Jun 19, 2014
The second day of the NewCities Summit was filled with activity. Thousands of tweets were exchanged during the various panel discussions. A young app developer, inspired by his house burning down, presented a sharing app that, by popular of Summit participant votes, nabbed the New Cities Foundation’s coveted AppMyCity! prize. Later, six mayors, hailing from…
Jun 18, 2014
Welcome to Big D, NewCities! Dallas rolled out what has become its signature, wide-armed welcome for the opening day of the NewCities Summit – the NewCities’ third gathering following last year’s wonderful experience in São Paulo, and two years after its debut in Paris. This year, for its first foray in the United States, the…
Jun 16, 2014
By 2050, more than 70 percent of world’s population is expected to live in cities. Swelling urban populations combined with aging infrastructure and tightening budgets are putting more pressure than ever on municipal leaders to ensure that resources are maximized. Indeed, the indisputable trend of urbanization is presenting a unique set of challenges – as…
Jun 14, 2014
The act of envisioning the future, wrestling with new ideas long enough to be able to pin them down into a sketch, story or prototype at the massive scale of time and size envisioned for cities can be incredibly challenging work. Evolution of form follows emotion One way we can face this challenge is by…
Jun 09, 2014
I went to high school and college just outside Detroit in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a very different Detroit than the one my grandmother knew when she arrived as a refugee from Nazi Germany. She painted a picture of a city in its heyday flush with lavish homes, energy and optimism. It was the…
Jun 06, 2014
Growing up in Lebanon in a farming family allowed me to witness firsthand the challenges of cultivating and transporting food. When I was really young, I remember a time when my grandmother put nine of her kids through university thanks to her farm. But more recently, I have seen her children and grandchildren struggle with…
Jun 04, 2014
A slight, dark boy with unwashed hands pushes up to our car’s window to beg. With learned apathy, I turn away. Perhaps, I wince. My mother says, “Pronita, don’t ever forget it’s sheer luck you’re on this side of the window, and not the other.” This window signifies a separation today, and also a divide…
Jun 03, 2014
Mobile communication is part of our everyday lives. Can you imagine a day without a mobile phone nearby to make calls whenever needed, or a smartphone to answer to an urgent email? Digital technology has become something we all rely on to perform basic activities. We take mobile phones for granted, acting as if they…
Jun 02, 2014
What could possibly warrant the existence of yet another foundation that cites ‘The City’ as the source of its legitimacy? Is the city really a cause that needs to be supported, to the extent even that it becomes the statutory aim of a non-profit organization? Somehow that notion doesn’t feel quite right. At the outset…
Jun 01, 2014
As cities and communities prepare for the future, they must confront a tsunami of challenges that can overwhelm how people live, work, play and learn. For the first time, more than half the world now lives in cities, and the influx is growing faster than many cities can accommodate. One element that will define the…
May 30, 2014
Much has already been said about how big data is dramatically changing the way that organizations make decisions. Today, more data is being created from more places than ever before. Blogs, Facebook, YouTube videos, retailer loyalty cards, mobile phones, and sensors on buildings are producing tons of data daily. Private sector companies, in their real-time…
May 19, 2014
Cities have long been centers of innovation and economic might, and the information economy has coincided with a tremendous rise in urbanization around the world. The statistics are by now familiar: the world population years ago became 50% urbanized, and is expected to exceed two-thirds urbanization by 2050. Even the United States, long noted for…
