Posts in the 'Urban Development' category
Intersection repair is one common example of tactical urbanism
Friday Fun: How tactical urbanism is shaping cities for people, by people
Like many DIY, post-recession movements that have sprung up in the past few years, tactical urbanism is human-centered and empowering. At its core, it’s about people making the city work for them. Rather than relying on governmental actors, the tactical ...
Let's honor International Women's Day 2015 - #MakeItHappen
Four women leaders ‘making it happen’ for sustainable cities
International Women’s Day is on March 8, 2015, and this year’s theme is “Make It Happen.” Nowhere do women make it happen more than they do in cities. In cities all around the world, women are working to improve the ...
World Bicycle Forum 2015
Six ideas for building cycling culture from the World Bicycle Forum
Last week, over 4,000 people gathered for the fourth World Bicycle Forum. This citizen-driven event was created by bike activists in Porto Alegre, Brazil after a car plowed through a group of bikers at a critical mass event in March ...
Green cities must address garbage and trash with effective waste management strategies
Friday Fun: How to create tomorrow’s green cities with today’s garbage
Cities around the world face many challenges to their cleanliness and environmental sustainability, including rising greenhouse gas emissions, unsanitary public spaces, foul odors, growing energy demand, low recycling rates, and limited space. Most people wouldn’t think of trash as a ...
Lahore's urban roads
Lahore’s roads to nowhere
Lahore, Pakistan is on a dangerous path toward a future of urban highways, underpasses, and flyovers that will eventually suffocate the city. By prioritizing car-centric infrastructure through new development contracts, the city is making traffic congestion, air pollution, and road ...
Open GTFS Visualizations
Mapping the way to safer urban mobility
According to a recent Thomson Reuters Foundation study of the world’s 16 largest metropolitan areas, harassment on public transport is a growing problem for cities worldwide. Nearly 60 percent of the 6,555 women surveyed admitted to having been physically harassed. ...
Downtown in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia
Friday Fun: Addis Ababa on the frontier of sustainable transport for African cities
East Africa doesn’t make a lot of headlines for its sustainable transport achievements. That’s changing, as its cities are starting to pioneer innovative new projects to bring urban Africa into the spotlight for sustainable development. The challenges in the region ...
Energy and sustainable cities are key to India's economic growth
The two things India must get right for its economic future
Taking even a quick look at India’s current pattern of growth, it’s not hard to see both the rising energy insecurity and the stress that cities across the country are experiencing. Congestion, urban sprawl, and poor access to reliable energy ...
Public participation in Belo Horizonte
Empowering citizens to shape their city: Brazil’s new approach to public participation
Citizen participation is a critical—and often overlooked—aspect of successful urban planning. For public policies and services to actually have a positive impact on people’s daily lives, city leaders need to have a clear picture of the particular needs of the ...
Making public transport work for women in India
Why public transport needs to work for women, too
Men and women use public transport in different ways because of their distinct social roles and economic activities. Since women’s reasons for traveling generally differ from men’s, the purpose, frequency, and distance of their trips are also different. Additionally, safety ...
Transforming Transport 2015 sustainable transport Hong Kong
Transforming Transportation 2015: Turning momentum into action
What will the city of the future look like? How can we unlock the potential of urbanization to create safe, accessible and prosperous societies? At Transforming Transportation 2015 – the annual conference co-organized by the World Resources Institute and the World Bank– we learned about ...
Making safe and accessible BRT stations
How to enable safer access to mass transit in Indian cities
It is increasingly recognized that cities are both powerhouses of economic growth and the primary drivers of economic prosperity, worldwide. This holds true for urban India as well, where exponential growth is expected not only in existing metropolitan areas, but ...
Connection between Medellín's Metrocable and Metroplús rapid transit systems
Mobility solutions for marginalized communities: The urban cable car
Latin America’s rate of urbanization peaked in the 1960s and 1970s, during which the region’s cities saw unprecedented rural to urban migration. In the following decades, violence in many of these population-drained rural areas accelerated the flow of rural migrants ...
2014 Lee Schipper Scholars present at Transforming Transportation
People-oriented streets and the built environment: Lee Schipper Memorial Scholars present at Transforming Transportation 2015
Last week’s Transforming Transportation conference put forth multiple innovative ideas for how cities can transform mobility to become more socially, environmentally, and economically sustainable. Speakers included former heads of state like Mexico’s Felipe Calderón, road safety champions like former New ...
Mexico City's Metrobús BRT system. Photo by Taís Policanti/EMBARQ Mexico.
Who needs cars? Smart mobility can make cities sustainable
This article was originally published on January 15, 2015 by the Thomson Reuters Foundation.  Last year marked an important tipping point: for the first time, half of the global population lives in cities. Cities currently add 1.4 million people each ...
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