A hundred-year-old street market in Bangalore was demolished in the dead of night last month. The colourful stalls of vendors spilling out onto the streets were illegal encroachments, but how much history and local colour is lost by enforcing the law now after so many years of peaceful coexistence?
Alan Gilbert doesn't believe there is one, but if one must speak of a global urban agenda, he would point to local private sector lobbies as the common force driving similar agendas in cities around the world.
Governments in many places can exhibit a loss in the basic competencies required for effective urban planning. In the UK and India, some of the slack is picked up by the private and non-profit sectors, with surprising and innovative results.
Joe Peach casts a critical eye over Amsterdam's cycling network, sketching out its limitations while still admiring its formidable success in moving people onto sustainable transport.
Applying the principle of democratic equality to the planning of road space leads to powerful arguments for the pedestrianisation of our streets and the expansion of bus and cycle networks.
A reality check on Boris Johnson's new cycle superhighways, noting that behind the scheme are ridership targets that remain paltry compared to northern European cities.
More vehicles, more trips, more people -- but gridlock remains a rarity. What gives?
But in a city where the old is constantly making way for the new, how do we ensure that our institutions first of all acknowledge these assets and then protect them?
Sign up here for email updates
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.
