Cities of the World

Resilience is the word of the decade, as sustainability was in previous decades. No doubt, our view of the kind and quality of cities we as societies want to build will continue to evolve and inspire a new descriptive goal. Surely we have not lost our desire for sustainable cities, with footprints we can globally and locally afford, even though our focus has rightly been on resilience, after what seems like a relentless drum beat of natural disasters around the world.

It speaks to the question: what is the city we want to create in the future? What is the city in which we want to live? Certainly that city is sustainable, since we want our cities to balance consumption and inputs to make a footprint that can last into the future. Certainly it is resilient, so our cities are still in existence after the next 100-year storm, now apparently due every few years.

And yet: as we build this vision we know that cities must also be livable. Indeed, we must view livability as the third indispensible—and arguably most important—leg supporting the cities of our dreams: resilient + sustainable + livable.

Daily Beast
What's Killing the Gas Station?
Daily Beast
Some, like the BP in Soho and the stations on Wisconsin Avenue in Bethesda, are victims of high land values in bustling urban and suburban cores.

Adrian Smith + Gordon Gill Architecture, dedicated to sustainable architecture, has imagined and designed city so compact that nothing is more than a 15-minute walk away.

Dubbed “Great City,” the prototype suggests a Chinese city that might be built in 2021 on the outskirts of Chengdu, a city in the southwest of Asia.

Taking up just 1.3 square miles and 320 acres, Great City could be home to 80,000 people. The project proposes that 15 per cent of the total acreage would be devoted to urban parks and green areas, 60 per cent to buildings and 25 per cent to roads and walkways.

To design the world’s first pedestrian-only city, the architects considered a massive transit centre where public transport would be concentrated...

Happiest Cities For Young Professionals: Forbes - Huffington Post Huffington Post Linscheid says San Francisco's diverse culture, unique character and lively neighborhoods make the city a top visitor destination and a “leading urban center...

Best City Parks In The US: 10 Relaxing Green Spaces For A Little Urban Zen
Huffington Post
... the City by the Bay so livable.

Santiago Chile announced they’re going to become a “smart city” in 2013, and is just one example of a growing number of areas around the globe preparing and modernizing for the future.

In fact demographers have long predicted the mass urbanization of metropolitan areas across the world. According to the United Nations, by the year 2050, 80% of the world will be living in urban areas. The equivalent of seven Manhattan size cities will be built each year until 2050. For these cities to thrive they must use smart technology to its fullest. Let’s take a look at what’s available now and what’s coming down the pipe...

The 19th century was a century of empires, 20th century was a century of nation states and the 21st century will be a century of cities...

This outstanding infographic (courtesy of postscapes.com) begins with some information about our current state of urbanization.

Did you know that 1.3 million people are moving to cities each week?! It then explains the need for smart cities and delves into what is required to establish these intelligent connected environments, how the smart city may take various forms in the developing worlds and what specific technologies are necessary to achieve such grand goals in practice.