To Improve Core Services, Cities Should Embrace Disruption
To Improve Core Services, Cities Should Embrace Disruption
Innovative business models can turn entire industries on their head – just ask retail executives how Amazon has changed their world, mobility companies about Uber, or music magnates about Apple’s legacy. How we shop, move, and enjoy music is fundamentally ...
Friday Fun: How Pop-Up Clothing Shops Help Create More Equal and Sustainable Cities
Friday Fun: How Pop-Up Clothing Shops Help Create More Equal and Sustainable Cities
Everyone, in one way or another, relies on clothing every day. Clothing is essential to keeping us warm and protecting us from the elements. Yet, ill-fitting clothing or having no clothes at all can cause great hardship beyond exposure to ...
Between the Road and the Built Environment: Exploring New Opportunities for Africa’s Cities
Between the Road and the Built Environment: Exploring New Opportunities for Africa’s Cities
WRI Ross Center’s engagement with sub-Saharan African cities is emerging with new projects, research and training programs. In this series, we explore – and ask partners – how to pursue and maintain equal and sustainable cities, highlighting people, spaces, challenges ...
'Open Traffic' Provides Unprecedented Data to Urban Policymakers
'Open Traffic' Provides Unprecedented Data to Urban Policymakers
Cities are complex and fast changing organisms, especially in low- and middle-income countries where rapid population growth, urbanization and technological advances are creating a dynamic mix of opportunity and challenge. One major issue facing many cities is road safety. On ...
Is the Tesla Model 3 Our Ride to a Sustainable Future?
Is the Tesla Model 3 Our Ride to a Sustainable Future?
This past weekend, Elon Musk shared the first images of a production Tesla Model 3—the much-anticipated new electric vehicle that had hundreds of thousands of people lining up last year to place preorders. It was the latest in a series of ...
Confronting the Urban Housing Gap
Confronting the Urban Housing Gap
More than 1.2 billion city dwellers – one of every three people living in urban areas – lack access to affordable and secure housing. This housing gap is a major drag on the economy and the environment. The impact is ...
Public Spaces: What Can Urban Planning Gain from the Mobile Internet Revolution?
Public Spaces: What Can Urban Planning Gain from the Mobile Internet Revolution?
Our impressions of a city are formed mainly by the quality of public spaces. If they are not pleasant and preserved, or if they transmit a sense of insecurity, we will seldom return. Good planning of these spaces should be the rule, ...
Reversing Mumbai’s Bicycle Decline Has Broad Implications for Quality of Life
https://www.flickr.com/photos/adamcohn/17141585170/
Bicycling is on the decline in India’s largest city; perhaps as few as 0.8 percent of a population of 12 million bicycles, according to one estimate, down from an already-low 6 percent measured in 2008. In a new op-ed for ...
Public Spaces: 10 Principles for Better Urban Renewal (Hint: Think Community Engagement)
Public Spaces: 10 Principles for Better Urban Renewal (Hint: Think Community Engagement)
Our impressions of a city are formed mainly by the quality of public spaces. If they are not pleasant and preserved, or if they transmit a sense of insecurity, we will seldom return. Good planning of these spaces should be the rule, ...
Making Air Quality Data Available to All: WRI, Development Seed, OpenAQ Partner to #FixtheAQGap
Making Air Quality Data Available to All: WRI, Development Seed, OpenAQ Partner to #FixtheAQGap
WRI recently announced a partnership with OpenAQ and Development Seed to help more users access – and contribute to – air quality data from around the world through the OpenAQ open source platform. This update, which originally appeared on OpenAQ’s ...