Urbanization
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Categories: Urbanization
6 Sustainability Lessons from the World’s Happiest City
“[T]he role of the city is to make the lives of the people as easy and pleasant as possible,” said former Helsinki mayor, Jan Vapaavuori. For many of the 1.3 million residents of the Helsinki metropolitan area, daily life unfolds like a symphony of Nordic beauty and urban grace. In this city, serenity marries sophistication, as vast green parks […]
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Categories: Urbanization
Urban Rewilding: How These 5 Cities Brought Nature Back to the City
Due to the skyrocketing urbanization, industrialization, and population growth globally, our planet is losing its biodiversity at an alarming rate, faster than at any time in human history. Since the beginning of the 20th century, as the cities kept booming, the average population of indigenous species in the majority of significant ecosystems has declined by […]
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Categories: Urbanization
What Modern Cities Can Learn From London’s Deadly Smog of 1952
“Fog everywhere. Fog up the river where it flows among green airs and meadows; fog down the river, where it rolls defiled among the tiers of shipping, and the waterside pollutions of a great (and dirty) city … Chance people on the bridges peeping over the parapets into a nether sky of fog, with fog […]
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Categories: Sustainability
How Buildings Can Contribute to Urban Biodiversity
“It’s surely our responsibility to do everything within our power to create a planet that provides a home not just for us, but for all life on Earth,” says the legendary natural historian and broadcaster David Attenborough. However, as cities claim an increasing amount of land and resources, rapid urbanization is one of the significant drivers of biodiversity loss […]
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Categories: Urbanization
These 5 Latin American Cities Are Embracing A Smart Future
Smart cities are among our best bets for a livable and prosperous future. By leveraging technology to solve problems, smart cities can improve the quality of life for residents, promote sustainability, increase efficiency, enable better decision-making, create new opportunities, and foster economic growth. Hence, it’s no surprise that smart cities have rapidly spread worldwide. In […]
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Categories: Urbanization
Bats Can Help Us Design Better Cities. Here’s How.
Popular culture doesn’t always portray bats in a favorable light. In many of the stories we consume about bats, they’re spooky and scary animals commonly spotted in the horror genre. When bats populate a scene, it’s usually bad news for the characters. Most recently, the world’s only flying mammal species have been in the limelight […]
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Categories: Urbanization
Here’s Why Japan Decided to Build Smart Cities From Scratch
Japan is arguably going through the biggest demographic challenge of modern history. After lingering around zero growth at the beginning of the 21st century, Japan‘s population has continued to shrink since 2010, with the decline rate accelerating in recent years. In 2022, the island nation, with a population of about 125 million, recorded its largest decline due to the combination […]
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Categories: Urbanization
How Vienna Became the World’s Most Livable City
In 2022, Vienna grabbed the top spot in the Global Livability Index published by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU). For this picture-perfect Central European city famous for its legacy in classical music, baroque architecture, and coffeehouse culture, the top ranking didn’t come as a surprise. “Stability and good infrastructure are the city’s main charms for its […]
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Categories: Urbanization
Pedestrian Paradises: Top 4 Car-Free Urban Areas in the World
Personal car ownership has defined many aspects of modern urban life as we know it. Without a doubt, cars can bring great convenience, comfort, individual freedom, and opportunities to their owners. On the other hand, cars require an enormous amount of resources, both in terms of manufacturing and everyday use. In addition to being one of […]
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Categories: Urbanization
“Fifteen-Minute City”: An Urban Concept That Might Change How We Live
Throughout history, diseases and pandemics always had a tendency to shape and inform the development of our built environment – and the COVID-19 pandemic was no exception. As the lockdowns forced millions of city dwellers worldwide to adapt to a hyper-local life for months at a time, an increasing number of urbanists started to understand the importance of accessibility […]
