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.
The UK Government wants to make it easier to convert offices to residential use, but it runs the risk of turning valuable commercial space into more empty houses.
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.
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.
From Western rules of thumb about the affordability of mortgages to an obsession with high-rise private sector developments, India's approach to affordable housing is full of hopelessly outdated assumptions.
Our editors exhort the global urban development community to raise the level of media debate from awareness building to constructive engagement with the political conflicts that confront our cities.
The Government of India has launched a grand housing scheme for a 'slum-free India'. But can grand schemes work when planners and policymakers neither understand the reality of the urban poor nor connect to their aspirations?
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.
