What's Changing? - Habitat

Please see below selected recent cities/urbanisation-related change.

See also:

April 2024

About a tenth of the world’s residential property by value is under threat from global warming, including many houses that are nowhere near the coast. Severe weather brought about by greenhouse-gas emissions is shaking the foundations of the world’s most important asset class. The potential costs stem from policies designed to reduce the emissions of houses as well as from climate-related damage. They are enormous. By one estimate, climate change and the fight against it could wipe out 9% of the value of the world’s housing by 205, which amounts to US$25trn, not much less than the US annual GDP.

February 2024

Urban land expansion is a key driver of biodiversity loss. By 2050 it is expected that 75% of the global population will be living in cities, and most future urban expansion will take place in some of the world’s most biodiverse regions. The resulting increase in fragmentation of non-urban ecosystems interrupts wildlife and ecological zones and increases risks from fire, pests, and diseases. Some cities, notably in India and China, are embracing eco-city developments to address these challenges, developing, eco-cities (broadly defined as ecologically sensitive cities which aim to restore natural environments and promote social justice).

January 2024

The 2050 Climate Change City Index placed a range of high and low-income cities at risk of rising sea-level damage, including Bangkok in top place, where the OECD has projected over 5m of its inhabitants could be exposed to flooding by the 2070s. Amsterdam, Shenzhen and Dubai also ranked in the top 10. It is not only coastal cities that face challenges. Many riverside cities including Paris, Cairo and New Delhi are at risk of flooding too, while those farther from flowing water are under threat from drought, such as Phoenix, Brasília and Mexico City. The number of cities exposed to extreme heat is expected to almost triple by 2030.
China used more cement from 2011 to 2013 than the US did in the entire 20th century. A key ingredient in cement is sand, and unsustainable demand for that material is reportedly creating "sand mafias".
More than 55,000 offices were expected to be converted into apartments in the US in 2024. The trend was most notable in Washington DC.

December 2023

COP28 mobilised US$467m for urban climate action, including a commitment of over US$53m from the US Agency for International Development (USAID). These funds were intended to support low-carbon and climate-resilient initiatives in cities across the world, focusing on issues such as air pollution, water scarcity, decarbonising transportation, transitioning buildings to net-zero emissions, and accelerating climate adaptation solutions. Additionally, a significant initiative called Breathe Cities, backed by US$30m, was unveiled at COP28, with the goal of achieving a 30% reduction in emissions by 2030.

July 2023

By 2050, Amsterdam plans to be running the world’s first fully circular economy, a model focused on eliminating waste and reusing or recycling nearly all resources. Experimental projects across the city are offering solutions: prepping meals out of “expiring” groceries, not letting an inch of rainwater go to waste, and building Europe’s most sustainable neighborhood: the floating eco-village Schoonschip, Dutch for “starting over from scratch.”

June 2023

City centres worldwide faced the challenge of vacant office spaces and the need to repurpose them for new uses. The City of London took proactive measures to convert unused offices into hotels, galleries, and other facilities to prevent them from becoming "stranded assets". With hybrid working models in place, traditional office spaces saw reduced demand, with London's occupancy rate down from 60-80% pre-pandemic to 26.5% in 2023. This trend is not unique to London. From the US to Sweden and South Korea, falling property values and rising interest rates added to the commercial real estate sector's woes, making loan repayments more expensive.

December 2022

An estimated 6.5 billion people will be living in urban spaces by the middle of the 21st century. A new crop of indoor farms now taking root in cities around the world could help feed this booming population. In the first half of 2022 alone, investors pumped more than US$800m into so-called vertical farms: warehouses converted into growing spaces for crops ranging from leafy greens to herbs and strawberries. By 2030, this indoor agriculture business could be worth US$33bn.
A McKinsey Global Institute analysis of more than 178 countries showed that half of the increase in global output over the first two decades of the millennium was generated by regions making up less than 1% of the world’s landmass. While cities have always played an outsized role in driving economic development, the data highlight the degree to which growth was concentrated in places such as Shenzhen and Guangzhou in China, Delhi and Bangalore in India, and Los Angeles and Dallas in the US.
Further reading:
- Can a city be redesigned for the new world of work? - Financial Times
- How technology will automate and connect the home - CB Insights

September 2022

Cities have traditionally been massive consumers of energy rather than creators of it, but new technology could reverse that trend. In 2014, Michigan State University researchers developed technology to convert any glass sheet or window into a solar cell, and more recently a design school in Copenhagen installed 12,000 clear panels, which is apparently enough to power half of the building's annual energy usage. So can solar panels replace windows? Maybe, but not yet. The darker a solar panel, the more effective it is, so transparent panels are still nowhere near as efficient as traditional panels.

August 2022

At the beginning of the pandemic, analysts predicted an exodus from cities, easing the urban cost-of-living burden. More than two years on, seemed they were wrong. While some did move away from cities, many more decided they wanted to stay put - but, crucially, live on their own. That in turn caused a supply and demand crisis, leading rents to increase,

June 2022

If subsidence continues at its current rate, flood models that only account for sea-level rise will be insufficient to predict the intensity and speed with which floods will come on. Essentially, coastal cities may be in for a watery future sooner than current models predict. Plans to floodproof cities in the future will need to involve floodwalls and other types of measures to keep water out, and also include regulation of activities that sink cities further into the ground in the first place, warned Big Think.
The first modules of a new floating city in the Maldives were unveiled. The city was designed by architecture firm Waterstudio and is being built by property developer Dutch Docklands. It’s intended to help the Maldives deal with the existential challenge posed to it by rising sea levels. The Maldives is an archipelago of 1,190 low-lying islands; more than 80% of its land is less than one metre above sea level. That makes it very exposed nations when it comes to the projected 1 metre rise in sea levels expected this century. Once complete, the city was planned to consist of 5,000 floating units that host schools, shopping areas and homes for 20,000 residents, with canals in between.
Further reading:

May 2022

The Financial Times warned that, just as the growth of the factory changed where and how people lived, the rise of remote working is an enormous shock. It will affect not just corporate life and how businesses arrange themselves, but macroeconomics and geography. For the office-heavy cities at the heart of it, it is an unprecedented shock - their version of the closure of coal mines or car manufacturing plants, and just as industrial areas have had to adapt before, many world cities must adapt now.
Airports in Baghdad and other major Iraqi cities closed in May 2022 as a massive sandstorm tore across the country. The frequency of these storms, which blanket everything in a reddish-brown haze of sand and dust, has been increasing: this was the eighth one in the past month alone. Scientists blame droughts, heat, and soil degradation linked to global warming.

April 2022

A study from the University of Rhode Island studied land subsidence using satellite imagery and found that coastal cities are sinking up to several centimetres per year, with the most heavily impacted cities located in Asia.
Plans for the world’s first floating city were unveiled at the UN. “Oceanix Busan” in South Korea plans to be a fully sustainable, floating community that could accommodate 12,000 people.
Lisbon, Miami and Dubai were ranked the best cities for digital nomads in the Executive Nomad Index by real estate consultancy Savills. The report ranked the top cities according to the quality of life, internet speed, climate, air connectivity and rent.

December 2021

Analysis by traffic information supplier Inrix said London had the world's worst traffic jams, rising from 16th most congested in 2020. Drivers in London will spend an average of 148 hours in traffic jams this year, according to Inrix, while those in Paris - the second most congested global city – will lose 140 hours in traffic. Brussels, Moscow and New York filled out the top five.

November 2021

The world's cities need to get ready for an influx of arrivals of up to 2.5 billion more people by 2050, according to UN estimates. To accommodate all these new people without straining our climate, cities should embrace low-rise living, argued researchers from Edinburgh Napier University. The researchers found that densely packed low-rise buildings are more space efficient and less taxing on the environment than high rise structures. High-rise buildings require significantly more energy and resources to design and construct and, ultimately, take apart, even when they are built to operate efficiently.
The RSA asked what cities might look like if they were designed with mental wellbeing, equity, and restoration at their core. Many cities around the world are built on models that haven’t kept pace with growing urban populations and the imperative to halt damage to the climate - which means millions living high-cost, high-stress lives in polluted, overcrowded surroundings. An RSA panel explored the principles and practice of designing and running cities with mental health at the forefront, examining such questions as: How do our surroundings affect us? What role can citizen participation play in developing inclusive urban environments? And what will it take in practice for our cities to enable healthy, happy, more equitable lives for everyone?

October 2021

A Bloomberg analysis of 15 global business hubs compared the respective safety, mobility, maternity provisions, equality and wealth opportunities for women – and found that each city failed in some way. The 15 cities were selected by Bloomberg journalists based on a few criteria: They’re all hubs of commerce in their respective regions, providing a global perspective on gender inequality, and most attract finance and business workers from elsewhere. Bloomberg graded them in five areas: safety, mobility, maternity provisions, equality, and wealth (a measure of earning potential and financial independence) and weighted those equally to form an overall ranking.

August 2021

A panel of experts liated their views of the 25 most important works of post-war architecture. Buildings in Mexico City; Plano, Illinois; and Luxor, Egypt topped the list.

July 2021

68% is the latest estimate of the share of the global population that will live in cities by 2050, a growth of 2.5 billion people from 2018 numbers. Much of that growth will happen in China, India, and Nigeria. Whether in search of better economic opportunities or an escape from poor climate conditions at home, millions of people around the world are expected to flock to cities.
Quartz believe that the reasons smart cities have failed in Africa range from the use of foreign blueprints that don’t work on the continent to conflict between promoters and government authorities. Mauritius intends to construct a global media and creative hub that builds on others’ missteps.
A study that evaluated greenhouse gas emissions for 167 cities around the world found over half of emissions from the entire group came from just 25 cities, mostly in China. The massive emissions output of these Chinese cities could be largely traced to the country’s rapid urbanisation and reliance on coal energy.
Madrid is building a “green wall” made up of 75km forested area around the city, including making use of disused sites within the city. This effort, which will plant half a million native trees and absorb 175,000 tons of CO2 per year will fight the urban ‘heat island’ effect, absorb the emissions from the city, and connect all the existing forest masses around the city. The project will also make use of derelict sites lying between roads and buildings to help absorb 175,000 tons of CO2 per year. Planners have also been clear these are not parks, and do not require maintenance or water in the ways planned parks do, instead framing the “green wall” as infrastructure.

June 2021

In the Economist Intelligence Unit’s 2021 ranking of most liveable cities, Auckland, New Zealand took the top spot. The latest ranking bumped Vienna out of first place and even pushed it out of the top 10.

May 2021

The concept of smart cities has gained popularity over the last decade, but MIT Technology Review questioned how much progress has actually been made. Since this trend has been driven by the tech sector rather than urban planners, these projects have generally not been about upgrading existing infrastructure but more about testing new technology in the real world. As a result, smart cities have yet to solve some of the deeper urban issues like affordable housing and good public transport. Instead, the “smartest” elements, the report argued, have come from things like ride-hailing, co-working and smart dustbins - hardly revolutionary to day-to-day life.
While Paris works with a 15-minute radius and Barcelona’s superblocks with nine-block chunks of the city, a new project in Sweden operates at the single street level, paying attention to “the space outside your front door and that of your neighbours adjacent and opposite". Called Street Moves, the initiative allows local communities to become co-architects of their own streets’ layouts. Via workshops and consultations, residents can control how much street space is used for parking, or for other public uses.

April 2021

The COVID-19 pandemic has done immense harm to the world’s bustling cities, damaging their economies, closing their shops, frightening off tourists and forcing inhabitants to hide indoors. But as light began to shimmer at the tunnel’s end, urban planners started dreaming up a greener, healthier future that will allow city centres to be reclaimed by the people who live in them. Trees are being planted, cars banished and sustainable systems introduced to make life less hectic and more enjoyable for everyone.

March 2021

For the Financial Times, 2020-21 witnessed the biggest year of urban change in decades. Many cities remade themselves during the pandemic, laying bike paths or turning parking spaces into café terraces overnight. Offices have emptied and shops closed, some forever. Every organisation on earth seems to have held a webinar on “The future of cities”. The city - 10,000 years old - obviously isn’t going to die, but it is evolving on fast-forward.
New World Same Humans wondered whether, inspired by 20th-century success stories such as Hong Kong, the later 2020s will see a new wave of charismatic founders establish charter cities: independent city states intended to attract itinerant knowledge workers and reimagine government for the 21st-century. Many will be born, first, as decentralised cities in the cloud, which bring people together based on shared values, interests, and skills.

February 2021

Remote work, which represents a danger to the economic viability of cities as we know them, might be here for a while, according to The Atlantic, which thinks that our cities are in for a bumpy ride going forward.

January 2021

Urban areas are home to more than half the global population, but global-scale climate models tend to focus on much broader regional projections. A Quartz paper helped demonstrate the disproportionate impact on cities. It projected urban areas will be 4.4°C (7.9°F) warmer on average by 2100 assuming a high volume of greenhouse gas emissions, and 1.9°C (3.4°F) warmer with mid-level emissions. Those numbers are a bit lower than the global average projections because urban areas are starting from a warmer baseline, but they still end up warmer overall.

December 2020

The pandemic may change the face of cities, remodelling them in ways that will make urban life more sustainable. Mayors from all over the world have put the launch of “15-minute cities” - where people have everything they need (work, bars, restaurants, shops, schools, healthcare, leisure) within a quarter-hour trip from home - at the heart of their recovery plans. “Big cities like Paris, London and Sydney could become vast urban areas made up of several smaller communities, each with their own centre,” claimed Frederik Anseel, professor at the University of New South Wales.
London is still the world's most attractive city to live in, according to an annual ranking from the Japanese Mori Memorial Foundation. It’s the ninth consecutive year that the British capital tops the list.

November 2020

The world’s three most expensive cities are now Hong Kong, Zurich and Paris, according to a 2020 cost of living report. Singapore and Osaka, which were equal first with Hong Kong in 2019, slipped down the rankings. The Economist Intelligence Unit’s annual survey, which is geared towards expatriates, said Singapore’s prices fell because of an exodus of foreign workers due to the Covid-19 pandemic. “Asian cities have traditionally dominated the rankings in the past years but the pandemic has reshuffled the rankings of this edition,” said Upasana Dutt, the EIU’s Head of Worldwide Cost of Living.

October 2020

Over the past seven decades, dozens of countries have experienced rapid urbanisation as people flock from rural areas to cities in search of more diverse economic opportunities. During that time, the global urban population has increased six-fold. While North America and Latin America have been predominantly urban for decades, it is only more recently that East Asia has made this transition, while sub-Saharan Africa is just on the cusp of being majority urban.
Cities need revenue from knowledge-sector companies, as well as the many restaurants, dry cleaners, and pharmacies that rely on office workers to stay in business. Urban planners predict cities will survive, but change shape. Some fraction of office buildings could be repurposed as apartments, hotels, even affordable housing in city cores. Satellite hubs of the urban economy could pop up in far-flung neighbourhoods making it easier for people of various income levels to live near the places they work.
Even before the coronavirus crisis, a key topic of debate among town planners was how to create a sustainable, healthy urban environment that is easy to get around by either walking or cycling. To this end, Paris mayor Anne Hidalgo, who has been leading a radical overhaul of the city’s mobility culture since taking office in 2014, embraced the notion of reshaping France’s capital into a 15-minute city. The concept, which was developed by Sorbonne Professor Carlos Moreno, advocates the creation of a city of neighbourhoods, in which workers find everything they need in terms of work, retail and leisure within 15 minutes of their home. In a work context, this would see offices added to neighbourhoods that lack them so people could work closer to where they live. There would also be local co-working hubs, enabling them to come together for meetings and to collaborate when necessary.
So-called ’secondary cities’ around the world may reap the benefits from a fall in commuting. The work-from-home model has proven successful, with around 28% of jobs in Italy, France, Germany, Spain, Sweden and the UK already able to be remote, and up to 37% in the US, reported The Guardian. Economics lecturer Michel Serafinelli predicted post-pandemic workers would not return full time to an office, prompting an exodus to smaller towns for more space and cheaper housing. These towns will however need to amp up their broadband infrastructure to cope with a new generation of ‘telecommuters’.
GZERO Media noted that, while it's easy to assume that the pandemic will "destroy" highly congested urban centres, throughout history some modern cities actually benefitted in the long term from the lessons learned from dealing with a public health crisis. For instance, London only embarked on the engineering marvel of its present-day sewer system after it was crushed by cholera — a water-borne disease — in the 1850s. Urban planners widely expect that future cities will be designed to be healthier for residents.
Cities are hugely vulnerable to climate change and will have to take the lead in efforts to contain and adapt to it. More than 90 percent of the world's cities lie in coastal areas exposed to rising sea levels. At the same time, large cities' traffic, transport infrastructure, and buildings are responsible for 75 percent of global carbon emissions.

September 2020

New World, Same Humans argued that while cities are far from done, we can’t pretend that their role in our lives and economies isn’t undergoing a shift. Long commutes scarred health, social and family time for millions; they’re not coming back to the office full time. For those who depended on office workers for custom, the pain will be real. Medium-term this is a chance to diversify the use of real estate in city centres and to rebalance economies, as prosperous knowledge workers buy lunch and handle their dry cleaning in their local neighbourhoods.
Quartz asked: what does it take for a city to jump into the knowledge economy? A new study found one key factor: a population of at least 1.2 million. Physicist Inho Hong from the Max Planck Institute looked at the industry composition of 350 US metro areas between 1998 and 2013. He and his team found that 1.2 million people is the threshold between economies based on manual labour and those based on knowledge and innovation. Hong and his colleagues were trying to figure out whether all urban areas follow the same path as they grow, a concept they borrowed from biology. Their data analysis suggests the answer to that question is “yes.”
Cities struggle with traffic congestion, long commutes and increased costs for goods movement. New and emerging technologies such as ride-sharing services, e-bikes, autonomous vehicles (AVs), light rail transit (LRT) and Hyperloop can resolve transportation inefficiencies and address environmental issues. So-called smart cities can deploy new technologies to ensure renewable energy, for example, more efficient building standards or free Wi-Fi. incorporating sustainability into all aspects of urban development is an important strategy for cities to improve the health and quality of life of its citizens and meet climate change targets.
Chatham House warned that reducing carbon emissions from the built environment will be vital to remaining within the limit of 1.5°C global warming. In 2017, the building sector (defined as materials manufacturing, construction and building operation) contributed 39 per cent of global energy-related emissions, with a 78-22 per cent split between operational and embodied carbon.To have a high probability of limiting global warming to 1.5°C, embodied carbon emissions must be reduced by 65 per cent from their value in 2019 by 2030 and net-zero operational carbon installed as soon as possible, with the target of zero emissions by 2040.
Although the plight of mega-cities gets much of the attention, the pandemic is changing suburbs, too. The Economist reported from the front line of Britain’s commuterland.
Residents in Lagos, Nigerai are paying for the city’s worsening air pollution with their lives, warned Quartz. World Bank estimates show air pollution resulted in 11,200 premature deaths in 2018 alone in Lagos - up to 60% of those were children under-five. Yet, the problem is likely to worsen as the main sources of pollution in the city: excessive vehicular traffic and power generators are not going away.

August 2020

Exponential View examined key urban trends in the light of the coronavirus pandemic:
- Density in cities has been blamed for outbreaks of Covid-19, but findings suggest “near-zero associations between the density of 36 world cities (as measured in people per square kilometre) and rates of Covid-19 cases and deaths.”
- Covid-19 could remake what we consider a city, at least in certain ways, from larger patios for restaurants to widened sidewalks – but “not all of the shifts will be by intentional design.”
- Other commentators suggesred that the city will bounce back from both pandemics and protests.
- Will we want to live in crowded cities again? Even the notion of a busy city is a relatively modern idea.

July 2020

Innovation is supposed to improve our quality of life, but, as the history of transportation shows us, it often fails to consider large segments of the population. Structural inequalities and discrimination have dictated who could afford new commutes to the suburbs, and who was stuck living with dubious bus or train service - at best. In South Africa, for example, a sprawling informal minibus system arose out of a disregard by the apartheid government for the commuting needs of the country’s Black-majority population. In the US, blatant racism has always been a part of the transit story: Consider the day Rosa Parks demanded change and dignity for all Black Americans on a public bus, or the damaging legacy of white flight, or the prevailing perception of cars as the symbol of individualism and success. Quartz looked at how the coronavirus pandemic is providing a unique opportunity to correct imbalances by reshaping the way we move through cities.

June 2020

An essayist for Vox never realised how much urban planning is centred around male breadwinners until she got pregnant. Suddenly, just trying to get to work every day became a daunting expedition, and things didn’t improve once her child was born. In an essay for Vox, she asked how cities could be designed differently - from transportation to street lights - so women feel more comfortable and safe navigating their streets.

April 2020

In Scale, noted Exponential View, Geoffrey West showed that cities last longer than corporations, because they crop up naturally in places that facilitate existing flows of information and ideas, and adapt to changes of these flows. Historically, cities flourished on very tangible flows of rivers. Nowadays, they flourish on abstract flows of ideas and capital. West showed that cities outperform corporations because they are diverse, heterogenous and have enough weirdos and contrarians to be adaptable.
Meanwhile, cities may take the opportunity offered by the pandemic to reframe their relationship with the car. Take Milan, which will turn 35km of streets over to cyclists and pedestrians, and create space for them to maintain physical distance.
Trendwatching believes that, for a while already, there have been signs that the long urban boom is coming to an end at least in the West. Today, millions of educated young aspirants pour into cities every year. They seek the lifestyle of the infamous metropolitan liberal elite. They discover, instead, a reality that is cramped, precarious, and impossibly expensive. London’s recent graduates may secure the flashy job titles they crave, but many will find themselves jammed into dingy flatshares that eat most of their immobile salaries. As for buying your own place one day? Without help from rich parents, you can keep dreaming. That reality is now visible in data that shows high and rising migration out of London. The UK’s Office for National Statistics said that in 2018, a record 340,500 people moved out of the city. Only immigration from abroad is maintaining a steady population in the UK capital. A similar story is playing out in NYC, L.A, and other major US cities.
But a middle-class flight from western cities would present challenges, too. Cities, with their densely packed populations, are more energy efficient. And whatever the power of online collaboration, evidence shows that throwing millions of clever young people together at close quarters produces a fruitful cauldron of ideas and innovation. Meanwhile, the global trend towards urbanisation won’t end: the UN forecasts that 2.5 billion people will pour into megacities in Asia and Africa between now and 2050.

January 2020

A Bangkok university recently opened Asia's largest rooftop farm to tackle problems like food security, sustainable energy, urban heat-island effect, and more. Located at Thammasat University, the 236,000-square-foot roof was designed to prevent the flood-prone city from sinking, and is able to hold up to 3M gallons of water in detention ponds. The farm will also be able to grow enough rice for 100,000+ meals to be served on campus in a year. Any leftovers will be composted to fertilise the next crop of rice, noted CB Insights.

December 2019

Higher skilled jobs are clustering in small numbers of cities. This pattern has played out in the US, Turkey, Hungary and many other places. It is part of the ongoing resurgence of place in our political economies. One key driver is our shift to an intangible economy whose patterns and processes strongly favour local agglomeration into big cities; For example, tech jobs and the wealth they generate are becomingly increasingly concentrated in the US. Since 2005, just five metro areas have accounted for 90 per cent of all US growth in innovation sector jobs.

October 2019

One of the major problems facing native habitats is fragmentation. As human impact creeps further and further into woods, grasslands and savannas, barriers like roads, agriculture lands and urban development are slicing and dicing natural spaces into smaller and smaller parcels. For decades, researchers have argued that connecting up these conservation areas could help improve species diversity and keep the ecosystems healthier. Now, an 18-year-long published in the journal Science is one of the first long-term experiments to confirm that hypothesis, showing that relatively small habitat corridors can have big impacts on conservation parcels. The paper is based on a highly fragmented habitat found in the American South. In 10 locations, a team restored 2.5-acre blocks of cleared savanna. Some were connected with 80- by 500-foot corridors of restored habitat. Other blocks were left isolated. Over the last 18 years, they’ve compared what’s going on in the connected habitat with the isolated patches. They discovered that annually, there was a 5% increase in species diversity and a 2% drop in the number of species going extinct and that biodiversity builds over time: by the end of the study period, an average of 24 more plant species were growing in connected habitats than isolated savanna.

August 2019

A new study by McKinsey predicted that over the next decade, 60 percent of new jobs will be created in just 25 "megacities and high-growth hubs." For the world’s cities, the advantages of size have only grown. Big, superstar cities attract more talent and have higher rates of productivity and innovation than smaller cities. And the people who work in these cities tend to make more money. A study published in the Journal of Urban Economics used detailed data from the British Household Panel Survey to track the connection between the size of an individual’s birth city in the UK and their earnings as a working adult. The minimum sample (after cleaning) is 7,500 individuals aged 16 and older, interviewed multiple times from 1991 to 2009. What they found: the size of one’s birth city does have a sizeable effect on later-life earnings.

July 2019

Some 93% of households in India now have access to toilets, and 500 million people have stopped having to go to the toilet out in the open, according to research published by The Economic Times.

April 2019

Indonesia has announced an ambitious project to move the country's capital away from Jakarta, which is famously traffic-choked, polluted, and steadily sinking into the sea.

February 2019

McKinsey explained the concept of “seamless mobility”. Simply defined, seamless mobility uses technologies—from smart traffic lights to autonomous vehicles (AVs) to preventive maintenance—to integrate all sorts of travel. Many of the options are fuelled by low-polluting, low-emissions sources of power. A few examples: seamless mobility means fewer private cars, with people mixing and matching rail transit and low-cost, point-to-point travel in robo-taxis and autonomous shuttles. It means converting parking spaces into parks or gardens. And it means widespread use of AVs, which is expected to result in many fewer traffic deaths.

January 2019

If current trends hold, the world will include 48 cities with populations over 10 million people by 2035, up from 33 today. Of the 15 contenders for mega-city status, 10 are in Asia, two are in the Middle East, two are in Africa, and one is in Europe. None are in the Americas, noted GZEROMedia.
About 65 million apartments, more than 20 percent of all apartments in Chinese cities, are unoccupied, according to a new study. That’s cause for concern in a country where housing, construction, and related industries account for up to one-third of economic growth.
A small “big city” can have deeper connections. Cities that are less dense have tighter communities and provide more reasons to actually try connecting with your neighbours, argued Quartz.
Technology may eventually promote the re-emergence of cities as important actors in global affairs after a long period of dominance by nation-states. Urban areas already account for 80% of global economic output, and game-changing innovations like ultra-fast 5G mobile networks, noted GZEROMedia.
Persistent underfunding of critical infrastructure worldwide is hampering economic progress, and exposing businesses and communities to significant risks, warned the World Economic Forum. Existing physical and digital infrastructure are under stress from population growth and face challenges from cyberattacks, extreme weather and climate change. New infrastructure development is increasingly intertwined with rising geopolitical tensions, and given the potential for a global economic downturn, funding could come under further pressure.

December 2018

Africa has 21 of the world’s 30 fastest-growing urban areas, where an expanding middle class deals with hideous traffic, noted The Economist, adding that this is fertile territory for food-delivery startups. Tupuca, for example, has been ferrying meals around Angola’s capital, Luanda, since 2016. As well as the likes of pizzas, burgers and sushi, customers can buy coal, petrol, fruit and vegetables - or live animals, such as chickens, pigs and goats.
See also key urban innovations identified by TrendWatching:
- Bumblebee Spaces | This San Francisco-based startup uses motorized ceiling modules to help homeowners use the empty space below their ceilings. Welcome news for anyone struggling to square city living with convenient access to everyday personal items!
- Manukau | Talking of maximizing use of space...this New Zealand bus shelter doubles up as a homeless shelter at night. An infrastructure win-win for cash-strapped local authorities?
- Apotek Hjärtat | This Finnish pharmacy turned its store windows into giant light therapy signs to help locals combat SAD during the country’s long dark winter..
- Surabaya | This Indonesian city now enables residents to ‘pay’ for bus tickets with plastic waste. A convenient, rewarding approach to engaging citizens in the fight against trash.
- Dust See | The Seoul City government launched this AR-enabled app to enable residents to ‘see’ pollution levels in order to encourage them to take precautions. An accessible and visual solution to a growing global urban issue.
Further reading:
- Home: the global search for a decent place to live - FT

November 2018

Rapid urbanisation poses enormous challenges, warned Raconteur. More than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas. According to the United Nations, the proportion is set to rise to almost 70 per cent by 2050. By then the planet is expected to be home to 43 megacities of more than ten million inhabitants. Those in charge of our ever-swelling cities have a huge amount of work ahead to make sure they can cope with this unstoppable influx of people. Radical changes will be required to meet the demands on transport, housing and energy supply, to improve air quality and waste management processes, and to prepare urban settlements for extreme weather and the increased risk of flooding brought on by climate change.
More than 50 million urban homes are unoccupied in China, noted GZEROMedia. That’s a vacancy rate of 22 percent, the highest for any country in the world. This problem can be attributed in part to excessive spending by the state to create construction-sector jobs and artificially boost economic activity and in part to wealthy people, barred by the government from moving their money abroad, parking their cash in real estate.

October 2018

Cities have powered the world economy for centuries, argued McKinsey. Large cities generate about 75% of global GDP today and will generate 86% of worldwide GDP growth between 2015 and 2030. Population growth has been the crucial driver of cities’ GDP growth, accounting for 58% f it among large cities between 2000 and 2012. Rising per capita income contributed the other 42%. However, McKinsey warns, the world’s cities are facing more challenging demographics, and the days of easy growth are over. In the past, city economies expanded largely because their populations were increasing due to high birthrates and mass migration from rural areas. Both of those sources of population growth are now diminishing.
McKinsey further argued that as cities get smarter, they are becoming more liveable and more responsive - and today we are seeing only a preview of what technology could eventually do in the urban environment. The firm believes that talent, technology, climate, and globalisation will be key shapers of the city context and that citizen well-being will be the future metric of success.
Cities are increasingly the centres of global growth: believes, McKinsey, arguing that 50 “superstar” cities account for 21 percent of global GDP, despite being home to just 8 percent of the world’s population.
Rapid urbanisation poses enormous challenges. More than half the world’s population now lives in urban areas. According to the UN, the proportion is set to rise to almost 70% by 2050. By then the planet is expected to be home to 43 megacities of more than ten million inhabitants. Those in charge of our ever-swelling cities have a huge amount of work ahead to make sure they can cope with this unstoppable influx of people, warned Raconteur.
Future cities should be made of wood, argued Quartz. It’s a sustainable choice, especially if modern techniques can make timber-frame buildings more fire-resistant.
As cries for local food ring louder and louder, reported Modern Farmer, many have begun looking too flashy new urban farming missions: rooftop gardens, vertical farms inside abandoned factories or warehouses, that kind of thing. But a new study from the University of Minnesota finds that urban areas already produce a lot of food - the challenge is matching local producers with local consumers.

September 2018

From 2018 to 2035, the ten fastest growing cities in the world will be in Africa, according to the UN. By 2040, the continent’s urban population is expected to double to 1 billion, creating massive opportunities for economic growth that could also create challenges for resource-strained local and national governments.
The concept of the smart city first emerged in the early to mid 2000s as governments sought to digitise and become more efficient, noted Quartz. (Some argue that it emerged earlier in the 1980s). Now, the term connotes the use of big data and technology in urban planning. It’s bandied about by large technology companies like IBM and Cisco, city officials, and property developers - the global market for smart city services could reach as much as $225.5 billion in 10 years, from an estimated $93.5 billion this year.
Representatives of 10 cities around the world gathered at the Concordia Summit, which is linked to the UN General Assembly annual meetings, to discuss their role in protecting migrant and refugee residents—regardless of national policies on immigration.
Traffic delays cost Los Angeles and New York around $19 billion and $34 billion, respectively, in 2017. The two US cities were among top five most congested in the world last year, joined by Moscow, Sao Paulo, and San Francisco, according to a new report from INRIX.
Further reading:

August 2018

The People in Order series presented 73 homes arranged in descending order of household income, from £400,000 to £3,240 (or roughly US $733,945 to $5,945 at the rate of exchange in 2006). As the sequence unfolds, it becomes clear that income don’t always correlate with homes,
Questioning the methodology behind the Economist Intelligence Unit's best cities to live in report, The Guardian asked how lonely are the people who live in the cities ranked highest? How high are the levels of anxiety in these cities? How likely are strangers to come to your aid if you are in distress? It adds, to paraphrase Benjamin Disraeli, there are three kinds of lies: lies, damned lies, and global liveability indexes.
It’s generally accepted that building better infrastructure is a way to boost economic growth and prosperity, noted GZEROMedia. Politicians love infrastructure investments as ways to boost employment, reward certain constituencies, and plump up support ahead of elections. But a new study suggests that those benefits can last for hundreds, even thousands of years. A team of Danish researchers has found that areas of Europe where the Romans built the most roads are generally more economically prosperous today.
A Chatham House event argued that super-cities now act to concentrate a country's better paid jobs, primarily in the service sector, and as such, if they do not properly connect to the rest of a country’s economy, national economies will suffer.
Water covers 71% of Earth’s surface yet only 2% of it is accessible as a source of fresh water. Pressure on this limited resource is rising, a trend likely to continue. By 2050, 66% of the world’s population will be living in urban areas but will they face a future in which water is rationed, asked Chatham House.
N ew animal species and behaviours are reportedly emerging within the growing urban sprawl, including fluorescent light loving arachnids and traffic exploiting, nut-cracking Japanese crows.
Further reading:
- What’s the Right Number of Taxis (or Uber or Lyft Cars) in a City? - The New York Times

July 2018

By 2030, an estimated 5.1 billion people will live in cities, representing 60% of the population. This concentration of people in dense, urban spaces will have profound effects on the infrastructure and environment of most cities, according to EY, and it will challenge the strategies and operating models of many consumer-facing companies.
For the second year in a row, New York has been declared the smartest city in the world, according to the IESE Cities in Motion Index. The index analyses the level of development of 165 cities from 80 countries, across nine dimensions considered key to being a smart, sustainable city: human capital (developing, attracting and nurturing talent), social cohesion (consensus among the different social groups in a city), economy, environment, governance, urban planning, international outreach, technology, and mobility and transportation (ease of movement and access to public services).
100 Resilient Cities (100RC) – pioneered by the Rockefeller Foundation – describes urban resilience as “the capacity of individuals, communities, institutions, businesses, and systems within a city to survive, adapt, and grow no matter what kinds of chronic stresses and acute shocks they experience
Reshaping cities to be greener and more sustainable is one of the more urgent responses needed to combat climate change, argued Friends of Europe.
With the population of the world’s cities projected to double in size between now and 2050, what impact will this have on global and national economies, asked Chatham House? Will the concentration of wealth and talent in these growing super-cities destroy economies by creating a two class system between rural and urban areas?
With the population of the world’s cities projected to double in size between now and 2050, what impact will this have on global and national economies? Will the concentration of wealth and talent in these growing super-cities destroy economies by creating a two class system between rural and urban areas, asked Chatham House?
According to the Brookings Institute, the 300 largest metros in the world accounted for 36% of global employment growth and 67% of GDP growth between 2014-2016, but only 21.9% of population growth. Not only are cities the engine of growth, but of disproportionate growth - many large cities are pulling away from their surrounding areas.
Further reading:

June 2018

Focusing on the UK, Prospect wrote about the yawning gulf between cities and towns. While the former have had a renaissance the latter have fallen on hard times.
The population of China’s cities has quintupled since 1980, reaching 813 million people today. By 2030, a fifth of all the world’s city-dwellers will be in China, according to Signal Media.
Further reading:

May 2018

Only 1% of the world’s land is currently used for urban structures (cities, villages, streets, infrastructure), while half of the earth’s habitable land is used for agriculture.
'Living laboratories': the Dutch cities amassing data on oblivious residents | Cities | The Guardian
68% of the world population projected to live in urban areas by 2050, says UN - United Nations Sustainable Development
Booming cities' unintended consequences: Homelessness and congestion | McKinsey & Company
Extreme Cities The Peril and Promise of Urban Life in the Age of Climate Change - getAbstract
Making space for manufacturing in the city - RSA

April 2018

March 2018

According to UBS, urban car ownership is set to fall by 70% by the year 2050.
In 1975, there were just three cities with populations greater than 10 million (Mexico City, Tokyo, and New York). By 2018 there were 31.
13 cities that are starting to ban cars | World Economic Forum
2018 Quality of City Living Rankings - Mercer
Cities only work if they accommodate rich and poor - FT
Do cities need to get smarter about collaboration? - EY
Get smart: making our cities great places to live | INTHEBLACK
In an urbanizing world, shrinking cities are a forgotten problem | World Economic Forum
No more potholes: when cities can repair themselves - FT
These are Asia's cities to watch | World Economic Forum
These are the best countries and cities for attracting and developing talent | World Economic Forum
Why self-driving cars will cause sprawl (according to an Italian Physicist)
These are the European cities with the worst traffic | World Economic Forum

February 2018

January 2018

About 40 percent of the population of sub-Saharan Africa, or nearly 400 million people, live in urban areas. Over the next 25 years, that number is expected to double, increasing demand for new and better infrastructure in some of the world's poorest countries, according to Eurasia Group.
By 2025, Asia may boast more than 20 of the world's top 50 cities by gross domestic product (compared with just eight in 2007).
Cities make up just 2% of the earth's surface but 53% of the world's population live in cities - i.e. for the first time, over half the world's population is urban and the trend towards city living will continue to grow.
Recent Shaping Tomorrow research on cities identified trends and implications across a number of domains

2017

December 2017

November 2017

October 2017

September 2017

August 2017

July 2017

2016

November-December

Cities in 9 out of 10 countries studied by the OECD have higher levels of inequality than the respective national average. Better planned urban housing, transport, schooling, public services and employment strategies could help avoid cities becoming inequality traps.
A Medium essay "The First Principles of Urbanism: Part I" argued that, before we can predict how technology might shape cities, we have to identify the essential efficiencies - and costs - of urban environments.

October

A driverless future for our cities - FT.com
A Look At 7 New Cities Rising Along The New Silk Road
Cities of Opportunity 2016: The living city - PwC
How AI might affect urban life in 2030 - Future Timeline
How big data will help with traffic management - Raconteur
Is your city as smart as its residents? - Quartz
McKinsey claimed that the urban world is shifting. About 600 urban centres will continue to generate about 60% of global GDP towards 2025, but the centre of gravity will move south and, even more decisively, east.
Making Urbanisation Work for Africa - World Bank
New Data-Driven Planning Tool Helps Cities Advance Climate Action - The World Bank
Reykjavik unveils plan to limit urban sprawl to become carbon neutral by 2040 | Reuters
Securing the digital city: Cyber-threats and responses - NEC: Safe Cities
Story of cities #future: what will our growing megacities really look like? | Cities | The Guardian
The First Principles of Urbanism: Part I – Sidewalk Talk – Medium
The Future of our Cities - Sefik Birkiye | TEDxBrussels - YouTube
Urban Food Park: Scandinavia is Growing a “Silicon Valley for Agriculture” | Urbanist
Urbanisation's impact on old and new - EY Better Working World
Why The Future Will Be Dictated By Cities, Not Nations - Co.Exist ideas + impact

September

August

July

May

April

March

February

Best European cities for start-ups - Digital City Index
Corporate HQ and the magnetic pull of cities - strategy+business
How cities are...and might have been - BBC
How cities can lead the way toward a low-carbon future - Ensia
How Smart Cities are Accelerating the Energy Transition - Environmental Leader
London's first driverless cars revealed
On the "ruin" of London - The School of Life
“Quality of Life in European Cities” Survey sheds light on people's satisfaction of their city - European Union
The experimental city - The Long+Short

January

2015

December

November

October

A New Road for Urbanisation - Beijing Review
A Summary of City Liveability Ranking - PwC Spark
Better Growth, Better Cities: Rethinking and Redirecting Urbanisation in Africa - The New Climate Economy
Cities of the future: the unexpected evolution - PwC Spark
Feeding the World - Shaping Tomorrow
How to create successful cities for the future - KPMG
Indian smart cities initiative will have little impact on urban development - Eurasia Group
Mapped: the world's most urbanised countries - The Telegraph
Municipal infrastructure in Germany requires significant strengthening - DIW Berlin
Smart Cities - The Open University
Smart city spending: 5 new research reports predict where the action will be - Smart Cities Council
The Edge Is the Greenest, Most Intelligent Building in the World - Bloomberg Tracking
Top 10 urban innovations of 2015 - World Economic Forum
Urban change in Germany - Views of the World
Urban mobility at a tipping point - McKinsey & Company
Urbanisation: How big data can drive policies to make cities work for the poor - The World Bank

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2014

2013

The CEO of IDEO argued that data shows that megacities, in general, are a good idea. They reduce carbon emissions, generate wealth, and increase productivity and innovation. One of the greatest design challenges of the 21st century will be ensuring everyone benefits equally from these cities’ explosive growth—instead of some being unfairly exploited by it.

The EIU noted that base metals and natural rubber prices were particularly weak in 2013, but growing signs of sustained recovery in the US construction and auto sectors, and of additional stimulus in Japan, are positives for metals prices in 2014. Furthermore, although they expect China's demand growth to be relatively unexciting (by recent heady standards), ongoing infrastructure projects and urbanisation will support consumption and demand from developing countries will sustain prices in 2014-18.

BCG research projects that by 2025 250 million additional Chinese will have moved to urban areas. This large-scale migration will not only support further infrastructure investment but also provide new opportunities for China’s huge labor force and encourage development of the service sector.

In Urban world: The shifting global business landscape, McKinsey argued that emerging markets are changing where and how the world does business. For the last three decades, they have been a source of low-cost but increasingly skilled labour. Their fast-growing cities are filled with millions of new and increasingly prosperous consumers, who provide a new growth market for global corporations at a time when much of the developed world faces slower growth as a result of ageing. But the number of large companies from the emerging world will rise, as well, according to a new report from the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI). This powerful wave of new companies could profoundly alter long-established competitive dynamics around the world.

2011

A new idea for a $300 house held out the hope of applying the principles of frugal innovation to housebuilding. (The idea also created a lively response.)
Research suggested that the most efficient way to spend money on the urban homeless might be to give it to them.
Time magazine analysed the rise of so-called intelligent cities.
Megacities in wealthier countries have much lower growth rates or even declining populations in future, while megacities in other regions of the world are expected to continue growing.
Rural areas do not just have slower growth than cities - their populations are declining in absolute numbers. Rural populations in developed countries reached their peak long ago, and in many developing countries too, rural populations are going down.
The UN calculated that there are about 827m people living in slums worldwide, and predicted that the number might double by 2030. This led to a challenge in a Harvard Business Review blog:why not apply the world’s best business thinking to housing the poor? Why not replace the shacks that blight the lives of so many poor people with more durable structures, built of tough mass-produced materials, equipped with the basics of civilised life, including water filters and solar panel, and “improvable” so that families can adapt them to their needs...and what's more, they should cost no more than $300 each.

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