How Behavioral Science Can Boost Household Energy Efficiency
How Behavioral Science Can Boost Household Energy Efficiency
Persuading people to use energy more efficiently has long been heralded as a simple, effective way to help tackle climate change. The problem lies in the persuasion. Historically, policies and programs to encourage people to save energy have relied largely ...
What if Citizens Set City Budgets? An Experiment That Captivated the World – Participatory Budgeting – Might Be Abandoned in its Birthplace
What if Citizens Set City Budgets? An Experiment That Captivated the World – Participatory Budgeting – Might Be Abandoned in its Birthplace
Neighbors in Porto Alegre, Brazil, have been getting together regularly since 1989 to discuss the future of their city. Everyone is encouraged to speak at district meetings in churches, gyms and clubs, discussing everything from water supply and sewage to ...
Can Latin America Move From Quantity to Quality of Infrastructure?
Can Latin America Move From Quantity to Quality of Infrastructure?
At a recent Latin American Development Bank (CAF) Infrastructure for Development Conference in Buenos Aires, regional experts and policymakers delved into the unique urban landscape for the area, from early approaches to modern challenges around inequality and better service. Pre-Incan ...
Cleaner Air, New Jobs, Reduced Inequality: The Benefits of Low-Carbon Cities
Cleaner Air, New Jobs, Reduced Inequality: The Benefits of Low-Carbon Cities
Climate action is rarely a primary consideration when investments are made in cities. Roads and transport networks are built to improve mobility, homes to provide shelter, offices to create places to work. But with more than three-quarters of global emissions ...
Better Engineering Can Significantly Improve Road Safety in India
Better Engineering Can Significantly Improve Road Safety in India
Road engineering – the way urban streets are designed and built – plays an extremely important role in ensuring road safety. The right kind of engineering for a street includes measures that actively restrict the scope for road users to ...
4 Ways Businesses Can Get the Most Out of Public-Private Collaboration: Lessons from the Building Efficiency Accelerator
4 Ways Businesses Can Get the Most Out of Public-Private Collaboration: Lessons from the Building Efficiency Accelerator
How can businesses provide more value to, and receive more value from, collaborative initiatives with cities? Businesses are the ones that design, build, finance, own, operate, renovate and occupy most of the buildings in cities. Without active collaboration and support ...
The People of Bogotá Want Cleaner Air. Will the City Listen?
The People of Bogotá Want Cleaner Air. Will the City Listen?
Bogotá is one of Latin America’s most polluted cities—but thanks to its citizens, its air may be getting cleaner. A decision from the mayor’s office to keep using diesel fuels in the next generation of buses in the city’s bus ...
Informal Workers Make Cities Work for All: 3 Stories from Thailand, India and Colombia
Informal Workers Make Cities Work for All: 3 Stories from Thailand, India and Colombia
Think of the delicious food stands in Southeast Asia, the street performers in Africa, the rickshaw driver in Bangladesh, and the invisible home-based workers who embroider garments and stitch shoes in India. What do they all have in common? They ...
As China’s Urban Rail Transit Systems Boom, Public-Private Partnerships Face a Reckoning
As China’s Urban Rail Transit Systems Boom, Public-Private Partnerships Face a Reckoning
To curb car congestion and boost the economy, China is embracing trains at an unprecedented rate. In June 2017, the government approved 5,770 kilometers of new urban rail systems, almost 17 times the total amount of track in all of ...
Boosting the Cool Factor of Energy Efficiency
Boosting the Cool Factor of Energy Efficiency
Energy efficiency’s image is due for a makeover. Long seen as one of the simplest ways to reduce consumer costs, energy efficiency also offers multiple benefits that improve people’s lives while cutting air pollution and curbing climate-warming emissions. And yet, ...