Posts tagged with 'urban planners'
Calculating Climate Behavior Change Wins at Scale: Here’s What Works
Calculating Climate Behavior Change Wins at Scale: Here’s What Works
If you are admitted to a New York City public hospital, the in-patient meal menu might surprise you: It’s filled with items like a veggie pad Thai and a Moroccan vegetable tagine. The options look so tempting you probably wouldn’t ...
African Cities Use Nature to Fight Floods and Climate Change
African Cities Use Nature to Fight Floods and Climate Change
When torrential rains hit Kinshasa in April 2025, the city of 20 million came to a standstill. Floodwaters submerged more than half the city as the Ndjili River and smaller streams overflowed, quickly overwhelming the city’s drainage capacity. Lives were ...
Solving World's Housing Crisis Requires More Than New Construction
Solving World’s Housing Crisis Requires More Than New Construction
There’s a growing housing crisis that’s impossible to ignore. Consider the stats: Nearly 3 billion people lack access to housing that is both safe and connected to basic services like energy, water and sanitation. Around 40% of the world’s population lives in ...
Designing for Instinct: How Streets Shape Behavior
Designing for Instinct: How Streets Shape Behavior
People don’t just use streets; they respond to them. The placement of curbs, alignment of crossings and painted markings directly shape how safely and predictably people move. How people interpret the physical cues received from their environment determines their decisions and movements. ...
Tangible Insights: Planning for Resilience With Physical Maps
Tangible Insights: Planning for Resilience With Physical Maps
In most urban planning meetings, stakeholder engagement begins and ends with presentations. Data is shared, reports are circulated and challenges are discussed. This format often misses fostering the hands-on participation needed to tackle the local realities of climate change.  What ...
Hot in the City. But It Doesn't Have to Be — We Have Answers
Hot in the City. But It Doesn’t Have to Be — We Have Answers
This op-ed was originally published by Context, the media platform of the Thomson Reuters Foundation, on June 16, 2025. Read the original piece here. A new study has found that 4 billion people – half of the world’s population – endured ...
To Meet 2030 Targets, Cities Need Systems Change
To Meet 2030 Targets, Cities Need Systems Change
Cities are not just places where people live—they are interconnected networks of people, services and economic activity. A city is a system of systems, bringing together transportation, energy, buildings, water, waste management and more. Transforming these interconnected systems is vital ...
Building for People: Towards an Equitable Transition in the Built Environment
Building for People: Towards an Equitable Transition in the Built Environment
The built environment is not on track globally to achieve its sectoral climate targets. Accounting for over a third of total energy system emissions already, the continued use of carbon-intensive materials paired with inefficient energy use throughout the built environment ...
No Safe Journeys for Women: Why Mobility Systems in African Cities Are Failing Women’s Needs
No Safe Journeys for Women: Why Mobility Systems in African Cities Are Failing Women’s Needs
For a woman living in an African city, public transport can be a daunting experience. Women usually plan their trips in advance, and consider a multitude of factors before setting out: What is the safest way to reach the bus ...
India’s Shift to Low-Carbon Construction Must Not Leave Workers Behind
India’s Shift to Low-Carbon Construction Must Not Leave Workers Behind
India aims to reduce the emissions intensity of its economy by 45% by 2030, compared to 2005 levels, and to achieve net-zero emissions by 2070. The country can’t achieve either goal without a radical transformation in its buildings and construction sector, which was responsible for around 17% of the nation’s ...
Cutting Across Siloes, Catalyzing Transformative Change: WRI India’s Deep Dive Approach in Bengaluru
Cutting Across Siloes, Catalyzing Transformative Change: WRI India’s Deep Dive Approach in Bengaluru
Bengaluru is one of the world’s fastest growing metropolitan economies. A favored destination for investors and talent alike, this leading innovation hub is one of the largest technology clusters worldwide and home to 400 Fortune 500 companies. However, the planning ...
5 Ways to Shape a Greener, More Equitable Recovery Through Transport
5 Ways to Shape a Greener, More Equitable Recovery Through Transport
The global coronavirus pandemic brought a wave of public and private initiatives to help societies adapt and recover, from economic stabilization and safety measures to new business models and shifts in consumption. Many of these initiatives are not green, despite ...
Transport Needs More Women Voices. Here’s Why.
Transport Needs More Women Voices. Here’s Why.
Nearly 60 percent of women in Britain feel unsafe walking alone in their cities. Seventy percent of women who use public transport in Mexico City have experienced gender-based violence. In too many cases, using public transport in cities is an ...
5 Challenges and Solutions to Building Bike-Friendly Cities in Turkey
5 Challenges and Solutions to Building Bike-Friendly Cities in Turkey
The diverse economic, social and physical benefits of bicycling are no secret, yet many cities are hesitant to better accommodate growing numbers of bicycles on their streets. In October, WRI Turkey Sustainable Cities organized a workshop with representatives from 16 ...
Design as Democracy: Barcelona’s ‘Carritos’ Encourage a More Inclusive Urbanism
Design as Democracy: Barcelona’s ‘Carritos’ Encourage a More Inclusive Urbanism
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 ...
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