Going against the national government's own best practices and the consensus of urban planners worldwide, the Delhi Development Authority (DDA) continues to shift thriving urban communities into lifeless high-rise residential towers, ignorant of the economic base the existing neighbouroods provide to their residents, as Greg Randolph shows in Govindpuri.
Formed during the boom years, the UK's localism agenda was intended to act as a brake on development. With investment capital scarce after the global financial crisis, the policy is starting to look unaffordable, with campaigns to make all sorts of projects look like "nationally significant infrastructure projects" (NSIPs) to speed up planning delays and attract funding, as James Patterson-Waterston discusses.
San Francisco is developing a new paradigm for car parking with meter prices set by market demand and apps to allow drivers to find spaces and pay for them on their smartphone, with New York following in its wake.
A new subway line through an old informal neighbourhood in Buenos Aires is shaping up to be a political battle between social idealism and engineering pragmatism as Drew Reed discovers.
In a quiet London suburb two rival "neighbourhood forums" put forward under new "localism" laws have brought religious and cultural divisions into the light.
A multi-stakeholder dialogue about opportunities and barriers in and for cities to become future-just and regenerative habitats.
Henrik Valeur presents a well-developed proposal to turn one "sector" in Chandigarh into a car-free area, and the confused behaviour of the authorities attempting to implement the idea.
Faranak Miraftab gives the floor to members of DAMPA, a grassroots women's organisation with some rather sound strategies for raising awareness and sensitising police officers.
Neither the right nor the left like the appointment of an emergency manager for Detroit, but he will be critical in calming the municipal bond market and preventing infrastructure costs from inflating.
Sceptical of the narrative that cities have wholeheartedly embraced urban gardening, Matt DelSesto spies a connection between city crackdowns on urban gardens and police crackdowns in poor communities.
Henrik Valeur confronts us with the health problems caused by motorised transportation, suggesting that mobility may not be about the balance between public and private, but between motorised and non-motorised.
Cairo's street vendors have benefited from the turmoil of post-revolutionary Egypt, but their demands still fall on deaf ears at the national level.
James Patterson-Waterston is a consultant on strategy, urban planning and development at Happold Consulting, with a particular focus on projects in…
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The Global Urbanist is an online magazine reviewing urban affairs and urban development issues in cities throughout the developed and developing world.
Its readers are drawn from the urban policy and international development sectors, and include urban planners, officers in local, national or international government agencies, civil society leaders, and researchers.
