Building & Design

skate parks

Nowadays, skateparks seem to be the new form of the traditional town squares we all remember visiting during our childhood and adolescence years.[read more]

retrofitting old schools

With the potential to reduce carbon consumption by more than 50%, and make £120,000 a year, retrofitting its school is an investment that Impington Village College, near Cambridge in England, can’t afford not to make.[read more]

Galleria Vittorio Emmanuele, Milan

The developmental link between Expo 2015 and Westfield Milano, as well as a physical rail link between Linate and these sites, suggests this is a strong opportunity to build a mall for the next generation.[read more]

Global climate change is a crisis, but it can also be an opportunity for new and innovative ideas, new opportunities to build sustainable economies, and new opportunities to build sustainable societies.[read more]

affordable housing

San Francisco voters passed Proposition C, establishing a city-wide affordable housing fund on the enormous margin of 31 percent. And it couldn’t have come at a better time.[read more]

solar-powered water pump

Can solar power help eradicate extreme poverty in the developing world? As we’ve shown a number of times, many social entrepreneurs think so, and are investing their time and money in a variety of technologies.[read more]

after the tsunami

Indonesia is prone to natural disasters. But today the country is better prepared. Why? Because of the lessons it learned in responding to a series of disasters that pummeled it between 2004 and 2010.[read more]

quality of life in Boston

For the past several years, the Boston Foundation has been collecting data on key indicators of the health of the city’s economic, social, and natural environment.[read more]

infrastructure/shutterstock

Building green infrastructure is often a good investment for nature, for the economy and for jobs. We should provide solutions that work with nature instead of against it, where that makes economic and environmental sense.[read more]

urbanism without effort?

While we might champion the programmed successes of certain iconic examples, we risk ignoring the backstory of urban forms and functions, and failing to truly understand the traditional relationships between people and place.[read more]

Paris' tree-lined streets

During the reign of French King Henry IV from 1579 to 1610, he and his Duke of Sully remade French infrastructure with tree-lined highways. A new word was introduced, promenade: a special walk to see and to be seen.[read more]

Green Lake Park, Seattle

While the greenbelt was the prevailing feature of the master plan, John Charles Olmsted also intended to locate a park or playground within a half mile of every home.[read more]