URBLOG

Making the invisible visible

Raporteur on US housing crisis

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing. 

The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

Investigator meets homeless victims of American dream

From New York to LA: America's deepening housing crisis: gallery

Reviving cities in Europe and the USA

Learning from city recovery in Europe and the United States

A new study from Joseph Rowntree Foundation  investigates why cities decline, how they recover and how low-income communities within them fare under the impact of dramatic changes.

The study focuses on the fortunes of seven European cities – Sheffield and Belfast in the UK; Bremen and Leipzig in Germany; Torino, Italy; Saint-Étienne, France; and Bilbao, Spain.

'Although cities in Europe and the US face urgent pressures – including  the need to reduce radically their reliance on fossil fuels – their underused spaces, existing infrastructure, knowledge and skills base, and diverse populations open up new opportunities for urban progress and environmental protection.'

Urban Population Trends

URBAN POPULATION GRAPH

Orginal Guardian data blog

Urbanization is, to be sure, still manifested in the continues massive expansion of cities, city-regions, and mega-city-regions,   it equally entails the ongoing socio-spatial transformation of  diverse, less densely agglomerated settlement spaces that are, through constantly thickening inter-urban and inter-metropolitan infrastructural networks, being even more interlinked to the major urban centres. We are witnessing, in short, nothing less than the intensification  and extension of  the urbanization process at all spatial scales and across the entire surface of planetary space.

Neil Brenner     ‘What is critical urban theory’ in CITY 13/2-3 June- September2009 p. 205

 

Cities under Obama

Metropolis now

On the campaign trail, Barack Obama promised to champion America’s cities and help them help themselves. So how are they faring under his presidency?

While cities have long been to a large extent invisible in American public life, the country now has a president who actually likes them and understands their centrality. He recognises that almost all the big trends in US demographics (smaller households, ageing), culture (more tolerant, less racist), economics (the need for innovation, less waste, greater self-sufficiency) and the environment (dying) either predict or recommend the growth of cities. And he thinks their present dysfunction - the source of most of the country's main domestic problems, such as inequality, unsustainability and declining competitiveness - can be cured.

Wrestling With Moses

Mother Courage

A bicycling mother arrested for rabble-rousing, Jane Jacobs has set the agenda for urban planning for half a century. But was she right?

It was only when [Robert] Moses tried to bring light and air into the city that he was charged with elitism. Like Jacobs, he wanted to democratise space - it was just his techniques that were different.

Jacobs checked Moses's mad worship of the car and his despotic excesses. But in a world of faux cobblestones, pedestrian zones and hanging baskets, aren't we a little nostalgic for Moses's obsessive audacity - for an era when planners could transcend the nimbies to execute grand gestures in the public interest?

An elevated alternative to Central Park

Walk the line   Manhattan's High Line Park, a disused aerial railway reborn as a lush ribbon of gardens, is about to open.

It is organic and architectural. Quite different to the more commercial, conventionally pretty elevated rail viaduct park Promenade Plantée in Paris. It is a wild, low maintenance environment, a curvi-linear boardwalk that will flow for 22 blocks through woodlands, grasslands, sundecks, art installations, public squares and performance spaces. In essence, be the cultural anchor of the neighbourhood.  

Florida on how recession might reshape urban america

Richard Florida: How the crash will reshape America

The economic crash has damaged some places much more severely than others. On the other side of the crisis, America’s economic landscape will look very different than it does today. What fate will the coming years hold for New York, Charlotte, Detroit, Las Vegas? Will the suburbs be ineffably changed? Which cities and regions can come back strong? And which will never come back at all?

New report compares community revitalization in the United States and the United Kingdom

Community Revitalization in the US and the UK

A new report from iCoCo and the Urban Institute compares approaches to community revitalization, community cohesion and sustainable neighbourhoods in cities across the UK and the US.

Detroit and a carless future

Road to ruin

Once the proud home of America's mighty car industry, Detroit now faces meltdown. Tomorrow, the bosses of Ford, Chrysler and GM will make their final plea for a $25bn government bailout to save their firms, the legacy of Motor City - and nearly 2m jobs.

  In pictures: US automotive industry in crisis

New UN STATE OF THE WORLD'S CITIES report

Harmonious Cities

The report from UN Habitat  adopts the concept of Harmonious Cities as a theoretical framework in order to understand today's urban world, and also as an operational tool to confront the most important challenges facing urbanization and development processes. For the first time, preliminary findings of a global analysis of spatial, socio-economic and environmental dimensions at the city level are presented in order to promote greater understanding of the dynamics and forces that promote harmony in cities. The book also analyses the determinants of urban growth or decline, which can help guide planners in supporting processes that lead to harmonious urban development.

John Vidal in The Guardian

'In a survey of 120 major cities New York was found to be the ninth most unequal in the world and Atlanta, New Orleans, Washington, and Miami had similar inequality levels to those of Nairobi, Kenya and Abidjan, Ivory Coast. Many were above an internationally recognised acceptable "alert" line used to warn governments.

India was becoming more unequal as a direct result of economic liberalisation and globalisation, and that the most unequal cities were in South Africa and Namibia and Latin America. "The cumulative effect of unequal distribution [of wealth] has been a deep and lasting division between rich and poor. Trade liberalisation did not bring about the expected benefits."'