Friday Fun: City Planning in the Virtual World of Gaming
Friday Fun: City Planning in the Virtual World of Gaming
The real world is looking a lot more digital. With increasingly advanced software and the rise of the “sand box” gaming genre (video games that enable players to freely design their environments) has come a flurry of city building simulators.  ...
China’s Pedestrianization: Reviving a Tradition of Walking for Healthier Cities
China’s Pedestrianization: Reviving a Tradition of Walking for Healthier Cities
Pedestrian-oriented streets not only are safer, improve air quality, and encourage physical activity, but also facilitate commercial and social activity. Although China has rapidly urbanized in the past few decades, many cities across the country are still not easily walkable. According ...
How Transport Reform is Helping Brazilian Cities Fight Climate Change
How Transport Reform is Helping Brazilian Cities Fight Climate Change
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 ...
From Ideas to Implementation: Creating Sustainable Cities with Good Governance
Biking in a Favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
How do we make cities work for people? As a WRI Helms Fellow on Urban Governance and Sustainable Cities, Maria Antonia Tigre was tasked with answering this question. Through From ideas to implementation: creating sustainable cities with good governance here ...
How Policy Integration Can Enable Sustainable Urban Energy
Biking in Lille, France
While cities need to address energy and climate challenges, national governments can play a critical role in enabling local action. As ministers from 23 countries highlighted at the Clean Energy Ministerial in Merida, Mexico last May, national governments can provide ...
Friday Fun: How 2 Street Festivals Are Giving Back to the Local Community
Mumbai Street Festival Ganesh Chaturthi
After last week’s Fourth of July celebrations here in Washington DC, summer has truly arrived. Throughout the season, the capital of the US features a spectacular lineup of street festivals in its public squares. From the Fourth of July celebrations ...
The Challenges of Bringing TOD to Brazilian Cities
Biking down the street in Mexico City
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 ...
Be a Hummingbird: It’s Time for Concerted Local Action on Climate Change
Be a Hummingbird: It’s Time for Concerted Local Action on Climate Change
The World Summit Climate & Territories (#WSCT) gathered 800 local decision makers in Lyon, France, July 1-2, 2015. In the lead up to COP21 (the 21st Conference of the Parties)—one of the most important climate meetings of the year—mayors and ...
How City Partnerships and a $1 Billion Global Cities Package Could Unlock $17 Trillion in Economic Growth
New Climate Economy Bike Cities
Climate-smart actions—such as investing in public transport and building efficiency—could generate $17 trillion dollars in net savings for cities by 2050 and cut annual greenhouse gas emissions by more than the annual emissions of Japan and Russia combined. Furthermore, with ...
The Next Gold Rush, Excess Capacity, and the Advent of a “Peers Inc” World
Crowds in metro station
From the breakdown of conventional ways of creating and sharing wealth to rising temperatures and increasingly extreme weather events, linear models of development are no longer providing an answer to the pressing challenges that the world is facing. At least, ...