What will the future of cities be like? It's a riveting question and one that excites the passions of the folks at The Atlantic Cities website. Their work here "explores the most innovative ideas and pressing issues facing today's global cities and neighborhoods." Visitors should browse through their newest articles, which might include "Why Our Kids Need Play" and "How Poverty Taxes the Brain."...
Presaging the movements of political ecology, "smart growth", sustainable development and other trends of the past three decades, R. Buckminster Fuller remains one of the most misunderstood Renaissance individuals of the 20the century. Today, Mr. Fuller is most well known for inventing the geodesic dome, which he hoped would become a model for low-cost housing across the world. Over his life, Mr....
The Guardian newspaper has crafted this wonderful site to bring curious urbanologists news from Seoul to San Francisco. Supported in part by the Rockefeller Foundation, the site offers "a forum for debate and the sharing of ideas about the future of cities around the world.” Articles on the homepage might include pieces on investment in Detroit by Chinese corporations or the shifting public art...
Located at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI), the Polis Center is an academic research center that focuses on urban and urban-related issues. Their goal is to "to develop knowledge that will serve the common good and invigorate the sense of community in this city and beyond." To this end, they have placed on the site a great deal of material about their numerous research...
As the number of miles logged on the US Interstate Highway System continued to increase dramatically over the past decade, many major metropolitan areas have seen traffic and commuting times grow rapidly. Certain cities, such as Atlanta (among others), are having particularly difficult coping with this problem, as they have little or no effective means of public transportation. To address these...
Launched in 1999 by the UN-HABITAT group, the Global Campaign on Urban Governance was designed to support the implementation of the Habitat Agenda goal of "sustainable human settlements development in an urbanizing world." Specifically, the Campaign is dedicated to increasing the capacity of local governments around the world to practice good urban governance, with specific attention paid to the...
Founded during the throes of the Great Depression in 1932, the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM), was established to serve as the official nonpartisan organization of the nation's cities with populations of 30,000 or more. Each city is represented in the conference by its chief elected official, and the primary roles of the USCM are to "promote the development of effective national urban/suburban...
The spatial dimension and geographic variation of poverty has been the subject of great scholarly debate among policy-makers and academics for numerous decades. Some have commented that dense concentrations of underclass persons create a "culture of poverty," while others lay the blame on architects, urban planners, and a host of others. This engaging and useful site is a product of the Bruton...