Kategorie: Pre-2020

  • Informal development reaches Harare’s leafy suburbs

    Informal development is now penetrating the formerly exclusive suburbs of Harare, Zimbabwe’s main city. lLike many colonial cities the early planning of Harare sought to segregate areas by class and ethnicity. However, urbanisation and poverty are now resulting in green spaces in low density suburbs becoming the focus for informal housing that brings the poor…

  • How to make urban growth boundaries work

    Keys to making urban growth boundaries work as a planning tool for controlling sprawl in US cities were identified in a session in the recent American Planning Association conference. Examples of urban growth boundaries were presented from Portland, Oregon; King County, Washington; and Denver. Messages were that the boundaries are flexible and negotiable; they succed…

  • UN-Habitat launches new urban data portal

    UN-Habitat has launched a new open-access portal for urban data. Urban Data allows users to explore data from a number of cities and regions around the world and compare indicators such as slum prevalence and city prosperity. you can try it out for yourself here.

  • Stores no more? How shops are changing to meet challenges from e-retailing

    As e-shopping eats into the markets previously dominated by traditional shops and stores, what will the retail store of the future look like? Are the malls and the arcades a relic of the last century? What does it mean for our towns and cities? A new article on a specialist retailing website suggests that in the USA…

  • Public markets at risk

    Public markets add greatly to the vitality of cities and provide essential goods and jobs for many people. They are an integreal part of our urban cultural heritage across all the continents. Yet a number of these markets are now at risk warns a new study. The Sustainable Cities Collective warns of a number of threats…

  • New ESPON programme to be launched in Latvia in June

    The new ESPON programme will be launched at an event on 3 and 4 June 2015 in the Latvian sea-side town of Jurmala, under the Latvian presidency of the EU. ESPON 2020 will continue the consolidation of a European Territorial Observatory Network and grow the provision and policy use of pan-European, comparable, systematic and reliable…

  • Vancouver goes for 100% renewables

    Vancouver’s city council has voted to source 1005 of its energy needs from renewables. Officials have been asked to report on how to deliver on the policy. “Cities around the world must show continued leadership to meet the urgent challenge of climate change, and the most impactful change we can make is a shift toward…