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Dundee, Bilbao, Curitiba, Helsinki and Turin have been awarded UNESCO City of Design status for their input to the international design industry.

For over a century, writers and architects have imagined the cities of the future.

 In the late 1960s, architect Paolo Soleri envisioned “arcology” - a word that combines “architecture” and “ecology," with a goal of building structures to house large populations in self-contained environments with a self-sustaining economy and agriculture. “In the three-dimensional city, man defines a human ecology. In it he is a country dweller and metropolitan man in one. By it the inner and the outer are at ‘skin’ distance. He has made the city in his own image. Arcology: the city in the image of man.” (Paolo Soleri)

The Town Square Initiative is a yearlong volunteer effort in which Gensler designers set out to unearth and re-imagine unexpected open space in cities around the globe. All 43 Gensler offices were invited to participate in the conceptual project, in which we challenged our designers to identify open space in the city and reimagine it as a town square.

Visit the link for more images, diagrams and information on Gensler New York’s design of their future city.

Welcome to the first annual Urbanist Toolkit Bracket Challenge, where the hottest trends in urbanism go head-to-head in a conceptual game that challenges the instincts, tastes, and urban design wisdom of readers.

Here's how it works:

Thirty-two in-form tools of urbanism have been seeded, according to their popularity and utility, into four regional groups: the Ed Koch, the Sidewalk Ballet, the Le Corbusier, and the Dandyhorse. The four #1 seeds -- car share, bike lanes, farmers' markets, and the waterfront promenade -- are paired off against decidedly more obscure options.

It's the nature of an elimination tournament: two urban design features enter, one urban design feature emerges victorious. At the moment we have a choice between Bike Lanes and Pedestrian Street.

The Pedestrian Street easily trumped the Waterfront Promenade, 69-31, to advance to the finals. On the left side of the bracket, Bike Lanes sent congestion pricing back to the theoretical realm, 60-40, in a match-up that many people found particularly aggravating, for reasons that commenter Quinn Raymond elucidated at the very start of the bracket challenge: "The final question is basically, 'Would you rather stab yourself in the face or the chest?'"

(Confused? Check out the Final Four, the Elite Eight, the Sweet Sixteen, or the initial post for more info on the entries.)

For many years, architects and city planners from around the world have been trying to create the green ideal: an entire city built to strict environmental standards- highly functional while still retaining aesthetic value.

Here’s a look at some green building and community design that caught our attention in recent months and may (or may not) become reality in the next several years. Their physical footprints may be large, but by using features such as wind power, solar, rainwater recycling and advanced air quality controls, their carbon footprints don't have to be...

The Communication Hut by Herreros Arquitectos is hung from three poles placed beyond its floating amoeba-like ring, and sits in the trees scattered through one of South Korea’s public squares. At all times of day, the ring emits WiFi signals to encourage occupation of the space, while at night it glows to provide a feeling of safety.

The Communication Hut encourages the public to use the space as an outdoor living room. By providing a relatively unobstructed ground plane, the occupants of the space can see friends from afar and children can play safely. The suspended structure, then, gives the site its boundaries, suggesting an enclosed space where sitting and stopping is welcomed. The Communication Hut is a subtle yet effective intervention in the workings of the city...

Parisian architects Irina Cristea and Grégoire Zündel of Atelier Zündel Cristea (AZC) conceived an inflatable trampoline bridge over the Seine last fall and their latest structure the Peace Pavilion, temporarily exhibited last month in the Bethnal Green Museum Gardens, uses a similar concept and materials creating a realized sculptural work that can be entered or climbed.

The beauty of the shape of this inflatable sculpture lies in its perfect symmetry and fluidity. The geometry of the pavilion blurs the notion of inside and outside. The project is a self-supporting structure with 4m in height and 20m⊃2; in area, designed entirely with lightweight materials – 77.96m⊃2; of PVC membrane and 20m3 of air.

Lighting designers are applying the skills of their profession to further the goals of urban design, creating safer, more stimulating, and better functioning cities.

Cities rarely stand still. It is in their nature to evolve, expand, and, in some cases, contract. Whichever way they go, cities are always reinventing themselves, often one neighborhood at a time. Outdoor lighting can be a crucial part of this metamorphosis. Across the U.S., urban regeneration projects are stimulating activity in derelict infrastructure, defunct waterfronts, neglected plots of land, and dilapidated buildings. Though not completely erased, the use of fluorescent tubes and glaring security lights has been scaled back and in their place is a growing appreciation for sensitive, appropriate, and considered lighting.

The arbiters of this decades-long shift are lighting designers. Their role in improving conditions to make safer, more accessible cities is increasingly key to urban design...