Browsing Tag
Urban Development
24 posts
How to make our cities greener, healthier, wilder and fairer
By 2050, 68% of the world’s population is expected to live in a city; Rapid urbanization threatens biodiversity,…
Designing For Future Ready Cities
Engineering has always been about building for what lies ahead, creating lasting legacies in the form of extraordinary…
What Sort Of ‘Development’ Has No Place For A Billion Slum Dwellers?
Imagine a community of 200,000. Convivial, walkable, six times the density of Manhattan but with a smaller ecological…
Addis Ababa’s Street Hustlers Helped Build The City – Now They’re Being Pushed Out
The population of Africa is booming, but as long as productivity and employment remain unsteady, “global experts” and…
There Are Dozens Of Ways To Rank Cities. Here’s What They All Get Wrong
Every year, the world’s most “liveable” cities are celebrated, in city rankings published by Mercer, the Economist Intelligence…
How Do We Improve Cities Without Causing Displacement?
As demand for urban living continues to increase, how do we make our cities better without triggering displacement…
The Aim For Cities Of All Sizes To Give Everyone A Fair Go
We live in an urban world. By 2030, 66% of the world’s population will live in cities, concentrated in…
Religious Faith Can Help People To Build Better Cities – Here’s How
Religious faith is deeply ingrained in the way cities look and function. In the past, cities were often…
Robot Cities: Three Urban Prototypes For Future Living
Before I started working on real-world robots, I wrote about their fictional and historical ancestors. This isn’t so…
What Will New Zealand’s New Government Bring For Towns And Cities?
Almost 90% of New Zealand’s population is urbanised. Getting policy right for towns and cities will be crucial…
How To Make Smart Cities Human Again
Huge quantities of networked sensors have appeared in cities across the world in recent years. These include cameras and sensors that count…
Nail Houses, A Pain In China’s Rapid Urbanisation Run
A single house balancing precariously in the middle of a construction site may seem like a doomed and…
Why Culture Should Drive City Planning
In my view, while infrastructure and services are necessary for environmental health, it is culture that provides identity,…
Bringing Back The ‘Seoul’ In Seoul, South Korea
Seoul, capital of South Korea, a modern metropolis. A booming economy with a technologically advanced infrastructure. Skyscrapers abound.…
A Bus For Cars? Hmmm… A Cleaner Future From Ideas Past
First dreamed up in 1969, the bus may help Chinese cities ease traffic and curb air pollution. Car…
Not All Ills Of Urban Consolidation Is As Ugly As Media Reports
Neighbourhoods as “battlefields”, “sardine city”, traditional suburbs as “threatened species” and urban hubs as the domain of “latte-sipping…
Why & How Perth Is Testing If Its Strategy Is Really Working
City planning has many approaches that have been used to enable better economic, social and environmental outcomes. The…
New York City Neighborhood, A Precursor To America’s Urban Future
When you exit the elevated number 7 subway at the 74th Street station in the Jackson Heights section…
An Ethical City : An Idea Whose Time Has Come (Or Has Long Been Delayed)
Globally, there is intense discussion about the future of urban life through the World Urban Campaign. The central…
Why Modern Cities Kills Nightingale’s Song
The Commons apartment building in the inner Melbourne suburb of Brunswick has won swags of awards, including the…
Singapore + Copenhagen = Smart City Fusion
To mark the 50th anniversary of close bilateral ties between Singapore and Denmark, the two countries came together…
How Climate-Smart Cities Could Save The World
Green buildings and better infrastructure would not only spur economic growth but also cut carbon emissions equal to…
How Fast Should Development Cycles Be?
Having lived and worked in both Singapore and London, I’ve experienced first-hand the very different pace of projects…
What’s The Best Way To Plan A City?
A lot of municipalities want to plan for more sustainable urban growth and are applying fairly rigid urban…