September 24, 2018 | by Preeta Bannerjee | Britain’s health and social care systems are ailing. Strapped for cash, its public services are straining to meet unprecedented demand from an ageing population. The number of people aged 85 and older needing 24-hour care is on course to double, according to a recent report by Newcastle […]
Chandigarh: The Fight for the Radiant City | 22 May 2018 | by Vineeta Shetty Like Berlin surrounded by the Russians, Chandigarh often has to be defended like an island of sophistication from the marauders surrounding her. The city was master-planned in 96 hours, reflecting the urban philosophy laid down by the Congres Internationale d’Architecture […]
Bilbao: Making is Believing | 30 September 2017 | by Vineeta Shetty When architect Susana González was transferred by her firm from Buenos Aires to Bilbao in the early 80s, she looked around in tears at the soot-covered buildings and the sludge-choked river, thinking she had been given a hardship post. Urban and industrial overdevelopment […]
What can you give a city that has everything? The resort of San Sebastián was born smart: envisioned and planned where sea and land came together in a sheltered bay with an island, surrounded by green hills, three beaches, a river and a sufficiently wide floodplain to build streets, picturesque squares and gardens. The Belle Epoque […]
Vitoria-Gasteiz: Blue and Green All Over 5 September 2017 | by Vineeta Shetty While many cities are throwing a ring road around their conurbation as a garland of progress, Vitoria-Gasteiz opted to gird itself with a 30 kilometre Green Belt, connecting six peri-urban parks. The Basque political capital in northern Spain, Vitoria-Gasteiz visualizes itself as […]
The Hague: Europe’s Cyber-Guardian 24 August 2017 | by Preeta Bannerjee | In the first half of 2017, ransomware outbreaks disabled organisations around the world and wrought huge economic costs. Malware called Petya crippled shipping, infiltrated ATM machines and knocked out transport systems. Then WannaCry inflicted havoc on the UK’s National Health Service, forcing it […]
The Smart Citizen is a Well-Nourished Citizen 3 August 2017 | by Vineeta Shetty | India may have titillated the tastebuds of the Pharaohs of Egypt but continues to be home to a quarter of the world’s undernourished people, three times the entire population of France. World Food Programme noted a year ago that while hunger […]
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Smart Indore: Gentle Winds of Change 13 April 2017 | by Vineeta Shetty | Even as Madhya Pradesh’s sedate political capital, Bhopal, is settling in for the night, 190 kilometers away, its commercial capital, Indore is just rousing for the evening out. The characteristic breeze of the Malwan plateau in central India stirs the appetite, […]
Mechelen: How a Flemish City Fought Off ISIS Recruiters | 28 February 2017 | by Preeta Bannerjee | US President Trump’s recent executive order to bar the entry into the US of refugees and immigrants from seven Muslim-majority countries has provoked an outcry. But it’s not just Americans who are apprehensive; Europe is being tested […]
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Chicago: The Outlier in Trump’s Rust Belt | 19 January 2017 | by Kate Lanham | As the date for the presidential inauguration dawns, the ever-growing divide between rural communities and urban centres in the United States continues to define public discourse. As with the Brexit referendum in the United Kingdom, pollsters leading up to […]
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Zaragoza Sources the Code to Citizen Co-Creation | 20 October 2016 | by Daniel Sarasa Funes | Back in 2003, a group of local geeks and open source advocates met with Zargoza’s future mayor Juan Alberto Belloch who, after being the last all-mighty minister of Justice and Interior in the last of prime minister Felipe […]
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Copenhagen: The Great Dane of Sustainability 22 September 2016 | by Vineeta Shetty | Sharing does not come intuitively to the Danes. Julian Agyeman recounts in his book, “Sharing Cities” that when the Danes colonized Greenland after 1721, they taught the Inuit “that communal living—shared food, shared hunting trips, shared wives—was sinful.” Three hundred […]
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22 July 2016 | by Katherine Rhoden | Place branding has boomed as a marketing concept in the past decade or so, but it has existed in some form for centuries. Alexander the Great believed that the success of a place relied heavily on its image among those outside of the place, making place branding virtually […]
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27 June 2014 | by Vitor Pereira No one can pinpoint how, when or why it started. What was the spark? Could it have been the melding of vast cultures with African, northern Europe, Arab and Asian roots? Could it have been the big corporations and their white-collar executives, ready to enjoy the sunlight, great […]
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