Cities are energy-hungry, climate hotspots but when they become greener you see immediate benefits for the climate, the environment and those that live there.
Cities are both in the front line of increasingly extreme weather events such as heatwaves and floods, and major sources of the pollution that pushes climate breakdown. But green a city, and you help to make it more climate-proof and take the pressure off global warming. Once steps are taken to green cities, a host of other benefits emerge. The air becomes cleaner, reducing childhood asthma and a host of other lethal health complaints directly linked to dirty air. By involving a wide range of people in the process, cities can benefit from their knowledge and ideas to make greener cities work for everyone.
Story of change
Making streets people friendly: the rise of car free communitiesThe rise of ‘low-car to no-car’ residential initiatives is gathering pace in many cities around the world. In the UK they offer a glimpse of how to address multiple problems that cities face:...
Shifting away from the dominance of polluting, private cars toward clean mass-transit systems makes our streets and neighbourhoods safer places to play, and more peaceful for all residents. Living streets bring communities together too. Urban growing can rebuild a relationship between people and real food, make a shift to better diets easier, and also bring people together.
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Story of change
When behaviour changes overnight – from stay-at-home, to smoke free air and switching sides of the roadHow quickly, in peacetime democracies, are people prepared radically to change their behaviour? The Covid-19 pandemic provides some clues. One of the most...
Story of change
How does your city grow? Lockdown illuminates urban farming and gardening’s potentialThe lockdown and threat of a global pandemic has turned a lot of people who previously may have depended solely on supermarkets for their food into...
Story of change
S**t matters – how the Covid-19 crisis reveals both progress and the challenge of universal sanitationNever has a resource crisis been brought so swiftly to the attention of the global North than when toilet paper was suddenly in short supply and even...
Commentary
Coronavirus: we’re in a real-time laboratory of a more sustainable urban futureA pause has been forced on urban life. Quiet roads, empty skies, deserted high streets and parks, closed cinemas, cafés and museums – a break in the...
Story of change
Unnecessary travel? The return of breathable air and rethinking transport in a crisisBowing, perhaps to inevitability, the group of scientists responsible for assessing ways to cut the pollution that causes global heating, working group...
Story of change
From passive consumers to active producers – how crisis restrictions open opportunities for creative culture shiftsAs the global pandemic continues to reshape whole economies and the lives of populations, normal consumer behaviour has been suddenly altered. The focus has...
Story of change
Rethinking work – the sudden end of the regular 9-to-5 working day?For millions of people around the world working lives have been suddenly turned upside down. As offices, shops and other workplaces close in the face of a...
Story of change
The ‘instant’ local economy – how communities saved themselves when mainstream economics failed in ArgentinaArgentina is again in the grips of an economic crisis – with debt and default with the International Monetary Fund looming over the country. It all seems...
Story of change
There is such a thing as a free-ride! Rapid innovations in urban transportIn the United States, once the home of car culture, cities are experimenting with free public transport following successful international experiments. In...