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COPENHAGEN: Maputo and Rotterdam

Rising sea levels: A tale of two cities

When people talk about the impact of rising sea levels, they often think of small island states that risk being submerged if global warming continues unchecked. By 2050 the number of people living in delta cities is set to increase by as much as 70%, experts suggest, vastly increasing the number of those at risk.

Migration in European Cities

Free online access for a limited period to a special issue of European Urban and Regional Studies.   (available until 31^st December 2009).

Special Issue: Migration    Volume 16, Issue 3, July 2009

Diane Perrons  Migration: Cities, Regions and Uneven Development

 Enzo Mingione  Family, Welfare and Districts: The Local Impact of New Migrants in Italy

Jane Wills, Jon May, Kavita Datta, Yara Evans, Joanna Herbert, and Cathy McIlwaine  London's Migrant Division of Labour

Alison Stenning and Stuart Dawley  Poles To Newcastle: Grounding New Migrant Flows in Peripheral Regions

Allan M. Williams  International Migration, Uneven Regional Development and Polarization

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

 

Beyond the peripherique

After the Pompidou, can Rogers transform the other side of Paris?

Ten of the world's most renowned architects present their strategies for a dramatic overhaul of the unvisted parts of the world's most visited city

"I don't know any other big city where the heart is so detached from its arm and legs"

Revolving buildings: the new shape of things

Darmstadt and Dubai present the extreme possibilities of contemporary living. In the first, a small town south of Frankfurt, you find the Passivhaus Institut. Since 1996, it has been experimenting with the ultimate in environmentally intelligent building design. [...] Architecture, they used to say, is frozen music. In Darmstadt and Dubai, the extreme possibilities seem to be a solemn fugue or a drunken samba. Maybe the real future will have a different soundtrack.

Le Corbusier at The Barbican

Le Corbusier — The Art of Architecture is the first major survey in London of the internationally renowned architect in more than 20 years. This timely reassessment presents a wealth of original models, interior settings, drawings, furniture, photographs, films, tapestries, paintings, sculpture and books by designed and written by the architect himself.

Le Corbusier's concrete legacy in Britain has been both celebrated and reviled. Brian Dillon visits the vast complex of futuristic rot that was once the seminary of St Peter's, and finds hope amid the decay

 

Migrant workers in UK construction

Building a New Home: Migration in the UK construction sector

This IPPR report investigates the role of migrant workers in UK construction, and the impact that their migration into this industry is having on its existing construction workforce, on the development of the next generation of UK construction workers, and on the performance of the industry as a whole.

THE RIGHT TO THE CITY

David Harvey in NLR

Examining the link between urbanization and capitalism, David Harvey suggests we view Haussmann's reshaping of Paris and today's explosive growth of cities as responses to systemic crises of accumulation”and issues a call to democratize the power to shape the urban experience.

David Harvey at LSE - 18.30 18th November

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."'