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Posted on Tuesday, July 4th, 2017
Nick Michell spoke to Mercedes Vidal Lago, Councillor for Mobility in Barcelona, about the city’s plans to reduce car journeys and encourage increased walking and cycling How much of a problem is air pollution in Barcelona in relation to... Read more
Nick Michell spoke to Mercedes Vidal Lago, Councillor for Mobility in Barcelona, about the city’s plans to reduce car journeys and encourage increased walking and cycling How much of a problem is air pollution in Barcelona in relation to motorised-vehicles? Today Barcelona clearly exceeds the thresholds recommended by the World Health Organization both for nitrogen dioxide and particles, especially in terms of average levels of these pollutants in the atmosphere. Air pollution not only causes more than 650 premature deaths annually in Barcelona, but also represents the deterioration in the... Read more
WASHINGTON, D. C.— As President Donald Trump this spring moved toward a decision to withdraw the United States from the Paris climate agreement, the mayor of the U. S. capital city made her own announcement: She would seek to earmark millions of city dollars to lend to developers and others who want to bolster building efficiency, invest in renewable energy and undertake other ways to reduce carbon emissions. In so doing, Washington Mayor Muriel Bowser was proposing to create the country’s first city-led “green bank” — a fast-growing strategy for using public money to reduce risk for private... Read more
Jonathan Andrews spoke to Devin de Vries, Co Founder, WhereIsMyTransport, one of the Global Urban Innovators during the New Cities Summit What are the basic concepts and who is it aimed at? While open, real-time public transport data is the norm in many cities, this is not the case in emerging cities. Typically, a range of modes–from informally run minibus taxis to formally run rail networks–coexist, but without a shared place for network information. This makes things like journey planning, or system oversight, difficult. At WhereIsMyTransport we connect, digitalise, and map transport... Read more
Last week, the United Nations wrapped up its first-ever Ocean Conference with a global call to action. From plastics to overfishing, nations pledged to do their part to deliver a global goal to protect life under water — one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals that went into effect last year. Cities were not mentioned in the ocean manifesto. That’s despite the fact that nearly 40 percent of the world’s population lives within 100 km of a coastline — and the majority of those people live in urban areas. For Asad Mohammed, an urban planner who directs the Caribbean Network for Urban and... Read more
Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo was once a labour inspector and upon taking office in 2014, insisted housing was her “absolute priority”. But it’s another issue — climate change — that has since become her signature. From instituting popular car-free days to hosting over a thousand local leaders during a major United Nations climate conference, the Spanish-born Hidalgo, who became a French citizen as a teenager, has become one of the world’s de facto leaders on climate issues. That’s thanks in no small part to the international accord that bears her city’s name, the Paris Agreement on climate... Read more
The passing last month of visionary thinker Dr. Benjamin Barber occurred during a difficult stretch for democracy, the topic that animated Barber the most during his long career. A passionate advocate for democracy, Barber devoted his life to empowering citizens for democratic self-governance. He was convinced that it offered the best possible form of government for societies and the world. Globalization and Urbanization It was in this spirit that Barber wrestled with the democratic implications of two of the defining phenomena of our times: globalization and urbanization. Jihad vs. McWorld... Read more
If the world’s cities are truly going to embark on a more sustainable path, they’re going to need a lot of advice. That’s where the Coalition for Urban Transitions comes in. A new think tank jointly managed by the World Resources Institute and the C40 Cities Climate Leadership Group, the coalition will draw on academic, NGO and private sector expertise to provide evidence-based guidance on how urban growth can benefit both people and the planet. The coalition is a subset of the New Climate Economy, a similar effort aimed at providing research for countries transitioning into more climate-... Read more
The Center for Real Estate’s Albert Saiz talks about worldwide trends affecting housing, commercial real estate, and investment in the built environment. Around the world, more and more people are moving to cities. The increase in urbanization is paralleled by revolutionary advances in digital technology, innovation in the built environment, and new modes for how real estate is transacted and conducted. This combination has created significant opportunities — as well as challenges — for the global real estate industry. The MIT Center for Real Estate (CRE) will host its annual World Real... Read more
From traffic flows to housing figures, researchers, advocacy groups and city leadership are collecting growing amounts of urban data to better understand the ways in which cities do and don’t work. Making hard data useful and communicating it in a way that makes sense to policymakers and their constituents, however, is a skill in itself. And that skill is a speciality of Jon Schwabish, a senior fellow at Washington-based Urban Institute. Through his work at the institute and his website PolicyViz, Schwabish trains city officials and others in how to better analyze, present and visualize... Read more
Six months have passed since 167 countries adopted the 20-year urbanization strategy known as the New Urban Agenda at last year’s United Nations Habitat III summit in Quito, Ecuador. That the world made it to that milestone is due in no small part to the efforts of Joan Clos, executive director of UN-Habitat, the U. N.’s lead agency on urban issues. The indefatigable former mayor of Barcelona traveled to over 40 countries on the road to Habitat III, drumming up interest and support from heads of state, housing ministers, big-city mayors and civil society activists. Since the summit, Clos has... Read more