MONICA KHEMSUROV

‘If you think big,’’ says the tag line for the 1,000-acre Baha Mar resort about to break ground in the Bahamas, ‘‘think bigger.’’ Sound ridiculous in a recession? It’s more of a harbinger than you’d imagine, at least in the travel world: led by Las Vegas’s CityCenter and the Marina Bay Sands Singapore, a new wave of mega-scale complexes that were conceived during the boom have recently opened their doors, with several more in development, from the Alps to Abu Dhabi. ‘‘I think it’s the future,’’ says Andy Cohen, executive director of the architecture firm Gensler, which worked on CityCenter and has a similar mixed-use project brewing in Shanghai. ‘‘Whether it’s sports, entertainment or retail, the ability to have all that variety in one place is key. People want choice.’’ Continue reading →

When David Lynch and Frank Gehry made headlines last year for their involvement in two multimillion-dollar cultural centers in the economically downtrodden city of Lodz, Poland, confusion ran high. What could they possibly see in the so-called Manchester of Poland? In fact, Lodz is undergoing something of a creative rebirth. The city has begun turning its 19th-century textile buildings into new-economy hubs — a case in point is the Manufaktura complex (Ogrodowa Street), home to a museum and the city’s first upscale design hotel, Andel’s. Lodz is also financing cultural festivals and programs aimed at retaining local art school grads, and once a planned high-speed rail slashes the Warsaw commute to 35 minutes, they’ll have one more reason to stay put.
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