Sustainable Urban Development
With cities expected to host about 70 percent of the world's population, sustainable urban development is key to making communities worldwide more resilient against the growing threat of climate change. Find out about the latest urban practices from across the world aiming to make our cities more sustainable and inclusive in these good-news stories from The Optimist Daily.
Diesel garbage trucks average 3 miles per gallon. It’s time to go electric
Last month, we featured a story out of New York City where new electric garbage trucks are being tested on the streets of Brooklyn to take the sound and smell of exhaust fumes out of the waste collection equation. The garbage truck in that story was Mack’s LR Electric, a greener take on the truck Read More...
Waymo is now offering the Phoenix public rides in its driverless cars
The Google self-driving project Waymo started testing its driverless technology in the city of Phoenix back in 2017. Now, three years later, Waymo has announced plans to open its fully autonomous cars to the city’s wider population. In a similar style to Uber or Lyft, people can now book a trip Read More...
This study gave homeless people $5,660 each. The results are beautiful
In 2018, a Vancouver-based charitable organization called Foundations for Social Change started a groundbreaking research project that gave cash payments of $7,500 CAD ($5,660 USD) to 50 homeless people. The idea was to check on recipients over the course of a year to see how they were faring. Read More...
This is how climate-resilient neighborhoods might look in the future
Building resilient neighborhoods is key in enabling our growing cities to adapt to the threats of climate change. The Norwegian city of Bergen is well aware of this. That’s why it has recently devised plans to develop a former port area at the edge of the city into a regenerative, zero-emissions Read More...
Tartu transformed its main street into a pedestrian paradise
From Oakland and Seattle to Bogota and York, cities around the world have been showcasing the community-building benefits that come with removing cars from the streets. In another display of car-free living, the Estonian city of Tartu transformed its main street into a pedestrian-friendly paradise Read More...
Park in Copenhagen is designed to stop rainwater from flooding the streets
Following a devastating dose of heavy rain in 2011 that cost Copenhagen $1 billion in damage, the Danish capital decided to begin investing in hundreds of climate-resilient projects that could mitigate the city’s vulnerability to flooding as a result of extreme rainstorms — which are only Read More...
New cement-free sewerage concrete prevents fatbergs and corrosion
The cement used to construct concrete sewerage systems around the world does a mighty job of helping wash away our waste but does have its shortcomings. Scientists in Australia have developed a new cement-free solution they say is better equipped to handle the corrosive nature of these Read More...
How AI and the video game Minecraft can help us design better cities
While artificial intelligence (AI) is nowhere near ready to tackle the complicated task of designing an actual city, it can assist city planners, especially when it comes to the quantitative aspects of urban planning. In order to improve the urban planning abilities of AI, programmers are turning Read More...
Berlin opens giant city-run department store for second-hand goods
City planners around the world should take note of an exciting new development taking place in the German capital of Berlin. As the city looks to cut down on waste, it has opened a state-run department store that sells items that might get thrown away otherwise. Located on the third floor of the Read More...
This building was made partially from its own construction waste
While we’ve seen architects use wasted materials to construct buildings, never have we seen a complex use its own construction waste to build parts of a building. But that’s exactly what’s happened in the North India city of Kishangarh, where an innovative industrial complex has created Read More...