In Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argued that urbanisation, especially suburbanisation, had been harmful to levels of civic engagement in the US. Sifting through recent data on volunteering and civic participation in US Cities, Andy Carr finds some anomalies that suggest density may indeed encourage greater civic engagement where educational and religious organisations are strong.
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.
Jacqueline Leavitt meets with women taxi drivers in San Francisco and Chicago to learn how they deal with safety risks on the public streets.
Martha Bridegam describes Dignity Village and other settlements setting out to prove that informal housing can be just as peaceful, lawful and neighbourly as any other residential area.
We tend to believe that wealthy countries don't have informal settlements. Not only is this false, but it allows western governments to further marginalise an already misunderstood community.
As coastal and delta cities face the impacts of rising sea levels due to climate change, planners are readying with a combination of sea wall solutions, ecological engineering and urban design, which one says will buy us three centuries of security.
Martha Bridegam is a lawyer and writer in San Francisco with a history of volunteer advocacy for informally housed city residents.
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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.
