Past Projects

NewCities has helped shape the urban narrative since 2010. Browse through an archive of our past work, press, and network of contributors. 

Greenfield Cities

Sep 28, 2018

NewCities has partnered with Schneider Electric, the global specialist in energy management and automation, to present our Big Picture edition on greenfield cities. In March 2018, we explored why cities are built from scratch. We now focus on how these cities are developing and thriving to become a destination – for its citizens and visitors.…

Emerging Cities Need to Integrate Engaging Touchpoints for the Citizens

Sep 25, 2018

In a country like India, where the burgeoning population is a never ending issue (the urban population is estimated to reach 600 million by 2030), there can never be enough roads to solve the problem, and needless to state the shortage of quality housing estimated at 19 million households. Moreover, with another 230 million Indians…

Vibrant and Livable – Creating a City from Scratch

Sep 25, 2018

How can you create a sustainable, vibrant and livable city from scratch? This is a question my team at Sweco and I had to answer in 2016 when asked to develop the Masterplan for one of Sri Lanka’s largest and most controversial urban development projects – the Port City. With our urban planning experience and…

Unlocking Prosperity Through Charter Cities

Sep 25, 2018

China’s lifting of 800 million people out of poverty is the greatest humanitarian miracle of the post-war era. A combination of urbanization and special economic zones was responsible for China’s success. Shenzhen, for example, was a fishing village with 30,000 residents in 1980 when it was declared one of the country’s first special economic zones.…

Five Suggestions to Avoid Being a Ghost City

Sep 25, 2018

Starting from the 1990s, over 100 new city projects have been launched around the world. This number does not include China, which has hundreds of its own state-driven new city projects underway. While some new cities have attracted tens of thousands of residents, others join the growing herd of white elephant projects that are stalled…

Ghost Towns or Boomtowns? What New Cities Really Become

Sep 25, 2018

This article was originally posted by Forbes. Thirty years ago hardly anybody other than a Shanghai local would have found any reason to mutter the word “Pudong.” At that time, the place where the vibrant financial center that we know today now sits — the iconic skyline of the city — simply didn’t exist. To…

Affordable Housing

Sep 13, 2018

NewCities has partnered with Citi, the largest affordable housing lender in the United States, to present key perspectives on securing affordable housing in cities worldwide. Presented by: