Posts in the 'Good Governance' category
Over the past 50 years, transport planners have tended to focus on reducing congestion to improve people’s mobility within cities. But increasing road capacity, vehicle speeds and parking spaces have not solved urban traffic. Building more roads and parking just ...
India’s parliament approved the Motor Vehicles Amendment Bill on July 31, 2019, the result of a five-year effort to improve national legislation on road safety. After the president’s approval, India’s streets may finally become safer places for both pedestrians and ...
A couple of Sundays back, Haryana observed the first state-level Raahgiri in India. Chief Minister Manohar Lal Khattar personally came to the city of Hisar to participate in its official celebration with full state machinery. This was totally unthinkable when ...
In Mexico City, someone living in one of the wealthiest neighborhoods has 28 times better access to jobs in a 30-minute trip by public transit and walking than someone living in the poorest areas. Twenty-eight times. And this says nothing ...
The emergence of the Green New Deal has inspired unprecedented activism and lively debate about the future of climate action in Congress and the relationship between climate policy and a broader economic and social equity agenda. So far, it’s only been talk, since ...
Sustainable economic development in sub-Saharan Africa will only be possible if towns and cities across the region thrive. This column highlights the critical role that national governments need to play in guiding the urban transition. National Urban Policies can help ...
In July last year, Nitin Gadkari, India’s minister for road transport and highways, informed parliament that the country loses over 150,000 lives to road traffic accidents every year. More damningly, the country has only about 2 percent of the world’s motor vehicles ...
Community participation has become a checklist item for any major urban development project. But what does community participation actually mean? What would it look like if we flipped the responsibility of engagement from citizens to designers? What if, instead of ...
Thousands of cities have committed to act on climate change, but few have yet turned their goals into tangible results. One of the important items that can help them begin is data from national governments. Establishing an “emissions inventory,” measuring how much greenhouse ...
More and more, cities are acting independently of – or even in direct opposition to – their national governments. This trend is seen, for example, in the group of American “Climate Mayors” that remain committed to the Paris Agreement even ...
While there is growing global interest in smart city applications, there are also significant challenges in scaling implementation and impact. Building on the success of its annual Energy Efficiency Indicator study, Johnson Controls recently conducted its first Smart City Indicator ...
There were 663 million people without access to safe drinking water in 2015, according to the United Nations and World Health Organization. Many of those going without are from low-income households in cities across the global south. Jenna Davis, associate professor ...
For some time now, there has been an ongoing tussle between the Government of Delhi and the National Ministry of Housing and Urban Affairs about increasing fares for the Delhi metro. Under the existing law, a fare fixation committee reviews ...
Ultimately, the work on climate change is done on the ground and is up to each of us. That is why America’s Pledge on climate is so important, as former U.S. President Barack Obama told city leaders in Chicago last week at the inaugural Global ...
An Open Letter to the World’s Mayors: Welcome to Chicago! As you gather this week at a major climate summit, I hope you will make the most of your time in one of the world’s best food cities. Try the ...
