Posts tagged with 'land use'
Restoring Degraded Forests Could Bring Back Lost Rainfall, Cooler Temperatures
Restoring Degraded Forests Could Bring Back Lost Rainfall, Cooler Temperatures
Many people point to forest restoration as a way to curb climate change, where replanted forests sequester carbon in trees and soils. But emerging evidence shows that restoration can provide non-carbon climate benefits, too — in particular, reducing heat and regulating rainfall. Here’s what ...
How Vitoria-Gasteiz Has Optimized Land Use and Mobility to Save Lives and Fight Climate Change
How Vitoria-Gasteiz Has Optimized Land Use and Mobility to Save Lives and Fight Climate Change
Like many European cities in the 20th century, Vitoria-Gasteiz, capital of the Basque Country in Spain, experienced rapid population growth, followed by increased motorization and urban sprawl. What makes Vitoria-Gasteiz stand out is the coordinated action its leaders and community ...
Beyond Highways: Funding Clean Transportation through the US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
Beyond Highways: Funding Clean Transportation through the US Bipartisan Infrastructure Law
U.S. President Biden has touted the potential climate benefits of the Bipartisan Infrastructure Law, which makes historic investments in transportation, the country’s largest and fastest-growing source of greenhouse gas emissions. But while the bill’s investments could significantly lower transportation emissions, those reductions are not ...
The Top Urban Stories From a Year of Pandemic
The Top Urban Stories From a Year of Pandemic
As 2021 closes, most cities around the world continue to grapple with the uncertainty of a pandemic now in its second year. Amid dips and rises in cases, the emergence of new variants, and the ongoing challenge of vaccinating the ...
5 Priorities for Cities After COP26
5 Priorities for Cities After COP26
Without getting cities right, we cannot solve the climate crisis. Contributing to 75% of energy-related greenhouse gas emissions, it is impossible to overstate their central role. Cities’ choices influence and can drive change in every system that needs to be decarbonized ...
7 Major Transformations to Solve Urban Inequality
7 Major Transformations to Solve Urban Inequality
Owusu lives with his wife and four children in the Tantra Hills neighborhood of Accra, Ghana, where he shares his residence with five other tenants and their families. The house has a toilet and electricity, but the costs for both ...
5 Big Findings from the IPCC’s 2021 Climate Report
5 Big Findings from the IPCC’s 2021 Climate Report
Headlines related to recent extreme weather appear to come out of a science fiction book: Even the richest countries in the world can’t control widespread fires — they’re even burning in the Arctic. Deadly flooding in Germany and Belgium in July 2021 completely washed away buildings ...
Rosario, Argentina Uses Urban Farming to Tackle Economic and Climate Crises
Rosario, Argentina Uses Urban Farming to Tackle Economic and Climate Crises
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sustainable Food Production for a Resilient Rosario won the 2020-2021 Prize for Cities on June 29, 2021. Learn more here. (June 29, 2021) The residents of Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city, are no strangers to crises. When the country’s economy ...
New Land Use Mapping Paints a Clearer Picture of Urban Life
New Land Use Mapping Paints a Clearer Picture of Urban Life
Remote sensing has revolutionized how we measure and understand the Earth. We can now track deforestation across the globe, predict end-of-season crop yields and identify wildfires in near real-time. But exploration into its possibilities for urban areas has only just begun. ...
Disruption and Refocusing: COVID Response and the Climate Crisis at Transforming Transportation 2021
Disruption and Refocusing: COVID Response and the Climate Crisis at Transforming Transportation 2021
2020 brought tremendous disruption to the global transportation sector. As the world coped with a pandemic, millions began working from home and millions more lost their jobs. Logistics networks were broken and then reshaped. All while the planet experienced the ...
Europe Charts a Course for Sustainable Recovery from COVID-19
Europe Charts a Course for Sustainable Recovery from COVID-19
On May 27, the European Union unveiled a €750 billion ($826 billion) recovery proposal as a centerpiece of its economic response to the coronavirus crisis, while also increasing its existing budget. EU officials have said that 25% of the stimulus package will be set ...
Walking the Talk: What Can We Learn from Germany’s New Pedestrian Policy Framework?
Walking the Talk: What Can We Learn from Germany’s New Pedestrian Policy Framework?
Walking, as simple as it is, is key to many current urban issues. As car ownership grows, people are walking less and becoming less physically active generally, especially adolescents, more than 80% of whom are insufficiently active. The impacts are ...
A Tale of Two Cities in Brazil (and the Forest that Connects Them)
A Tale of Two Cities in Brazil (and the Forest that Connects Them)
What if you could send a WhatsApp message and a colorful green van would deliver free native tree seedlings directly to you? In Salvador, Brazil, the local government does just that. Painted with a picture of a biodiverse Brazilian forest, ...
Urban Transformations: In Durban, Informal Workers Design Marketplaces Instead of Getting Displaced by Them
Urban Transformations: In Durban, Informal Workers Design Marketplaces Instead of Getting Displaced by Them
Warwick Junction is a finalist for the WRI Ross Prize for Cities. Warwick Junction’s maze of stalls, arches and bridges can elicit wonder in any first-time visitor to South Africa’s largest marketplace. The area’s nine distinct markets are wedged between ...
‘Socially Aware Planning’ Key to Building and Sustaining Communities
‘Socially Aware Planning’ Key to Building and Sustaining Communities
When Rani, a mother of five in Khulna, Bangladesh, found that the tea stall outside her home kept flooding, she didn’t wait for a government climate resilience program to swoop in. Like many people in urban communities facing the effects ...
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