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.
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.
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.
Henrik Valeur visits Bangalore to see how researchers at the IISc are integrating bicycle sharing and electric vehicles on campus, a potential prototype for transit systems across India's cities.
As Mumbai progresses its newest 20-year Development Plan, Kristen Teutonico argues that many small interventions might do more for the city than a grand plan that may ultimately be ignored entirely.
Lots of 'solutions' get presented at events like the Urban and Housing Development conference in Cape Town, but can a model be sustainable if it excludes large parts of the city?
...but with the Al Maktoum International Airport, the logistics centre in Jebel Ali, and a flourishing of small-scale economic life, evidence would suggest otherwise, as Michele Acuto observes.
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.
