Posts tagged with 'Asia'
James Fallows of the Atlantic recently blogged about “today’s enormous, expanding Chinese cities,” comparing the more intimate architecture of Shanghai to the sprawling concrete slabs in Beijing. “This is not a ‘which do you like better?’ discussion,” he emphasizes. Rather ...
“Most global cities aren’t the dirtiest cities,” according to Foreign Policy magazine. “In fact, some of the biggest, most integrated cities are some of the cleanest urban areas on the planet.” The conclusions are part of the publication’s Global Cities ...
Beijing is prepared to pay up to 1 billion yuan (about $146 million) in subsidies to get citizens to ditch their dirty cars and purchase cleaner ones. (Read Laura Root’s recent post about the pros and cons of these types ...
Previously, the Beijing skyline took the international spotlight during the Olympics as air pollution threatened athletes and cast a gray haze over the city. Now the Beijing government is designing a policy that would reward driver’s for purchasing cleaner cars. ...
Electric railway system in Bangkok. Photo by SpAvAAi. Lew Fulton of the International Energy Agency made a very compelling presentation at the most recent BAQ Asia Conference. Here are some of the most important messages from his data-intensive presentation: Asian ...
Beijing Traffic. Photo by Proggie Listening to NPR last night, I was caught by surprise by a story describing the unexpected popularity of the temporary traffic restrictions Beijing implemented during the Olympics. Conventional wisdom holds that citizens usually view such ...
Photo by Alexandra Moss. Once known as the world’s ‘bicycle kingdom,’ China has experienced rapid urbanization leading some to declare the beginning of the end for China’s bikes. While it’s true that from 1995 to 2005, China’s bike fleet declined ...
The term “Butterfly effect” was coined by Edward Lorenz based on the theory that a single flap of a butterfly’s wings in one part of world could set off a tornado in another part of world. The concept – which ...
I haven’t had a chance to see this elegantly shot film, but I still thought it would be appropriate for me to share it with you. Click here to view the film makers site. And click here for AO Scott’s ...
Photo by James Cridland. In ancient Indian and Chinese texts, writers noted that the ultimate form of torture involved subjecting captives to loud and horrible noises. It’s an interesting paradox that we now live in the modern world as free ...
60 Kilos from CHINTAN on Vimeo. In a recent post here on thecityfix.com, Sudhir Gota documented the plight of ‘Transport Challenged People’ in Bangalore, India. In his piece, Sudhir explains how Indian transportation policy’s often myopic focus on car infrastructure ...
Here two-wheelers invade a footpath. All photos by Sudhir Gota, SECON Pvt Ltd. Krishnappa is a security guard for a multinational software firm in Bangalore who, for the past thirty years, has walked and cycled to work. For Krishnappa, the ...
Going nowhere fast in Bangkok. Photo by pchweat. Which city has the world’s worst traffic? It’s a tough question, as cities like Sao Paulo, Cairo, Mumbai, and Los Angeles compete neck and neck for the world’s worst bottlenecks. But Time ...
Photo by Jingye. As car fever strikes Bangalore and other rapidly-expanding cities throughout India, one group stands to lose out big: pedestrians. Yesterday The Times of India ran an important article – No Place for Pedestrians? – which talks about ...
China’s Green Beat, is a neat bilingual blog I stumbled upon the other day, written by John Romankiewicz, an American Fulbright scholar currently living in Beijing, and Zhao Xiangyu, a Chinese citizen from Heilongjiang, a province in the northern part ...
