England's experiment with neighbourhood planning brings ethnic tensions to...
In a quiet north London suburb in the borough of Hackney, two rival "neighbourhood forums" put forward under the UK's new "localism" laws have brought religious and cultural divisions into the light,...
View ArticleNationally significant infrastructure projects: Another dent in the UK's...
Formed during the boom years, the UK's localism agenda was intended to act as a brake on development. With investment capital scarce after the global financial crisis, the policy is starting to look...
View ArticleNightclubs are here to stay, it's just the misogyny that should go
After the discovery of a two-way mirror allowing men to perve on women in a Glaswegian nightclub bathroom, Frances Brill argues that it is wrongheaded to focus on steering young people from clubbing to...
View ArticleIstanbul and Rio protests show that "cities matter", but urbanists shouldn't...
It's too easy to overlay an urbanist narrative onto the past month's protests in Turkish and Brazilian cities. It's more important to see how the protests contradict even some pro-urban discourses such...
View ArticleWhat makes Taichung the intelligent community of the year? The judges explain
Robert Bell and Sylvie Albert explain the achievements that made Taichung this year's winner, including job creation in technology parks and precision manufacturing, a 4G wireless rollout supporting...
View ArticleStrange plans to gentrify Hackney will exacerbate inequality yet may create...
Young writer Frances Brill reflects on those of her peers who rioted in London two years ago, and wonders whether the plans to deliberately gentrify the areas most affected will target investment to...
View ArticleThe Royal Docks: a third international business district for London?
The Royal Docks in east London were left behind by the containerisation of shipping leaving a generation or more out of work. In the wake of the Olympics, planning efforts and business investment is...
View ArticleMayors don't need the help of a World Association of Cities
As Benjamin Barber's If Mayors Ruled the World progresses steadily towards the bookstores, Andrew Stevens and Jonas Schorr reconsider his proposal for a World Association of Cities but remain...
View ArticleHow cities are financing their own energy efficiency by making retrofitting...
New financial institutions and instruments created by cities such as New York, Melbourne and Berlin have made it easy for large building owners to retrofit their properties by financing projects...
View ArticleEnding discriminatory development: a truly new Habitat III Agenda
Having established that conflict routinely arises in urban areas and that this impedes our progress on urban development issues, in this second of two articles addressing the New Urban Agenda we...
View ArticleWhat the Habitat III Agenda fails to consider
In June 2016, the United Nations will convene Habitat III, which will set the agenda for international cooperation on urban issues for the next 20 years. In the first of two articles addressing this...
View ArticleUnlocking the prosperity of the UK's core cities
A range of UK government initiatives seek to rebalance the country's urban-based economic growth on major cities other than London. Zoe Green assesses the field.
View ArticleThe City Effect: rapid urbanisation raises questions about how much urban...
The idea of empowering city governments is a thrown around a lot these days in urbanite circles. But where should the line between local and higher levels of government begin and end? Alia Dharssi...
View ArticleUrban housing policy can win the British general election
With the UK general election just weeks away, voter apathy among young Brits is high. Frances Brill explains how innovative policy that targets 18- to 24-year-olds' struggles with finding affordable...
View ArticleReleasing more land is the answer to the housing crisis in the UK
Following Frances Brill's call for innovative housing policies in the UK, Jeff Nottage argues that the UK government needs to allow development within green belt land in order to solve the current...
View ArticleThe curtailing of London’s creative economy
Two years after the introduction of Permitted Development Rights which allow employment space to be converted into housing through an easement of planning requirements, Zoe Green argues that the policy...
View ArticleThe long view of London
London’s ever evolving skyline serves as effective measure to understand the social and economic mechanisms of the city. Simon Hicks charts the transformations that have taken place in London over the...
View ArticleThe road to eliminating homelessness by 2030
Tom Archer argues that eliminating homelessness by 2030, a key recommendation of the UN’s Special Rapporteur on Adequate Housing, requires committed governments and an active civil society.
View ArticleGaming as a method for cooperative urbanism
Is public consultation a thing of the past? Alyssa Campbell takes us inside the City Innovation Game, a planning experiment in Buiksloterham, Amsterdam, that lets stakeholders create development...
View ArticleWhy do countries relocate their capital cities? Six strategies
Following the release of his book Capital Cities: varieties and patterns of development and relocation, Vadim Rossman explains the main trends and motivations behind a phenomenon as common as it is...
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