Aarhus: Hygge and the City | 18 July 2019 | by Ferenc Szigeti | When it comes to active citizenship and volunteerism, Denmark hogs more than its share of reputation. As an example, not only is 40% of the country’s energy needs now met by wind turbines, but 75% of these are owned by local […]
Refugees and the City: Stuttgart, Athens and Lucca vie for openness A World Refugee Day Special |By Patrizia Barbera | June 20, 2019 | Swabians are known for two things: Their high work ethic (the most famous saying and life motto of many people in Southern Germany is “Schaffa, schaffa, Häusle baua!”; “Work, work, build a […]
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 […]
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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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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7 January 2016 | by Vineeta Shetty For a city that is on the world heritage map as an exquisite city of lakes, attracting the equivalent of twice its population in domestic and international tourists every year, Udaipur has an unbelievable total of eight working public buses plying on two dusty routes. Amazingly also, the city […]
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9 July 2015 | by Vineeta Shetty While most cities are struggling to manage the triple helix of collaboration (government, vendor and academia) to improve their smart credentials, the city of Amsterdam has effortlessly strung the fourth strand in its helix: the say-so of community. The DNA of Amsterdam is in trade and its mayor […]
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31 October, 2014 | Nairobi, Kenya Mayors give voice to their citizens and play a central role in building well-planned cities and making them engines of prosperity, innovation and inclusiveness, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon recognized on World Cities Day. In a world where already over half the population lives in urban areas, the human future […]
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