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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
What is a smart city? The answer depends on who you ask. Solutions providers will tell you it’s smart parking, smart lighting or anything to do with technology. City officials may say it’s about conducting city business online, such as searching records or applying for permits. City residents may tell you it’s the ease of getting around, or about crime reduction. Everyone is right. A smart city,... Read more
For women, the phenomena of urbanization and the growth of city slums have unique causes and unique consequences. The reasons why women move into informal settlements and the specific challenges they face once they arrive have been largely unaddressed by academic scholars, policymakers, and others. Data on women and urbanization is limited [8].
The primary “drivers” for women’s migration to the... Read more
Many cities in the U.S. and around the world have started the process of transformation from analog to smart and sustainable. The process tends to start with the implementation of a series of independent infrastructure systems connected to a digitally linked network. Yet, the transformation process for cities is still in its early stages.
Many cities and communities have taken different... Read more
Officials in Ann Arbor, Michigan, have approved plans to move forward with a detailed list of pedestrian safety measures, including establishing Vision Zero funding.
The speed-reduction subcommittee of the city’s Transportation Commission released a set of recommendations last week, MLive reports. The Commission unanimously voted to accept the recommendations, so they’ll be moving to City Council... Read more
There's a global movement to encourage cities to grow more trees and plan more parks. On Wednesday, this year's International Day of Forests encourages urban areas to invest in green spaces.
To get a clearer picture of which cities have the most tree coverage today, MIT's Senseable Lab partnered with the World Economic Forum (WEF) to create Treepedia, a site with interactive maps that show the... Read more
In Cities of Tomorrow, a textbook commonly used to teach the history of urban planning, Peter Hall espoused the contributions of Ebenezer Howard, Le Corbusier, and other heroic male figures of urbanism. As for women, he told the reader: “There were, alas, almost no founding mothers.”
It would be more accurate to say that women are and always have been part of urbanism, but their contributions... Read more
In the Philippines, New Clark City seeks to shake up urban planning by uniting government, business and the public - and proving resilience can be cost-effective
CLARK, Philippines, March 26 (Thomson Reuters Foundation) - He may never set foot in New Clark City, but taxi driver Edgard Labitag hopes the Philippines' first green, disaster-resilient, high-tech metropolis will ease the pressure on... Read more
For a long time, cities have been likened to bodies. Circulation, metabolism, organs, digestion, all have neat parallels. But can a city think? Cognitive functions follow a sequence; raw perception, filtering information, identifying threats and desires, imagining alternate actions, speculating on potential outcomes and mobilizing for action. In the age of big data and cloud computing, the city... Read more
In an increasingly globalised world, cities have to stand out from the competition to be investable and attract investment. A city must differentiate itself by playing to its strengths, and celebrate its differences, in an authentic way. For it is not just the tangible, economic assets of a city that count. The unique qualities of a place that distinguish it from other cities domestically and... Read more
Monaco is the most densely populated country in the world, according to the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs Population Division.
The principality, located on France's Mediterranean coast, measures just 2.02 square kilometres. But despite its tiny size, around 26,000 people are squeezed in per square kilometre. This figure is predicted to rise to more than 27,000 by... Read more