Posts in the 'Guest Contributor' category
Can Europe’s Climate City Contracts Shake Up Urban Climate Action?
Can Europe’s Climate City Contracts Shake Up Urban Climate Action?
Think big. Think bold. Think mission to the moon! That’s the goal of the European Commission’s EU Mission program, which aims to package together funding, research and policy changes to deliver “concrete results” on ambitious goals by 2030. These goals ...
Financing Urban Transformation: Don’t Leave It Up to Cities Alone
Financing Urban Transformation: Don’t Leave It Up to Cities Alone
To achieve more equitable, resilient, low-carbon societies, cities need big changes to critical infrastructure and systems. But ample research shows they can’t raise the investment needed for those big changes on their own. Municipalities depend on higher levels of government ...
How Are New Informal Transit Routes Formed?
How Are New Informal Transit Routes Formed?
In 2015, the chairman of a Kampala administrative zone about 10 kilometers (6 miles) from the city’s downtown addressed a hand-written note to the chairman of a minibus taxi association. He humbly requested the group of drivers expand its services ...
Rethinking Urban Climate Research in the Shadow of Climate Breakdown
Rethinking Urban Climate Research in the Shadow of Climate Breakdown
The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), composed of hundreds of the world’s leading scientists, puts considerable weight on urban climate action in developing pathways towards sustainable futures. The 6th Assessment Report of the IPCC recognizes that urban areas present ...
Putting People at the Heart of Integrated Climate Action: Report From the 2022 ICLEI World Congress
Putting People at the Heart of Integrated Climate Action: Report From the 2022 ICLEI World Congress
ICLEI has long recommended that cities take integrated climate action, tackling both mitigation – lowering greenhouse gas emissions to prevent future climate change – and adaptation – preparing to cope with the climate change of today – in a holistic ...
Curitiba Is Evolving But Remains a Model for Urban Sustainability
Curitiba Is Evolving But Remains a Model for Urban Sustainability
I recently had the pleasure of re-visiting Curitiba, Brazil, thanks to an invitation from the Smart Cities Expo. I made my first pilgrimage in 2000, when Bogotá was implementing its bus rapid transit system, Transmilenio, and returned twice after that. ...
Data As a Force to Shape Future Urban Mobility
Data As a Force to Shape Future Urban Mobility
The sheer volume of data collected globally has grown exponentially. But particularly in developing and emerging countries, major gaps in availability, quality and usability of data lead to a lack of significant resources necessary to face complex urban challenges. The ...
3 Ways Countries Are Expanding Electric Mobility Access
3 Ways Countries Are Expanding Electric Mobility Access
As the pandemic has changed the way we get around and purchase goods, the world is considering how to make transport more efficient and sustainable. We’ve seen increasing efforts to expand electric mobility, as governments formulate policies to stimulate adoption ...
What Are We Learning About Urban Wellbeing During COVID-19?
What Are We Learning About Urban Wellbeing During COVID-19?
In recent years, many cities have launched new efforts to build healthier urban environments – happier, safer and cleaner places to work and play. Then, of course, the COVID-19 pandemic changed everything. But in many ways, it laid bare the ...
To Combat Climate Change, Electrification Needs Compact Cities for Full Impact
To Combat Climate Change, Electrification Needs Compact Cities for Full Impact
This year, reports have indicated that to keep temperatures from rising more than 1.5°C, there must be a major drop in greenhouse gas emissions. The transportation sector is the fastest growing contributor of greenhouse gas emissions (GHG) and must be drastically transformed ...
How Germany Is Working to Translate the Benefits of Active Mobility into Meaningful Action
How Germany Is Working to Translate the Benefits of Active Mobility into Meaningful Action
Electric vehicles may own the headlines, but our feet remain the most environmentally friendly means of travel, closely followed by bicycles, skateboards, scooters, tricycles and other active, non-motorized modes. Not only does zero-emission active mobility help protect the climate and ...
What We Can Learn About Climate Action from British Cities
What We Can Learn About Climate Action from British Cities
As COP26 is in full swing in Glasgow, countries worldwide have failed to reduce emissions in line with the Paris Agreement targets to limit global warming to 1.5°C. But cities are a bright spot. Many have developed climate action plans ...
Daring Cities 2021: Going from Ambitious Climate Goals to Impactful, On-the-Ground Solutions
Daring Cities 2021: Going from Ambitious Climate Goals to Impactful, On-the-Ground Solutions
The need to set aggressive goals, backed by meaningful numbers, is an obvious starting point in the fight against climate change. It’s common knowledge that if global warming exceeds 1.5C, we face the prospect of everything from increasingly extreme weather ...
Creating the Future of Cities with Regenerative Placemaking
Creating the Future of Cities with Regenerative Placemaking
This past year has been one of deep transformation, as we continue to live through one of the most influential events in human history. Amid the global pandemic, the social and racial inequality gap continues to widen. And the world’s ...
How Cities Can Rethink Housing After COVID-19
How Cities Can Rethink Housing After COVID-19
When the world shut down last March, the urban housing conversation took on a radically different hue. Suddenly, housing was a public health concern – which, of course, it always had been. Where you live, and under what conditions, appeared ...
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