Posts tagged with 'quality of life'
Recalibration, Recommitment, Renewal: Top 10 Posts for 2022
Recalibration, Recommitment, Renewal: Top 10 Posts for 2022
Just as cities were hoping to emerge from two years of a pandemic, 2022 provided a new round of disruption, thanks to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and new economic, political and climate disruption. Oh, and COVID-19 is still here.  This ...
Zero-Emission Delivery Zones: A New Way to Cut Traffic, Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases
Zero-Emission Delivery Zones: A New Way to Cut Traffic, Air Pollution and Greenhouse Gases
Urban freight and delivery services boomed during the COVID-19 pandemic as consumers switched to online shopping when businesses were forced to close. The surge in online market activity that began in 2020 builds on a decade of steady growth related to the ...
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 ...
Using Cycling as an Indicator for Urban Quality of Life
Using Cycling as an Indicator for Urban Quality of Life
Metropolitan areas around the world struggle with the same problem: More people means more traffic. If the majority of residents and workers use private vehicles, this leads to more congestion and emissions, more road crashes, lower air quality and therefore ...
New Land Use Mapping Paints a Clearer Picture of Urban Life
New Land Use Mapping Paints a Clearer Picture of Urban Life
Remote sensing has revolutionized how we measure and understand the Earth. We can now track deforestation across the globe, predict end-of-season crop yields and identify wildfires in near real-time. But exploration into its possibilities for urban areas has only just begun. ...
Modernization and Inclusion? Informal and Semiformal Transport in Latin America
Modernization and Inclusion? Informal and Semiformal Transport in Latin America
This blog is also available in Spanish on IADB.org. For most Latin American and Caribbean cities, public transport is the single most important way to access opportunity and essential services for most urban dwellers, from finding a job to education ...
The $250,000 Question: What Does a Transformative Urban Project Look Like?
The $250,000 Question: What Does a Transformative Urban Project Look Like?
The WRI Ross Prize for Cities seeks to answer the question every city wants to know: How do you achieve lasting, large-scale, positive change in your city? This week, applications for the inaugural $250,000 WRI Ross Prize closed and the ...
Public Space in Cities – What’s the Measuring Stick?
Public Space in Cities – What’s the Measuring Stick?
The famed American landscape architect and Central Park designer Fredrick Law Olmsted said that parks are the “lungs of the city.” However, many cities around the world—from growing Addis Ababa to sprawling Mumbai and dense Sao Paulo—currently lack adequate public ...
Streets of Bhubaneswar, India
India's Smart Cities Mission Takes A Forward Step
In the last 15 years of my professional career, many concepts around urban development have come and gone, but none have evoked such an excitement as the Narendra Modi government’s proposed 100 Smart Cities initiative, that has a price tag ...
Picnic Mexico City Public Space
How Public Spaces Make Cities More People-Oriented
Nossa Cidade (“Our City”), from TheCityFix Brasil, explores critical questions for building more sustainable cities. Every month features a new theme. Leaning on the expertise of researchers and specialists in WRI’s sustainable urban mobility team in Brazil, the series will feature in ...
New bike paths in São Paulo
New survey shows increased satisfaction with urban transport in São Paulo
Are you satisfied with the quality of life in your city? In São Paulo, overall perceptions of quality of life increased over the past year for one-third of the population, and remained stable for half according to the city’s Municipal ...
São Paulo's Rua da Consolação is often congested for hours each day, leading residents and city leaders to wonder if other transport modes such as bikes and mass transport can be used to cut down on traffic while increasing sustainable mobility. Photo by Carlos Barretta/Flickr.
Study: São Paulo commuters lose one month per year sitting in traffic
While the idea of ‘free time’ is by nature associated with individual choice and being momentarily ‘free’ from the demands of everyday life, the amount and quality of this time we have at our disposal is closely linked to city-wide ...
Trees bring a multitude of benefits to cities, helping the environment as well as residents' quality of life. Photo by Tristan Higbee/Flickr.
Urban trees boost quality of life for city dwellers around the world
Trees often fade into the background of what people understand as the city, yet they bring immense value – including environmental benefits like filtering water run-off and cleaning the air as well as increasing health and quality of life – ...
Connecting smart cards and mobile phones enables cities to offer more efficient mobility and a safer, quality experience for all transport users. Photo by EMBARQ Brasil/Flickr.
Connecting data and technology for smarter transport systems
Emerging technologies, together with big data, are tools that allow us to better plan our cities and revolutionize the efficiency and quality of our transport systems. We are seeing threads of this already, as millions of people use smart cards ...
Researchers find strong correlations between access to green space and increased levels of physical health and happiness. Photo by Mark Carter/Flickr.
Urban green space makes people happier than money
As much as cities can be drivers of economic and social progress, sometimes it’s downright stressful to live amid the hustle and bustle of today’s urban centers. To escape this stress, many urban residents take refuge in green public spaces, ...
Right Menu Icon