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Austria’s capital Vienna once again defended its position as the city offering the best quality of life in the world, while Iraq’s capital Baghdad remains the worst in an annual survey from consulting firm Mercer.
Mercer’s survey of 231... Read more
Two Purdue University studies show that urbanization changes storm patterns and rainfall amounts, highlighting the need for urban planning and infrastructure design that considers how the landscape will affect the weather.
In two separate papers, teams led by Dev Niyogi, Indiana state climatologist and professor in the departments of Agronomy and Earth, Atmospheric, and Planetary Sciences,... Read more
It has long been known that installing white roofs helps reduce heat buildup in cities. But new research indicates that making surfaces more light-reflecting can have a significant impact on lowering extreme temperatures – not just in cities, but in rural areas as well.
ummers in the city can be extremely hot — several degrees hotter than in the surrounding countryside. But recent research... Read more
rbanisation has been a well-established trend in the 20th and 21st centuries. However, depopulation and deurbanisation in some countries and numerous cities are becoming serious problems for which no good solutions exist at present.
People have steadily moved from rural to urban areas to improve their standard of living as well as quality of life. In 1950, 30% of world population was urban. A... Read more
Cities around the world are increasingly shifting to renewable electricity. More than 80 UK towns and cities have now committed to switching to 100% clean energy by 2050, it was announced last month by the UK100 network of local government leaders. This includes major cities, Manchester, Birmingham, Newcastle and Glasgow, and 16 London boroughs.
Momentum is growing in the US too: 58 cities... Read more
The ‘ignored pollutant’ can cause depression, stress, diabetes and heart attacks. What are cities doing to curb excess noise?
The constant roar of traffic, incessant construction noise, piercing sirens, honking horns, shrieking loudspeakers – noise in cities is clearly a nuisance.
But it’s also a danger. The World Health Organisation (WHO) has described noise pollution as an underestimated threat... Read more
Today, Metropolis brings together the governments of 137 cities and metropolitan areas. However, only 18 of these local authorities are headed by women. This represents less than 15%, when women are 51% of the world population. Even if the numbers in the statistics are the same (1 and 5), their inverted position reflects the inequality in every area of metropolitan life.
Taking into account our... Read more
The Land and Poverty conference will present the latest research and practice on the diversity of reforms, interventions, and innovations in the land sector around the world. The 2018 conference theme will be: Land Governance in an Interconnected World
The conference has become one of the largest international events on land governance, attracting over 1,300 participants in 2017 from governments... Read more
The 9th Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation
Resilient Cities - The Annual Global Forum on Urban Resilience and Adaptation - is the global platform for urban resilience and climate change adaptation, hosted in Bonn, Germany.
Resilient Cities was first launched in 2010 with the goal of connecting local government leaders and climate change adaptation experts to discuss adaptation... Read more
For the first time in our history, we are a majority urban species. It’s a statistic you’ve heard before, I’m sure, but its significance should not be so quickly overlooked.
Until recently, cities were far from the norm. Human populations have generally worked out a balance between their urban center and their complimentary rural hinterland. The denser city was a center for trade, government, and... Read more
An urbanization that fails to produce just job opportunities will have far-reaching consequences.
Cities are seen as beacons of prosperity the world over. Ironically, the same year that the global economy sunk into a deep recession, humanity at large became majority urban. As of 2008, over 50 per cent (link) of the world’s population was living in cities. The trend is far from its peak: The... Read more