Backing onto railway tracks, the brick-lined bar's communal tables are usually lined with plaid-shirted hipsters and diehard ale fans working their way through a menu of around 25 mostly regional microbrews.

BBC: Drinking in Vancouver��s historic Gastown district

In place of the kosher butchers, fish-fryers, boot-makers, furriers and tailors who lined Brick Lane itself a century ago, and the weavers and cheese-makers of Huguenot days, there are now sari centres, halal restaurants and vendors of exotic produce.

ECONOMIST: The many mansions in one east London house of God

The old town of mud-brick houses linked by labyrinthine alleys is disappearing, eaten up by broad avenues lined by high-rise buildings.

ECONOMIST: Xinjiang

Already Tzu-Chi "Big Love" villages are going up - complete with streets paved in terracotta brick and lined with trees and flowers.

CNN: The Human Touch

This classic brick colonial is in a desirable neighborhood on a tree-lined street in Memphis.

FORBES: What's On The Market For $600,000?

Homes with floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights are joining the brick row houses and Victorians that have long lined the city's streets.

WSJ: Washington, D.C.: The New Boomtown