; Rotterdam, The Netherlands' MVRDV; New York's Smith-Miller Hawkinson Architects and London, England's Zaha Hadid Architects. The NYC2012 web site features a slide show for each design, my at-first-glance favorites being MVRDV's angled, vertical spires and the vertically landscaped design of Henning Larsen. The winning design will be submitted along with New York City's proposal to the International Olympic Committee in November of this year.

And this week's Onion features a piece on urban planner and traffic-flow modulation specialist Bernard Rothstein of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania as he is "stuck in traffic of his own design."