Best Practices

Green Building/shutterstock

In the United States, buildings account for 41 percent of primary energy consumption. Tackling rising energy consumption in U.S. buildings will require a more coordinated and coherent approach[read more]

Urban Aging Population

Think back to the last time you helped an elderly person cross the street. In most cases, you’ll remember making it up and over the opposite curb with just seconds to spare.[read more]

Helsinki Green Lease

Green leasing news here in North America has been generally hard to come by thus far in 2013, but some interesting activity continues abroad. These foreign transactions involving environmental obligations are instructive for us to consider.[read more]

Logo from NYIT Energy Conference

Sustainable Cities Collective will be covering the NYIT Energy conference Thursday, 6/13, from 9-4 pm. Follow us @sustaincities ! The “NYIT Energy Conference: Preparing for Climate Change”- will cover emerging topics in energy storage, resilient infrastructure, and emergency preparedness for cities around the globe.[read more]

Urbanism Speakeasy is a podcast with a particular focus on human-scale design. We love streets and places designed for people, regardless of how they happen to travel. No advanced technical degrees or silver spoons required on this show. Our primary goal is to share technical information and trends in ordinary language. The show is...[read more]

how cities shape us

Have we designed our communities in such a way that we are contributing to the obesity epidemic and other health problems? This infographic illustrates some of the findings from a recent Pew Research study.[read more]

Gezi Park

Two years after the Arab Spring events we are witnessing another similar uprising in a large urban plaza filled with protestors of varying backgrounds seeking potentially disparate outcomes but gathering in the same place nonetheless.[read more]

Boulder, Colorado

Parking revenues are used as an economic development tool for downtown Boulder, paying for pedestrian and street improvements in the area and helping create a vibrant destination for visitors.[read more]

mapping rooftop energy

Kudos to the people at MIT who created this interactive map showing property owners in the city how much electricity can be generated from their rooftops.[read more]

infill and resuse

There is a coalition in Phoenix that hopes to begin sprawl repair, and even an office within the city to aid in the proliferation of walkable, interesting, and healthy neighborhoods.[read more]

mapping impoverish communities

Enumeration: to be counted; it is the fundamental basis of inclusion in the city. To exclude a community from census and mapping activities is to effectively render it invisible to urban decision-making processes.[read more]

Phoenix/shutterstock

How does a community lose 2+ acres of prized urban parkland without learning about it beforehand? How does a city government follow open meeting laws but fail to connect with affected residents?[read more]