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Community-Driven Visions of Modernity in Mumbai
A view of Jubilee Street, near Bhendi Bazaar, at the heart of the area to be redeveloped. The largest cluster redevelopment project in Mumbai is about to begin – a precedent-setting "upliftment" of 16.5 acres in the heart of the city's southern tip...
The Missing Link in London’s Tech City
Proposed design for an office block in "Silicon Roundabout" in East London, where policymakers hope to create a technology hub. Can you engineer an innovative neighborhood? London officials are banking on it. Last November, Prime Minister David...
Hong Kong MTR: A Sustainable Model for Mass Transit
Hong Kong Mass Transit Rail (MTR) is one of the most efficient, safe, reliable and affordable systems in the world. Its extensive network carries over 4 million passengers per day, connecting Hong Kong Island to Kowloon and the New Territories. Rush...
Occupy: The Sky’s the Limit
In the United States, the mainstream media seeks to place protest out of sight and out of mind, often reducing serious social movements to nothing more than tentative uprisings. But now, more than 1500 cities and towns worldwide have been "occupied...
Capturing Sao Paulo's Sidewalks
Just as a flaneur in Hong Kong would be remiss in his or her explorations without looking up into the density of urban life that occurs in skyscrapers and apartment towers, looking at the ground offers a glimpse of art, utility and public works in a...
London Protesters Turn Public Space into Civic Space
Polis recently featured a quote from James Holston in which he called for reactivation of the "social imagination" in using spaces of insurgent citizenship to generate alternative future political, economic and social structures. With the...
Implementing the Right to the City in Brazil?
Comunidade Campo Grande Jurubatuba, an informal settlement in Santo Amaro subprefecture, São Paulo. Magic Condominium Resort tower in the background.The right to the city is a concept employed by a variety of actors at different scales, with its use...
A World Bank Economist on Globalization and Inequality
"To question the profit objective is not to denigrate its importance, much less to argue that it should not be an important, perhaps the most important, criterion. But it should not be the sole criterion…The erection of 'financial viability' as the...
Interlude: The Emergence of Cities in Books
On a particularly foggy Friday evening in San Francisco (with nothing to do but putter about indoors), I sat down to watch a TEDx talk on the Ngram Viewer by Harvard University researchers Erez Lieberman Aiden and Jean-Baptiste Michel...
Update on the Solar Decathlon
Empowerhouse, Parsons the New School for Design and Stevens Institute of Technology.Almost exactly two years ago, I went to visit the Solar Decathlon in Washington, D.C. This year’s Solar Decathlon had the same goal — to design and build the best...
Modeling Open Source Cities
"Crowdsourced Moscow 2012: A Public Space Game" (above) was shown on Monday after a panel discussion with Adam Greenfield at the Strelka Institute. This was part of Social Media Week, a series of events focused on the potential for network...
Low-Income Residents Reclaim Rome's Derelict Buildings
Mailboxes on the main gate of the Metropoliz occupation site in Rome.The high volume of vacant and derelict buildings woven into the urban fabric of Rome has provided an opportunity for those unable or unwilling to pay formal market rents to...
