Love the Midwest but miss the ocean? The views and beaches in Chicago's Edgewater neighborhood will make fans of either coast feel at home, especially from the 24th-floor balcony of this Sweet Rental overlooking Hollywood Beach. The unobstructed southeast views include sandy beaches and green parks along the shore of Lake Michigan, Lake Shore Drive and the Chicago skyline in the background.

San Francisco and Detroit may be in full bloom this spring thanks to urban farms. Who are responsible for these urban farm projects? Could urban farms really remake either of these cities?

The cities' housing markets don't have much in common. San Francisco is frequently in the news for high priced homes, while Detroit is getting press over their $1 homes and esoteric structures like two-story beehives.

What both cities share is a renewed interest in urban farming...

What's the one thing - on or off - that immediately telegraphs your design tastes to every visitor in your apartment?

Why, lamps and light fixtures, of course. Whether you crave the unusual or the more mundane, lighting is one of the easiest ways to personalize your rental to your taste. So, consider one of these two lights - one sweet, one sour.

The combination of these unique light fixtures is sure to say you have an appetite for refined culinary design.

Appealing to a generation who built imaginary homes on The Sims instead of playing with dollhouses and are now obsessed with documenting life's moments with a 3.0 megapixel cell phone camera, MyDeco has released an iPhone app that augments the reality of one's living space with fancy digital furniture.

"Furnish Your Photo" -- available for free in the iTunes store -- lets users scroll through over 500 3D models of home decor objects from the stylish-yet-generic to the designer (think Eames loungers, Arco lamps, and B&B Italia modular sofas). Ever wanted to see what your sunroom would look like with a pool table? Curious about how a Chesterfield loveseat might work in an urban loft? Need to find a suitable lamp for that drab kitchen? It's got some kinks, but MyDeco has a lockdown on good, clean digital fun.

The price astounded me. I had to do a double take to ensure it wasn't some misprint of either the size of the place or the price. It wasn't. Indeed this recently remodeled two-bedroom, two-bath apartment in Echo Park is available for $1,195. It's even got marble counter tops. Sweet, right?

New York city's 30,000 doormen and porters are in the midst of negotiating their new union contract this week. Talks resume March 17, and if no agreement is reached, residents in some 3,200 of New York's apartment buildings may find themselves hauling their own dry cleaning and Tibetan delivery up from the lobby.

Jerry Seinfeld once unkindly noted, "you would think if any group of people would not want to demonstrate what life would be like without them it would be doormen," asking "who's gonna walk out next? The guys who clean your windshield at the traffic light, with the dirty rag?"

Seinfeld may underestimate the threat of labor solidarity if the doormen strike and other workers refuse to cross their picket line.

Name, Age, Occupation: Kai-Ming Cha, Old enough to know better, Writer and Manga (Japanese comics) expert

Neighborhood: Upper West Side

Abode: Two-bedroom apartment

How long have you lived there? More than 10 years. I moved here when I was pregnant because I wanted to be in this school district.

What do you love most about your neighborhood? It's so green in this area. Riverside Park is one of Manhattans gems, and its not necessarily a secret anymore, but it's really a nice place because it does attract a lot of nature. We have raccoons up here and I think its a family of hawks that have settled in the park which is cool. Nature in Manhattan!

There is this culture up here that ... if you are East of Broadway you go to Central Park and if you are west of Broadway you go to Riverside Park. It's one of those funny New Yorker-isms. In my neighborhood you see some people and they will only go to one certain park.

Quick, name three things in your local mall. Did you say "farm"? Probably not.

Perhaps you envisioned listless teenagers, stale pretzels or exercise-minded senior citizens - you would not be alone in listing these ho-hum responses. The country is littered with disinterest in dead malls. But don't dismiss the shopping temples of yesterday too quickly. Shopping malls may be on the brink of major reinvention and adaptive reuse...as farms.

The Galleria Mall in Cleveland, Ohio is leading the way by growing organic food for mall patrons and local restaurants.

Future Farmers of America? Meet, Future Farmers of the Mall.

Dozens of New Yorkers had to leave their homes Monday evening after city inspectors discovered that the building they lived in fails to meet with basic fire safety rules.

"They called it a fire trap," said Siobhan Burn, a resident of the building, at 1182 Broadway, who was walking down he street earlier this week.

The 16-story landmark doorman building, close to Manhattan's Garment District, was illegally converted more than a decade ago from offices into 60 apartments. But it seems the landlord, Mocal Enterprises, failed to make the change official with the city. Though the building has been inspected once a year by the Fire Department, it clearly doesn't meet the city's standards for a residential building. For starters, it only has one stairwell and no sprinkler system.

Apartments in this firetrap rented for as much as $3,700 a month for a one-bedroom apartment, according to listings, although the New York Post pegs the rents as high as $5,000.