URBLOG

Where are the women?

A new report from Urban Forum

Urban Forum is launching a major new report which, based on research over the country, points up the severe inbalance of men and women at senior levels in Local Strategic Partnerships (LSPs).

Environment, New Housing and Immigration

Brendan O'Neill on dangerous arguments in the new housing areas debate

'Today's anti-immigrant lobby is more likely to complain about immigrants' carbon footprint and their noxious impact on our green and pleasant land.'

World Habitat Day 1st October

The United Nations has designated the first Monday in October every year as World Habitat Day to reflect on the state of human settlements and the basic right to adequate shelter for all. It is also intended to remind the world of its collective responsibility for the future of the human habitat.

Brochure

LONDON VOICES, LONDON LIVES

The Inside Story

Peter Hall reflects on his new book which gathers the voices of hundreds of Londoners - and reveals what they really feel about their lives and communities.

A vivid picture of everyday life across London - this most dynamic, fast-moving of cities - is what I have tried to capture in my book London Voices, London Lives. It is an account, in their own words, of the people who live and work in the city.

'Generally, London's story has been a quite different, even contrary, one: a story of almost constant change and instability...'

Soweto Kinch in Lambeth

Kinch Quartet play the Museum of Garden History

Following a stunning appearance at Greenbelt, award winning alto saxophonist Soweto Kinch will be performing at the Museum of Garden History in Lambeth on 12^th September. Last year Soweto released the first of a two-part concept album, A Life In The Day Of B19 - Tales Of The Tower Block in which encounters on the street, the benefit office, a chat show and at a gig come to life in the manner of a radio play with jazz interludes.

'We have yet to accord such mediators their place in the communicative process.'  Bob Catterall CITY 8:2

Edinburgh launches MSc in The City

A new inter-disciplinary programme that is focused on the city and its fortunes in a global frame

How do we approach the city? By submitting to it, celebrating, resisting, subverting, jamming?

We invite you to join us in questioning the city: to explore how it has been represented and diagnosed in the past; to encounter significant traditions of urban scholarship, both theoretical and methodological; to comprehend the variety of city lives and processes, both in western and other contexts; and to experiment in new modes of representation, analysis, and city building.

Welcome to the future

Rem Koolhaas: Guardian Profile

"Here is an architect who could happily sit down one day with God to design refined and purposeful public buildings knitted into the fabric of old cities, and the next with the devil to design the wayward architecture demanded by ultra-capitalism."

Immigration keeps London business afloat

The Impact of Recent Immigration on the London Economy

Twenty years of unprecedented migration to London from overseas has boosted the London economy and made it more flexible and resilient – but boroughs need responsive financing policy to address the tensions that arise from rapid change, says a City of London report .

FOCUS ON URBAN INDIA

From The Guardian

Death of the small town

   'Globalisation has sucked the life out of many American and European towns. India's growing economy has had a more uneven effect: while adding glossy new suburbs to the metropolitan cities of Delhi, Mumbai and Bangalore, and revitalising a few small cities and towns, it has bypassed many provincial centres, especially in the densely populated north, exposing hundreds of millions to swift civic decay and crime-infested politics.'

Profile: Bengaluru/Bangalore

'...the leading example of how a city populated by clever, ambitious, English-speaking technicians in what is still known as the developing world can use the tools of the new information age to abolish geography - to undercut European and American costs so much, with no (or better) effect on quality, that it destroys the historic advantages of adjacency, when the counting house was best placed next to the warehouse and the warehouse next to the factory.'

Also:

New Statesman on public transport in Delhi

'From SUVs to battered buses and auto-rickshaws, Delhi's transport captures the divide between rich and poor. But its cheap, safe Metro system may level the field.'