Mar 19, 2019
Name a few smart cities. Barcelona, Singapore. How about a few green cities? Perhaps Copenhagen or Vancouver. But can you name a city that’s taking a consumption-based approach to carbon management? With over half of the world’s population living in cities, the concentration of human and economic capital allows citizens to lead a powerful shift…
Mar 19, 2019
It may well be true that spring brings new beginnings, but the last days of March are also when I typically admit to having abandoned all of my carefully crafted and well-intentioned New Year’s resolutions. Admittedly, this is not a great tragedy, and the lone victim is most likely my sense of adventure. But what…
Dec 05, 2018
Five and a half years ago my co-founder and I started planning a new city development in Zambia. After a year and a half, we started marketing the new town development and got busy doing the actual work of development. Four years in, we’ve done quite a lot, but there’s still a lot for us…
Nov 28, 2018
When we think about food sustainability, our minds go first to the countryside. It is there, after all, that farmers grow almost all that we eat. But we’re making a giant mistake. For the first time in history, more than half of the world’s population live in urban areas. This number is expected to rise…
Sep 13, 2018
The policies and resources currently dedicated to addressing affordable housing fall devastatingly short of meeting the need. Today, nearly half of all renters in the U.S. are paying an unsustainable portion of their income on rent. At the same time, an astounding 54 million spare bedrooms sit empty every night in the U.S. Many of…
Sep 13, 2018
Can you think back to the home in which you were raised, or if you moved often to the home you liked the most? Can you envision your favorite spot? Home is often referred to as a sacred place, and, in many languages, the word for home means not just shelter, but warmth, safety and…
Sep 13, 2018
My hometown, the great City of Oakland, sits directly in the geographic center of the San Francisco Bay Area region – arguably the global center of innovation. Our region has been wildly successful at attracting investment and creating jobs, but has failed to produce enough housing. Between 2011 and 2015 the region added 501,000 jobs…
Sep 13, 2018
Almost 60 percent of lone women over the age of 65 years renting privately in Australia were evicted during the past four years. Many more left their tenancies when rents were raised to the ‘market’ rate, which they can be every six months. With vacancy rates at less than two percent, rents have increased far…
Sep 13, 2018
Mom and pop landlords were once the backbone of affordable housing stock in many major cities across America. They housed senior citizens, recent immigrants, students, service providers, day laborers or young married couples and provided the foundational housing needs for people just starting to build their future wealth. However, in the last 10 years city…
Jul 16, 2018
Urban mobility access confronts cities across the globe. It’s a significant issue that dominates policy discussions in every major city. With innovations abounding thanks to technology disruptions, industry and civic leaders face increasing pressures to transform cities into fully accessible centers for all demographics. The United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs predicts that…
Jul 16, 2018
Urban spaces around the world are being flooded with public amenities at an unbelievable speed. Since its roll-out in 2012, New York City’s uniform public bench program, CityBench, has installed over 1,900 benches upon requests from communities throughout its five boroughs. In a similar fashion, the streets of Paris, London, and Amsterdam have seen new…
Jul 16, 2018
I was driving over the Kongsvinger bridge on the way to Oslo when a municipal traffic signal tried to kill me. The traffic signal pictured below intends to tell drivers when it’s not safe to turn left. But for folks like me who live with a color deficit, it actually urges me to turn left…
