Nick Cardoso 🇧🇷🇺🇦🚴

Arquiteto e urbanista

Retwites ≠ validação.

[Alicia, Courtyard Urbanist @UrbanCourtyard]

Remember: "Apartment housing" just means dividing a larger building into many smaller units, allowing more households to share the cost of land, roof, foundation, facade maintenance, building systems, yard, etc.

Apartments can be owned or leased.

Sadly, America has long suffered under the yoke of anti-scientific building regulations that prevent owners from building nice multifamily buildings -- the kind that people might want to buy units in to raise their family.

But it's physically and legally possible to build aspirational family city apartments, with the right code changes.

[Andy Boenau @Boenau]

Redesigning city streets to support human behavior isn't rocket science. But it does take a willingness to challenge the status quo assumptions about public space.

📹 Transport Infrastructure Ireland

[Alicia, Courtyard Urbanist @UrbanCourtyard]

When I was 20, all I wanted was to live in an apartment above a bookstore on a block like this.
What I did not then understand was that this block typology (mixed use, small-scale multifamily) was a stunning triumph of pre-war urbanism.
Only later did I realize how thoroughly such blocks were dismantled by postwar zoning regimes and car-centric planning, which nearly rendered this way of building, and living, extinct.

[News from TransLink @TransLinkNews]

Ever see a bus lane and thought it looked empty? Think again! Each bus lane can move more people per minute faster than a typical lane for cars.

💡 Learn more at https://t.co/DCfO88F37H

[ThinkingWest @thinkingwest]

Build cathedrals, not gambling apps

[Oliver Stuenkel 🇧🇷 @OliverStuenkel]

The thing about the Brazilian payment system Pix is that it’s superior to US alternatives and Brazilians know it. Attacking it thus makes the US look like a bad loser. Pix succeeded because it’s better, not because of unfair trade practices.

[Dariusz @DariuszAntyB1]

Wystarczy rozumieć i uczyć się od mądrzejszych.
Holandia. 🚴‍♂️

[ThinkingWest @thinkingwest]

Cologne Cathedral took 25 generations to finally complete.

We think in terms of quarterly profits today, but the men who built this were thinking in terms of eternal reward.

[DaVinci @BiancoDavinci]

Let's increase tree cover in our cities.

[Earth @earthcurated]

Cities are finally realizing that human infrastructure can pull double duty to save the planet.

In Utrecht, Netherlands, over 300 bus stops have been completely transformed into "bee stops" featuring green roofs planted with native sedum wildflowers.

These miniature urban oases capture rainwater, absorb fine dust, cool down the pavement during heatwaves, and provide essential pit stops for endangered pollinators navigating the concrete city maze.

The best part? It's paid for entirely by the city's standard transit budget.

[The Cultural Tutor @culturaltutor]

I’m making a show about buildings.

The concept is simple: do for the man-made world what Planet Earth did for the natural world.

But, when I pitched the idea, the answer was that nobody would watch it.

So I released a pilot episode on YouTube. It’s got 5.4 million views, 379k likes, and 23k comments.

People are interested, and now it’s time to make the full show.

Six episodes, filming in the UK, France, Belgium, Germany, Italy, and the USA, and releasing on a streaming service like HBO, Netflix, or Prime.

Why does this show matter?

First: we’re surrounded by buildings all the time. Look around yourself, right now… what do you see? Buildings are the logical conclusion of everything a society believes in. That’s the real focus of this show: not the buildings themselves, but what they say about us.

Second: there’s global dissatisfaction with modern architecture. This feeling gets written about online, but nobody’s given a voice to it on film or TV. That’s what this show will be. But this isn’t just about criticising modernity. That’s easy. This is about learning from the past in order to understand and improve the present, for everybody.

Third: there’s a drought of high-quality culture shows. When I spoke to film executives they said that only documentaries about sports, music, or true crime get funded. That’s a colossal missed opportunity. Galleries are always full, content about architecture goes viral online all the time, and people spend their precious holidays visiting beautiful cities.

Why no shows about architecture, then?

Tourists flock in their millions to see (for example) the buildings of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona. But, if you asked those same people if they’re interested in “architecture”, they’d probably say no.

To put that another way: not many people want to watch “a show about architecture”, but lots of people want to watch a show that illuminates the real world they’re living in, each and every day.

What will the show be like?

Six episodes, going chronologically through history and arriving at the present, each focussing on the architecture and design of a specific period:

1. Middle Ages
2. Renaissance
3. Enlightenment
4. The Nineteenth Century
5. Art Nouveau & Art Deco
6. Present Day

But, in each case, the point isn’t just to learn about that era; the point is to learn about our modern world through those eras and what they’ve left behind. If you watch the pilot episode (included below) you’ll see what I mean.

So the show’s not really “about” the past; it’s about the twenty-first century.

That’s why it’s called The Modern World.

When you think of a typical history show there are loads of interviews, stock footage, archive photos, historical recreations, and graphics. We’re doing none of that. Everything will be filmed on location, because we’re telling our story only through the real world that exists right now. And, rather than going to the most obvious places, we’ll focus on buildings that aren’t well-known but should be more famous.

But that’s all big picture; what will it be like on screen?

Buildings used to look different in every country, and now they look the same. Why? Because the weather is different everywhere, and buildings were always a way of dealing with that weather, using local materials. Now we have air conditioning and we ship concrete around the world, so we don’t need to design our buildings with regard to local weather or rely on local materials.

Look at really old clocks and you’ll notice something: they don’t have a second hand… because it was only invented 300 years ago! Then you look at the present and you realise we’re surrounded by timers, by seconds ticking down and ticking up relentlessly. If we’re looking for a cause of our anxiety-inducing culture, that might be it.

When you spend time with the sun-softened bricks and time-warped timbers of old cities you notice that synthetic materials like plastic have taken over. When we’re surrounded by things that feel temporary, how do you think it makes us feel?

It’s only by seeing 19th century train stations, designed like cathedrals, that you realise tradition and technology aren’t enemies. New things don’t have to look boring: if the Victorians had designed AI data centres, they’d look like Medieval castles.

In the 1920s, at the zenith of Art Deco, people believed technology would uplift humanity. That’s why they decorated their buildings with statues inspired by electricity. Only by seeing their enthusiasm can we realise our own cynicism, and perhaps begin to fix it.

All of that… and much, much more.

But, above all else, this show is about a way of seeing. If you want to understand any society then you need to look at what it creates, not what it says about itself.

There’s a worldview in every single object; our skyscrapers are designed the same way as our phones. Learn to look at this world, to notice its details, and everything else starts to make sense.

What now?

I’ve been quiet online recently because I’ve been researching and working on scripts for six full-length episodes. Production begins when we’ve raised the funding.

The Modern World is coming.

[Libertario 🟨⬛ @QuotesforGoal]

"Yo no escucho lo que dice la gente, solo observo lo que hacen. El comportamiento nunca miente"

Winston Churchill

[Alicia, Courtyard Urbanist @UrbanCourtyard]

-Lack of continuous perimeter wall degrades public street edge
-not enough density to support businesses and schools in age of e-commerce and low fertility
-fragmented green area doesn’t meet needs for yard

Generally there’s a lack of good separation of public and private realm, something that American cities have always struggled with

For me, being American means free and energetic pursuit of our goals, and this means freedom to take good planning and designs from other cultures when they suit our needs, and to make them better

[FINMAN @erikfinman]

This is the most aesthetic and walkable small town in America - Jim Thorpe, Pennsylvania.

It’s illegal to build this in our country today.

[Ray Dalio @RayDalio]

For me, who graduated from LIU 55 years ago, to pass along what I’ve learned over those 55 years to the graduating class of 2026 was a déjà vu joy.

If you want to learn in 15 minutes the most important things I’ve learned in the last 55 years, you can read my commencement speech here.

[Felipe Moura Brasil @FMouraBrasil]

O filme de ficção sobre um político que tentou combater o sistema, mas foi retaliado por ele, obviamente, nada tem a ver com a trajetória de Jair Bolsonaro.

O Bolsonaro real, quando veio à tona o funcionalismo fantasma da família, amarelou para o sistema e se aliou a ele contra o combate à corrupção e à impunidade de colarinho branco.

A prisão posterior de Bolsonaro, a despeito do juízo que se faça sobre a condução do processo e a pena imposta, nada tem a ver com combater o sistema, mas com atos resultantes de sua dificuldade de reconhecer a derrota eleitoral e sua necessidade de explorar teorias conspiratórias sobre as mesmas urnas eletrônicas pelas quais ele e seus filhos haviam sido eleitos.

O Bolsonaro real é aquele que distribuiu cargos a primo, advogado e aliados de Gilmar Mendes, que apoiou a campanha de seu irmão à Prefeitura de Diamantino, que mandou um filho esquecer qualquer crítica ao decano do STF e outro filho apagar a defesa da prisão em segunda instância em rede social, que abraçou Dias Toffoli em noite de sábado para celebrar a aprovação do apadrinhado de Ciro Nogueira para o STF, e que ainda avalizou que este mesmo Kassio Nunes Marques votasse a favor de Lula em processo da Operação Lava Jato.

Se a família Bolsonaro tivesse combatido o sistema a partir de 2019, recusando escambos e acordões em nome de princípios inegociáveis, não precisaria de uma ficção hollywoodiana bancada por um financiador do próprio sistema, como o “irmão” Daniel Vorcaro, dono do Banco Master, para se promover falseando a história do país. Bastaria a narração, ou o compilado, dos fatos objetivos.

Em certo sentido, no entanto, é preciso reconhecer que o filme sobre o cavalo azarão (de Troia) retrata perfeitamente o bolsonarismo: uma grande enganação, turbinada por outros enganadores.

[Bhaumik Gowande @bhaumikgowande]

You can travel at 5x the speed and a fraction of the cost and laugh at those sitting for 3 hours in traffic exercising what they think is freedom.

[ThinkingWest @thinkingwest]

Another Caesar is coming, and Western civilization is at a turning point, says German historian Oswald Spengler.

He claimed we live in “the most trying times known to history of a great culture."

And there's no offramp.

Here's what Spengler predicted:

[The City Mentor @TheCityMentor]

Great urban spaces are simple

[Alicia, Courtyard Urbanist @UrbanCourtyard]

Excellent question: what do fine-grained and coarse-grained mean in the context of an urban street or block?

they refer to parcel size.

The best urban neighborhoods (the places that tend to hold value over long periods of time) are usually FINE-grained. They are made up of many medium parcels, often something like 50 feet wide and 100 feet deep. That pattern allows for wide, shallow buildings at the front of the lot, rear yards or courtyards behind, and a street made of many individual buildings rather than one giant structure.

Over time, especially with modern construction techniques, zoning, parking requirements, and institutional financing, urban parcels have gotten larger. So we have more coarse-grained cities: fewer parcels, larger buildings, longer facades, fewer owners, and less architectural and economic variety.

That is not always bad. Coarse-grained development makes sense in places where you actually need a large floorplate: a tower on high-demand land, a hospital, a convention center, a university building, a major logistics facility.

But it is a problem when the goal is to create a socially diverse, complete life cycle NEIGHBORHOOD.

A real neighborhood is NOT made from one enormous building on one enormous parcel. It is made from many buildings, built by different owners over time, with different unit types, different rents, different storefronts, different architectural expressions, and different stages of aging and repair. Fine-grained parcelization is what allows that complexity to emerge.

Generally speaking, fine-grained is good and coarse-grained is bad.