Three metropolises, three realities, one objective: public innovation as a tool for participatory solutions to the most urgent metropolitan problems.
Montevideo, Montreal and São Paulo are the protagonists of "Public Innovation Labs".

A three-year work that promotes the exchange and construction of ideas in the field of urban and metropolitan politics to improve service delivery and public policies [...]

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The World Bank estimates that developing countries need to invest around 4.5 percent of GDP to achieve infrastructure-related Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and to stay on track to limit climate change by no more than 2 degrees Celsius.
Yet, the current level of all climate-related development financing (from bilateral sources and multilateral development banks, and development finance institution sources) is less than 1.5% of projected needs.
This illustrates the complexity of the low-carbon transition.
Low-income countries must maintain the necessary focus on basic goals such as improving energy access, providing safe and quality transport services, water, food security, and education—while forgoing opportunity, dealing with additional risks, and prioritizing climate-smart investments [...]

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Delegates from some 184 countries gathered in Bali for the 2022 Global Platform for Disaster Risk Reduction where they reviewed efforts to protect communities against a rising number of climate hazards and other catastrophes globally.

Current approaches to recovery and reconstruction are “not sufficiently effective in protecting development gains nor in building back better, greener and more equitably.”

A core recommendation of the Bali Agenda is to “apply a ‘Think Resilience’ approach to all investments and decision making, integrating disaster risk reduction with the whole of government and whole of society [...]

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New commitments made at the Africities summit held from 17 to 21 May 2022 in the Kenyan city of Kisumu.
The leaders of local authorities and economic players agreed to promote green mobility, create green jobs, adopt circularity for better management of plastic waste and renovate urban housing.
These are all issues at the heart of the development of intermediate cities in Africa [...]

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According to Rwanda Land Management and Use Authority (RLMUA), over 61 per cent of the population in the country currently live in informal settlements.
The new master plan introduces a flexible and incremental approach and seeks to accommodate 3.8 million population in 2050 from the current 1.6 million population.
The new model, involves contribution of land from the residents on which the housing blocks are built for them meaning that residents are not relocated but rehoused.
The approach seeks to upgrade such slums by encouraging dwellers to upgrade their houses while ‘minimizing recurrent evictions’.

The upgrading model sets up basic infrastructure such as water, roads, disaster control infrastructure, electricity and others to pave the way for residents to upgrade their houses and do businesses [...]

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The Dakhla Smart city project is part of the new generation of urban projects that promote sustainable development and strengthen connectivity and mobility.

The new urban pole, which covers about 275 Ha in the rural municipality of El Argoube, follows in the wake of a public-private partnership between the Al Omrane Group and an Economic Interest Group (GIE) of private promoters [...]

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Saudi Arabia’s crown prince has launched his latest ambitious, architecturally challenging project: a mountain ski resort with a folded vertical village and a three-kilometre man-made lake.
Crown Prince Mohammed bin Salman launched “Trojena”, a mountain tourism destination to be built in Neom - the futuristic megacity touted to be 33 times the size of New York City [...]

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The planned community of Columbia, Maryland, is trying to add urban-style density, without losing its suburban soul — or its founder's utopian ideals.
Today, with a population of 105,000, Columbia is counted among the success stories of the mid-century New Towns movement that reimagined suburban living.
But Rouse’s “better city” never quite achieved a proper downtown [...]

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In the smallest of towns and the biggest of cities, these new zoning reform policies help boost small businesses, promote housing development, and put people over parking.
In today's age of environmental sustainability concerns, there's also more awareness about the spatial costs of parking — the fact that suburban parking lots can be larger than the square footage of the buildings they serve, and a string of downtown parking lots can look like a mouthful of missing teeth on the face of a walkable public realm.
There can also be water quality costs, as rainfall lands on all that asphalt and then runs off into nearby waterways or storm sewers, taking oil and other surface contaminants with it [...]

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Whether it's digitalization, innovative community funding for equity, trends in inclusive design, the Great Resignation...

The 2022 Trend Report for Planners explains how these trends are important for planners, shares insights on signals on the horizon, and helps you make sense of the future.

Keep the American Planning Association report handy as you can use it throughout the year [...]

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With 125 kilometres of street closures for bicycles on main avenues on each Sunday and an efficient cycling network of 590 total kilometres, the Colombian capital is one of the most cycle-friendly cities in South America.
Since 2018, the city has even declared itself the Bicycle Capital of the World, Capital Mundial de la Bici
In February 2021, the municipal government announced the biggest bicycle programme in Bogota's history, allocating almost 2.2billion Colombian pesos (around EU490m) to bicycle projects until 2039 [...]

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As we face increased flooding, China’s sponge cities are taking a new course.

Innovative water management projects aim to slow water on land in some approximation of natural patterns.

The key to greater resilience, say the water detectives, is to find ways to let water be water, to reclaim space for it to interact with the land.
Slow Water approaches are bespoke: they work with local landscapes, climates and cultures rather than try to control or change them.

The purpose is to restore natural slow phases in order to support local availability, flood control, carbon storage and diverse forms of life [...]

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It is almost impossible to imagine the streets of Dhaka without the colourful shape of the cycle-rickshaw. Or without the hundreds of thousands of drivers who operate the rickshaw across the dense and congested streets of Bangladesh’s capital city.
Despite this overwhelming presence, the vehicle is strikingly absent from plans, policies, and visions for the urban future of Dhaka.
This thesis tries to make sense of this discrepancy [...]

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Urban forests, plant-festooned buildings and other ‘rewilding’ efforts can help bolster climate resilience, biodiversity, even moods.
The Bosco Verticale buildings in Milan, completed in 2014, are part of a broader redevelopment plan that replaced railroad tracks and surrounding wastes.
The area, called Porta Nuova, includes commercial spaces, UniCredit SpA's newCesar Pelli-designed headquarters, a public square and a park.
A botanical garden, Biblioteca degli Alberi, or BAM, opened there in 2018, boasting more than 100 species — 500 trees forming 22 circular forests, and 135,000 aromatic plants, hedges, shrubs, bulbs, vines and aquatic plants that have drawn woodpeckers, moor hens, great tits and blue tits, among others. [...]

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The new Shift publication aims to directly challenge and mobilize local decision-makers on their responsibility and their ability to act in order to make their territory more resilient.
In order to reflect the diversity of territorial realities and to make it easier to interest elected officials, this new publication focuses on the specificities of six categories of territories in terms of climate resilience:
Cities, Countryside, Metropolises, Mountains, Coasts and Overseas.

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South East Faversham will comprise 131 hectares of rural land.
Dissected by two roads and the Faversham to Canterbury railway line, the new town aims to provide housing for a mixed-income community.
"The Duchy has drawn together an emerging master plan to deliver 2,500 homes with an aspiration to provide 2,500 jobs," said the estate.
"The proposals are to bring forward a very high quality, sustainable, mixed-use settlement that will become a thriving new urban extension to the town" [...]

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SLA’s design of a green rooftop park for Copenhagen’s new waste-to-energy plant combines hiking trails, playgrounds, vantage points, climbing walls and street fitness – along with a 500+ meter ski slope. All of it designed within a wild and sensuous mountain nature with plants, rockscapes, 7000 bushes and 300 trees.

CopenHill embodies the notion of hedonistic sustainability while aligning with Copenhagen’s goal of becoming the world’s first carbon-neutral city by 2025 [...]

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Cities around the world are at the early stages of incorporating hydrogen into their energy mix.

Issy-les-Moulineaux, a Paris suburb with a population of around 70,000 people, aims to become a “near zero-emission city” by 2050 at the latest.

As part of its climate strategy, the city of Issy-les-Moulineaux wants to be a pioneer of hydrogen power from renewable sources.

This includes demonstrating how it can be used for mobility and residential heating, and establishing one of the first hydrogen districts in Europe [...]

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The challenge of the project was to develop a climate adaptation which could also promote improved urban living: connecting fragmented urban areas, creating new attractive meeting points, and bringing nature closer to the residents.
The area of 60 ha, which contains two large subsidized housing associations, borders the Usserød River and consequently suffered severe flooding around 2011.
The Kokkedal project contains an extensive catalogue of solutions for climate adaptation and water methods. Whereas rainwater was formerly hidden in pipelines, the rainwater management is now made visible, offering new recreational urban possibilities [...]

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In the same way that the city of Barcelona cannot be understood without its coastline and without its origin as a port, its future will be determined by its ability to manage the unpredictable effects of climate change in this unique area [...]

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New South Wales' new planning minister has dropped requirements to ban dark roofs that had been hailed by environmental groups.

Their cost and regulatory burden were fiercely criticised by property developers during its public exhibition period.

In western Sydney, a light-coloured roof could reduce indoor temperatures by an average of 4°C to 10°C during a heat wave, according to a study commissioned by the federal government.

Temperatures on bitumen streets can also rise by 4°C due to the heat island effect [...]

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