The Optimist View: The Green Divide
"Neither cities nor places in them are unordered, unplanned; the question is only whose order, whose planning, for what purpose?” - Peter Marcuse BY Amelia Buckley If you stand outside in the heat of summer, you’ll notice that things are considerably less comfortable on concrete or Read More...
Rotterdam becomes home to the world’s largest floating office
While Rotterdam is typically known for hosting Europe’s biggest port, the second largest Dutch city is also famous as a forerunning innovator in climate adaptability. This reputation is reflected by (among other things) a floating dairy farm located near the port, as well as by the more recently Read More...
Paris lowers the speed limit on most city streets
Pedestrians and cyclists in Paris are welcoming a new policy that will restrict the speed limit on nearly all streets in the French capital to just 30 kph, down from 50 kph. The law is the latest move by the municipality to advance the city closer to its climate targets and transform people’s Read More...
This new metric assesses road safety before any accidents ever happen
The way urban planners currently assess the safety of a road involves counting the number of accidents on that particular road. Essentially, this means that there’s a "literal human cost" to measuring how safe a street is, says Megan Ryerson, a transportation engineer and urban planner at the Read More...
What this small Dutch city can teach us about smart urban mobility
Urbanists across the world often look to the Netherlands for teachings on how to do urban planning the right way, especially when it comes to mobility. So, it’s no surprise that the authors of a new book called Curbing Traffic: The Human Case for Fewer Cars in Our Lives turn to Dutch cities to Read More...
Campaign to save giant fig tree in Kenya from proposed highway succeeds
The fig tree is considered sacred among Kenya’s most populous ethnic group, the Kikuyu. That’s why it was no surprise to see the Kikuyu people and other environmentalists stage protests when the country’s roads agency announced plans to uproot a giant fig tree in order to make way for a 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...
Public parks are showing their worth amid protests and the pandemic
During this extraordinary time in America’s cities — weeks of coronavirus lockdowns followed by mass protests against police violence and racial inequality — one theme runs through the twinned crises: the power and value of public spaces. The nation’s parks experienced a surge of use during Read More...
Architects design sustainable housing for changing lifestyles post COVID-19
Remote work may become a permanent way of life for many after the coronavirus crisis ends, with some companies already giving their employees the option to work from home forever. In response to how COVID-19 continues to reshape our lives, Paris-based architecture firm Studio BELEM has proposed Read More...
This new office complex is literally the greenest building in Europe
Now more than ever, cities around the world are starting to recognize the importance of green spaces within their urban environments. And in some cities, this sort of development is embodied directly in the buildings themselves. Düsseldorf, for example, has recently unveiled a new office Read More...