Teaching Children about Urban Design and Architecture
As Whitney Houston famously sang, "Children are our future/ Teach them well and let them lead the way." Kids learn about science, math, health and even home ec in school. However, little is taught about building »
Gaming and the City
As a child I loved SimCity. Building a city was a lot of fun, but having Godzilla destroy my city was even better. The city building franchise started in 1989 and 23 years later you can pre-order the newest release. While there are games - like SimCity, that are all »
Rio de Janeiro's Mayor: His Vision For Cities
Eduardo Paes, mayor of Rio de Janeiro, gave a TEDTalk recently about cities. Using Rio as an example, he listed and expanded on four "commandments" that govern the creation and sustainability of cities of the future in »
Classifying the Built Environment: Zones, Urbanicity, Transects, and Trends
Each day countless commuters trek through the commuter zone to the CBD, from T3 to T6, from “MSA but not in a central city” to “central city of an MSA,” from »
Invent the Future: Your Responses
Recently we asked: What one thing would you invent (anything goes) for our global future? Flying cars? Limitless energy generators? Vertical farm skyscrapers? Be creative - we're all ears! (see below for the »
Green Innovation: Making Ripples or Waves?
Without systems thinking, even the best new ideas can only go so far says WWF’s Dax Lovegrove. What will it take to join up the dots? Green innovation is gaining momentum, but will it fundamentally shift business »
What is a Resilient City?
The Academy of Urbanism recently explored that question at their Annual Congress held in Derry~Londonderry, Northern Ireland from May 9-11, 2012 with an incredible range of engaging speakers, interactive workshops, and healthy dialogue, all through the prism of the »
Classifying the Built Environment: Zones, Urbanicity, Transects, and Trends
The built environment houses various building types, densities, networks, land uses, and functions; author Brian Engelmann explores the facets of the built environment »
Megacities: Eight Ideas from #citytalk for Developing Future Cities
By Joe Peach of This Big City Last week we hosted another #citytalk tweetchat with the New Cities Foundation on the topic of Future Cities. With the world urbanising, »
CNU20 Report: Stroad, the Futon of Design Options
“Our current development pattern is causing us to go broke!” So began the CNU presentation by Chuck Marohn, executive director of StrongTowns.org. The simple premise is that we need to stop what we’re »
Size Matters: A Smaller Carbon Footprint
Somehow modern life seems to have ingrained a distorted idea in our heads – the assumption that bigger is better. Most people are happy to live in, own, or drive the biggest and costliest they can afford (or get »
New Cities Summit 2012: Day 3
From May 14th-May 16th, participants from across the world met in Paris for the inaugural New Cities Summit. Organised by the New Cities Foundation, a non-profit Swiss institution dedicated to improving the quality of life in the 21st-century global city, the »
Microcities: Five of the World’s ‘Smallest’ Cities
By Joe Peach, Founder of This Big City. See Related Post: Megacities: Five of the World’s ‘Biggest’ Cities For the first time ever, the majority of the world’s »
New Cities Summit 2012: Day 2
From May 14th-May 16th, participants from across the world are meeting in Paris for the inaugural New Cities Summit. Organised by the New Cities Foundation, a non-profit Swiss institution dedicated to improving the quality of life in the 21st-century global city. »
Megacities: Five of the World’s ‘Biggest’ Cities
By Joe Peach of This Big City As the world urbanises and our lifestyles evolve, cities are getting bigger. And I’m not just talking about population sizes. As This Big City kicks off a fortnight of themed posts »