English
EspañolNews and Events Latest stories, evidence of impact, media information
Featured
Urbanization is increasing, placing pressure on resources and infrastructure like never before. There’s no stemming the tide, so city leaders need to build resilience in order to cope. Work on a new International Standard for urban resilience... Read more
The world’s largest cities need to invest billions of additional dollars into their infrastructure in order to secure citizen data, new research suggests.
Of the roughly $135 billion expected to be spent globally on cybersecurity for critical city infrastructure in 2024, 44% will be split across data protection provisions for energy, health care, public security, transport, water and waste... Read more
Uruguay is vulnerable to climate change. Its coastline is more than 680 kilometres long and around 70 percent of the population lives near it. And most of the country—93 percent—lives in urban areas.
The country has faced many more frequent and intense floods and droughts over the past decade than in previous years. In 2015 20,000 people were displaced from the Salto, Paysandú and Artigas regions... Read more
Lancaster University in the UK has partnered with Malaysia’s Sunway University to form a Future Cities Research Institute.
Building on existing collaborative efforts between the two universities, the Future Cities Research Institute will direct its research and innovation resources towards developing smart, sustainable city strategies. The institute aims to produce an ‘innovative and agile... Read more
Cities in the Middle East and North Africa are centres of innovation and investment, pivotal to economic growth and development across the region. At the same time, they are vulnerable to severe impact from a range of challenges, shocks and stresses that can be both natural and man-made. The growth of sustainable cities needs to be disaster-proofed.
From emergency planning to infrastructure... Read more
In the week that Kenya announced it had sold its first crude oil consignment, Zimbabwe raised electricity prices threefold in the face of a biting shortage.
Days earlier Rwanda, Tanzania and Burundi had signed commitments for the construction of the 83MW Ruzizi hydropower plant while Nigeria reached agreement with Siemens for the delivery of more than 25,000MW, a third of which is expected on... Read more
The first 228 Kenyans who signed for the government-driven Affordable Housing Programme (AHP) will occupy the houses in October this year.
The units are based in Ngara, Nairobi, and come with two bedrooms.
The initiative, christened Boma Yangu, is under the government’s Big Four Agenda, and aims to facilitate ownership of affordable and decent housing for Kenyans in the low and middle-income... Read more
Virtual reality and scenario-testing models are being built to help urban planners and architects get real-time feedback about the impact of their designs on mental health, particularly for older people.
Europe’s cities are getting greyer. The EU’s 2018 ageing report claims that by 2070, more than half of Europeans will be over the age of 65. Poor health and a limited income mean older... Read more
With smart transportation services to greener buildings, smart cities are quickly revolutionising the way we think about urban living. We examine the top ten smart cities from across the world, according to the IESE Cities in Motion Index.
10 | Amsterdam
Amsterdam was rated the 10th best smart city in the world and the 4th best in Western Europe, according to the IESCE Cities in Motion... Read more
cities across Europe are trialling schemes such as roof gardens and ‘mobile forests’ to embed more nature into urban areas in an effort to protect their citizens from climate change events like heatwaves, floods and droughts.
Cities are becoming harder places to live in as climate change brings higher temperatures, water scarcity and flooding that not only makes already crowded urban... Read more
Feeling unhappy and cranky? The treatment: take a walk under some trees in the park.
That may not be the exact prescription of your doctor, but a first-of-its-kind study shows that visitors to urban parks use happier words and express less negativity on Twitter than they did before their visit—and that their elevated mood lasts, like a glow, for up to four hours afterwards.
The effect is so... Read more