Posts tagged with 'quality of life'
The $250,000 Question: What Does a Transformative Urban Project Look Like?
The $250,000 Question: What Does a Transformative Urban Project Look Like?
The WRI Ross Prize for Cities seeks to answer the question every city wants to know: How do you achieve lasting, large-scale, positive change in your city? This week, applications for the inaugural $250,000 WRI Ross Prize closed and the ...
Public Space in Cities – What’s the Measuring Stick?
Public Space in Cities – What’s the Measuring Stick?
The famed American landscape architect and Central Park designer Fredrick Law Olmsted said that parks are the “lungs of the city.” However, many cities around the world—from growing Addis Ababa to sprawling Mumbai and dense Sao Paulo—currently lack adequate public ...
Streets of Bhubaneswar, India
India's Smart Cities Mission Takes A Forward Step
In the last 15 years of my professional career, many concepts around urban development have come and gone, but none have evoked such an excitement as the Narendra Modi government’s proposed 100 Smart Cities initiative, that has a price tag ...
Picnic Mexico City Public Space
How Public Spaces Make Cities More People-Oriented
Nossa Cidade (“Our City”), from TheCityFix Brasil, explores critical questions for building more sustainable cities. Every month features a new theme. Leaning on the expertise of researchers and specialists in WRI’s sustainable urban mobility team in Brazil, the series will feature in ...
New bike paths in São Paulo
New survey shows increased satisfaction with urban transport in São Paulo
Are you satisfied with the quality of life in your city? In São Paulo, overall perceptions of quality of life increased over the past year for one-third of the population, and remained stable for half according to the city’s Municipal ...
São Paulo's Rua da Consolação is often congested for hours each day, leading residents and city leaders to wonder if other transport modes such as bikes and mass transport can be used to cut down on traffic while increasing sustainable mobility. Photo by Carlos Barretta/Flickr.
Study: São Paulo commuters lose one month per year sitting in traffic
While the idea of ‘free time’ is by nature associated with individual choice and being momentarily ‘free’ from the demands of everyday life, the amount and quality of this time we have at our disposal is closely linked to city-wide ...
Trees bring a multitude of benefits to cities, helping the environment as well as residents' quality of life. Photo by Tristan Higbee/Flickr.
Urban trees boost quality of life for city dwellers around the world
Trees often fade into the background of what people understand as the city, yet they bring immense value – including environmental benefits like filtering water run-off and cleaning the air as well as increasing health and quality of life – ...
Connecting smart cards and mobile phones enables cities to offer more efficient mobility and a safer, quality experience for all transport users. Photo by EMBARQ Brasil/Flickr.
Connecting data and technology for smarter transport systems
Emerging technologies, together with big data, are tools that allow us to better plan our cities and revolutionize the efficiency and quality of our transport systems. We are seeing threads of this already, as millions of people use smart cards ...
Researchers find strong correlations between access to green space and increased levels of physical health and happiness. Photo by Mark Carter/Flickr.
Urban green space makes people happier than money
As much as cities can be drivers of economic and social progress, sometimes it’s downright stressful to live amid the hustle and bustle of today’s urban centers. To escape this stress, many urban residents take refuge in green public spaces, ...
Walking in Bangalore. Photo by Benoit Colin/EMBARQ.
In photos: Walking in Bangalore reveals the plight of pedestrians
Bangalore has rapidly become a megacity. At nearly 10 million people, the city has already doubled the size of its population in just 20 years. This explosive urban growth has been coupled with increased motorization, with now more than 50% ...
Urban planners and city leaders look for a new framework to think about sustainable transport that promotes accessibility over mobility. Photo by Trevor Pritchard/Flickr.
Ekistics offers new perspective on mobility versus access
Being able to use a bus to travel ten miles to a super market is not the same as having a grocery store around the corner. Mobility, even sustainable mobility, is not the same as access. In order to create ...
Pedestrians passing across a congested road in Mumbai, India. Photo by Jerry H/Flickr.
From traffic flow to pedestrian access: Shifting Mumbai’s parking policy
In a recent study, the International Energy Agency (IEA) projected that the area required for parking in India if motorization trends continue as they are today will reach between 10,000 and 20,000 square kilometers (3,861 to 7,722 square miles) by ...
Bikers in the Forests of Palermo, Buenos Aires. Photo by Claudio Olivares Medina/Flickr.
Show off your skills – and your streets – with the ‘Open Streets’ Video Contest
Each Sunday streets across cities in the Americas are blocked off to all motorized vehicles. In the absence of cars from their normal ecosystems, new patterns of public interaction emerge in these public spaces. Instead of automobiles, people appear: runners, ...
Social, environmental, and economic impacts of BRT. Photo by Benoit Colin/EMBARQ.
4 ways cities benefit from bus rapid transit
Around the world, cities are searching for sustainable ways to transport residents quickly, efficiently, and safely throughout their streets. One such solution is bus rapid transit (BRT), which is already widely implemented in both the developed and developing worlds. New ...
Vancouver, Canada
Vancouverism: The prescription for a healthier city?
Three weeks ago I had the pleasure of representing EMBARQ at the International Women’s Forum (IWF) in Vancouver, Canada. The event focused on modern movements shaping the world, including trends influencing our lives, communities, and future. Since urban transport is ...
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