Posts tagged with 'green space'
Walking through Nyandungu Eco-Park in Kigali, Rwanda, it’s difficult to imagine that just a few years ago, industrial machinery and bedraggled grasses stood where lush trees and flowers now grow. Like in many wetlands across the city, the incursion of polluting industry ...
The transformation of Buenos Aires’ Rodrigo Bueno neighborhood over the last decade is remarkable. What was once an informal settlement lacking sewers and clean water is now a thriving, diverse community where residents own their homes. A new street system and electrical ...
As cities try to restore the benefits of natural systems by mimicking how ecosystems function, one option they can use is nature-based solutions (NBS). However, cities often struggle to determine which types of interventions best suit their local context, due ...
In September 2023, a 6.8 magnitude earthquake struck Morocco, killing over 3,000 people and devastating communities and infrastructure across Greater Marrakech. The Marrakech Medina, a United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) World Heritage Site, was hit particularly hard. ...
In a city, a grassy park might be a place to stretch out with a book, an asphalt road your route to work, a building wall a canvas for a mural. But beyond their familiar roles, each of these surfaces ...
In Gauteng Province, the Jukskei River winds its way through the heart of Johannesburg’s inner-city neighborhoods, informal settlements and suburban areas, eventually joining the Crocodile and Limpopo rivers before emptying into the Indian Ocean. One of the biggest waterways in ...
Resilience in cities is often framed around large-scale infrastructure projects and sweeping policy shifts. We see headlines about billion-dollar climate adaptation plans, smart cities leveraging AI for disaster response and ambitious net-zero pledges. But some of the most impactful solutions ...
Despite accounting for less than 3% of global terrestrial area, cities have had an outsized impact on our approach to planetary boundaries, affecting biodiversity and consumption of materials and energy. Studies show that cities have become responsible for 78% of carbon emissions, ...
By midday in Mathare, a densely populated informal settlement in Nairobi, Kenya, the sun beats down on the tight rows of wooden stalls and corrugated metal rooftops. At an elevation of 5,889 feet (1,795 meters), Nairobi has long been known ...
In the heart of Nairobi’s Mathare slums, a quiet but powerful revolution is growing – one plant at a time. Teenage mothers, often marginalized and overlooked, are transforming their lives and their community through urban farming and organizing. Their efforts ...
Sprawl is a known and widespread challenge for rapidly growing cities across the world. Unplanned, inefficient development encroaches on natural resources and ecosystems, often reaching far beyond established transit networks. Residents of sprawling urban areas often face socioeconomic vulnerabilities and ...
Looking at more than 350 urban leaders and experts gathered in Nairobi, Kenya, for the Green & Resilient UrbanShift Africa Forum, Dr. Cromwel Lukorito, Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) Working Group II, issued a simple ...
The way scientists and policymakers measure heat as they seek to combat rising temperatures across the world’s cities requires more nuance than just looking at the daily outdoor temperature. There are a variety of tools that can help show a ...
Imagine stepping into a city where sustainability isn’t just built upwards but also downwards. While cities worldwide grapple with intensifying climate risks—flooding, heatwaves and infrastructure strain—an untapped solution lies right beneath our feet. The underground isn’t just for subways and ...
For the 21 million residents of Lagos, Nigeria, climate change is not a distant concept — it is a current reality. Over the past decade, the city has experienced devastating floods, exacerbated by the loss of over half of its wetlands ...
