The WRI Ross Center for Sustainable Cities’ Sustainable and Livable Cities Initiative supports key leaders in China, India and Brazil in improving urban quality of life and environmental sustainability. WRI’s blog series on the Initiative will highlight some of the ...
The New Urban Agenda – a vision of inclusive, resilient, sustainable cities where everyone has access to resources and economic opportunity – will be center stage next month at the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements, known as Habitat III. ...
Nossa Cidade (“Our City”), from TheCityFix Brasil, explores critical questions for building more sustainable cities. Leaning on the expertise of specialists at WRI Brasil Sustainable Cities, the series features in depth articles on urban planning, sustainable mobility, resilience, road ...
Last week, the final draft of the New Urban Agenda (NUA)—the document at the center of Habitat III in Quito next month—was released. After an unexpected stalemate at the Preparatory Committee in Surabaya in July, Habitat III negotiators convened this ...
The future is here, or it is very close: Uber announced “driverless” car services in downtown Pittsburgh; nuTonomy, a MIT spin-off technology company, just started commercial trials of autonomous taxis in Singapore. These developments come way before car manufacturers and ...
The Summer Olympics are the largest sporting event, with 205 participating nations and billions of television viewers around the world. From the 1996 Games in Atlanta to the 2008 Games in Beijing, the Olympic TV audience grew from 3.2 to ...
The Olympics have given us the opportunity to meet the wonderful city of Rio de Janeiro. The landscape of Guanabara Bay, the famous beaches, Sugarloaf Mountain, Lagoa and the tropical forest are so beautiful, it feels natural that the Portuguese ...
The Summer Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, the first South American city to host the modern games, famously faced challenges in the run-up to the event – from construction delays to a polluted venue to worries about the Zika virus ...
Mexico is an eminently urban country. 78 percent of the Mexican population lives in an urban locality of more than 2,500 inhabitants, and 63 percent live in urban centers with more than 15,000 inhabitants. Urban development should be a priority ...
A video went viral earlier this month in Mexico. Ari Santillan, urban activist and contributor to TheCityFix Mexico, was biking home after work on a dedicated bus-bike lane in Mexico City when a car, driving illegally in the lane, started ...
Urban efficiency is all about linking the potential of buildings, energy and infrastructure to create smarter, more sustainable cities. But what does success look like, and how do cities get there? This past June, 34 city mayors, sustainability directors and ...
In the past few years, large commercial building owners and managers have expressed growing interest in using behavioral strategies to improve their buildings’ performance. That interest often takes the form of “occupant engagement,” whereby tenants are encouraged to adjust their ...
On July 25, over 4,000 participants and negotiators from 142 countries came together for Habitat III’s Preparatory Committee Meeting in Surabaya, Indonesia. The purpose of the meeting was to finalize the New Urban Agenda (NUA)—a vision for the cities of ...
Facing environmental vulnerabilities like increasingly high temperatures, more frequent storm surges and a rising sea level, small island states have long been on the front lines of the fight against climate change. This existential threat has made some of the ...
Every year, approximately 1.25 million people die in road traffic crashes. In 2015, India recorded 146,133 road traffic fatalities, which means that the country accounts for over 11 percent of the global numbers. While India is home to roughly two percent of ...
