Harvard economist Ed Glaeser and former New York City Health Commissioner Mary Bassett were recently interviewed on national radio about COVID-19 and the future of our cities. What both of them touch on is the long history that cities and pandemics have had together, which… Read More
Azeem Azhar’s recent newsletter, titled “Don’t call time on the megacity: cities will learn and adapt,” is a reminder of the tensions that cities face. There are forces of attraction. And there are also forces of repulsion. Cities all around the world continue to create… Read More
Harvard economist Edward Glaeser has a new paper out talking about “urbanization and its discontents.” In it, he argues that while cities today are working remarkably well for highly skilled people, they don’t seem to be delivering the same upward mobility to lower skilled people.… Read More
This UN report (2018) on urbanization trends is a fascinating way to understand how our world is growing and changing. So today’s post is about some of my takeaways. If you have others, feel free to add them to the comment section below. But first,… Read More
Shaping Cities in an Urban Age is the third book to come out of the London School of Economic’s Urban Age project. It was published last fall. The first two titles were, Living in the Endless City (2011) and The Endless City (2007). If you’re… Read More
The Guardian is running a series right now called: The next 15 megacities. A megacity is typically (but loosely) defined as a city (or metropolitan area) with a population of at least 10 million people. By 2035, another 15 cities are expected to become megacities according… Read More
Matt Daniels over at The Pudding recently visualized the world’s population in this spiky 3D map. You need to take a look. Better on desktop. The data is from 2015, but you can also compare it to and show the change from 1990. Here is… Read More
One of our partners sent me a terrific article last week by Sam Anderson on the founding of Oklahoma City. I have said this before on the blog, but I am deeply fascinated by the origins of cities because, oftentimes, the story isn’t all that… Read More
“The concentration of economic growth and prosperity in large metro areas defines the modern global economy, creating both opportunities and challenges in an era in which national political, economic, and societal trends are increasingly influenced by subnational dynamics.” -Brookings Institute The Metropolitan Policy Program at… Read More
Today’s post is going to be about a handful of things that have caught my attention. – Gary Hack, who is the former dean of the University of Pennsylvania School of Design, recently published a book called Site Planning: International Practice. It is a textbookish… Read More
