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1. Journalism about urban environments
Journalism is an important contributor to knowledge sharing about urban environments.
Examples of journalism that contributes towards an understanding of urban resilience (some free, some subscription-based) include the following (this table is not a complete or exhaustive list).
Is there an opportunity for municipal planners to liaise with journalists about matters that need to be addressed? An example of the power of journalism to help our understanding of urban issues and environments is their work in displaying complex data to show an accurate picture. An example of this from The Economist below describes an example of drawing together data to help explain complex patterns and situations in urban environments.
The BBC (free to access)
The BBC provides a range of stories and articles about, and relating to urban environments.
The Future Planet section in particular is a good source.
Bloomberg CityLab (requires subscription)
Bloomberg CityLab, which is part of the overall Bloomberg news service, covers an excellent and wide range of matters and stories relating to urban areas.
It is a subscription service that is well worth reviewing to see if it support research and urban activities.
The Conversation (free to access)
The Conversation is a global source of information covering various aspects of urban and city matters.
Urban planning:
https://theconversation.com/uk/topics/urban-planning-1404
Cities:
The Economist (requires subscription)
A range of stories, articles and pieces about urban environments around the world, and resilience and sustainability are covered by The Economist on a regular basis.
The Financial Times (requires subscription)
The FT covers urban environments through a number of sections, including energy, house & home, transport and infrastructure.
As well as their general coverage, they have a section on urban planning and resilience.
The Guardian (free to access)
The Guardian publishes many stories about the world’s urban environments.They have a specific section on cities, which provides a range of viewpoints such as history, urban regeneration, smart cities, homelessness, in-depth profiles and case studies of how cities may evolve.
The New York Times (requires subscription)
The New York Times publishes a range of pieces about urban environments, covering ecological, physical and socio-economic aspects. Detailed graphics are frequently made available.
Their Cities for Tomorrow section in particular looks at how cities around the world are working out solutions to make themselves more sustainable:
Smart Cities Dive (free to access)
Smart Cities Dive provides (mostly US-centric) regular updates on various aspects of city life.
WIRED (partially free to access)
WIRED magazine has a section on urban design, covering various aspects of urban thinking, concepts and planning.
2. Books
A wide variety of excellent books exist on urban environments, in a range of different styles.
A small sample is provided below.
Age of the City - Why our Future will be Won or Lost Together
The Stories Old Towns Tell - A Journey through Cities at the Heart of Europe
By Marek Kohn
How Ten Global Cities Take On Homelessness - Innovations the Work
By Linda Gibbs (Author), Jay Bainbridge (Author), Muzzy Rosenblatt (Author), Tamiru Mammo (Author)
A wide variety of excellent books exist on urban environments, in a range of different styles.
A small sample is provided below.
3. Podcasts
Podcasts vary in content and style - though there aren't too many of them that are regularly updated. There's been a pattern of urban podcast starting and then stopping. It is worth keeping track of latest podcast trends through whichever channel(s) you use.
Urban Exchange
Urban Exchange: Cities on the Frontlines is the podcast series from SmartCitiesWorld and the Resilient Cities Network (R-Cities), delivering conversations between international city leaders and industry practitioners that share ideas to solve urban challenges.
Monocle on Urbanism
The team at Monocle produce regular, short (3-5 mins usually) clips about urbanism.
Examples chosen from the team at reSITE
The team at reSITE (a platform connecting people and ideas to improve the urban environment) provide their own podcast, and also a list of their favourite other podcast shows on designing cities.
https://www.resite.org/podcast
https://www.resite.org/stories/the-most-inspiring-podcasts-on-urbanism-design-and-architecture
The Sustainable City
The Sustainable City Podcast addresses questions such as How do we build a zero-carbon city? In an automobile-obsessed culture, and with EVs on the march, are car-free communities really possible? And, do green cities inevitably mean gentrified cities, only for the rich?
Creating Green Cities
This podcast has been created by the Ecologic Institute (http://ecologic.eu) as part of NATURVATION (http://naturvation.eu), an EU-funded research project focusing on urban nature-based innovation.
City of the Future
City of the Future is a podcast created by Sidewalk Labs, looking at various aspects and topics of urban environments.
Cities in Mind
Cities in Mind is a podcast to learn about cities, technology, innovation and the people behind them. All through an Asian perspective.
Reinventing Transport
This series of podcasts offer various perspectives on urban transport.
4. Citizen engagement
How citizens are engaged is crucial for the future. Most of the time, the level of engagement is pretty low. Can this change in future? Would an "urban app" (per the idea put forward in this portal) help?
The Doughnut Model
The Doughnut offers a vision of what it means for humanity to thrive in the 21st century - and Doughnut Economics explores the mindset and ways of thinking needed to get us there...
Eurocities citizen engagement
Eurocities represents over 200 of Europe’s largest cities to improve the lives of over 130 million residents across 38 countries.
The Kaspersky Lab
Do you know about the Kaspersky Lab project?
This interactive model invites people to add ideas and predictions for places all around the world.
5. Think Tanks
Think Tanks cover a wide range of urban issues.
The World Economic Forum platform for urban transformation
The World Economic Forum's Platform for Shaping the Future of Urban Transformation is working with more than 100 global partners to ensure that these changes deliver a future that is more sustainable, resilient and prosperous for all.
The World Economic Forum Strategic Intelligence platform
This part of the WEF website provides valuable regular updates about urbanisation from a wide range of sources. It requires registration to access (free of charge).
The Centre for Liveable Cities (CLC)
The CLC (based in Singapore) distills key learning points from Singapore’s urban development journey since its independence in 1965, and creates knowledge to address emerging urban challenges, sharing it with local and international urban leaders.
The City Leadership Initiative
The City Leadership Initiative exists to equip mayors and senior city officials with leadership skills and management tools to tackle their complex challenges and improve people’s quality of life.
Oxford Economics Cities and Regions
Their forecasting services covers 8,000 cities and regions across the world, with regularly updated data and forecasts providing regional economic outlooks and specific city insights such as global city rankings. Their Global Cities Index 2024, covering 1,000 cities, is available here.
The Oxford Network for the Future of Cities
The Oxford Network for the Future of Cities seeks to re-think the urban area as a flexible and evolving space that proactively responds to the greatest challenges of our time, like the climate crisis or the next worldwide public health emergency.
One Billion Resilient
The Adrienne Arsht-Rockefeller Foundation Resilience Center (Arsht-Rock) builds individual and community resilience in the face of climate impacts.
Places Journal
Places Journal is a resource focused on the future of architecture, landscape, and urbanism.
Townmaking
Townmaking is an insightful portal with a variety of content using a systems based approach, from a team based in Amsterdam.
Urban Sustainability Exchange
use publishes case studies from registered practitioners who want to share their projects and experiences with others. Browse our growing database of case studies and discover initiatives making cities more inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable.
PeopleforBikes
The PeopleforBikes team publishes a City Ratings review, which looks at cities around the world and assesses how good they are for cycling. It doesn't cover every city in the world, but it does provide a good general overview.
6. Supranationals
As described in the Multinational initiatives page, Supranational organisations including various UN agencies, Development Banks and International Advisory agencies provide a variety of resources to support cities and towns.
UN-Habitat
UN-Habitat works with partners around the world to build inclusive, safe, resilient and sustainable cities and communities. UN-Habitat promotes urbanisation as a positive transformative force for people and communities, reducing inequality, discrimination and poverty.
Some key links include:
UNDP
As the United Nations lead agency on international development, UNDP works in 170 countries and territories to eradicate poverty and reduce inequality.
Some key links include:
UNDRR
The United Nations office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNDRR) oversees the implementation of the Sendai Framework for Disaster Risk Reduction 2015-2030, supporting countries in its implementation, monitoring and sharing what works in reducing existing risk and preventing the creation of new risk. Disaster risk is frequently referred to in this portal.
Some key links include:
MCR2030 (part of UNDRR)
MCR2030 (Making Cities Resilient 2030) is the global partnership under UNDRR (United Nations Disaster Risk Reduction) that is dedicated to strengthening local resilience. It is a partnership that cities, towns and also organisations can join to receive updates and invitations to knowledge sharing events and activities, including projects.
A resilience roadmap by MCR2030 is available here:
UNEP
UNEP’s mission is to provide leadership and encourage partnership in caring for the environment by inspiring, informing, and enabling nations and peoples to improve their quality of life without compromising that of future generations.
Some key links include:
UNESCO Cities Platform
UNESCO is committed to enhancing the sustainability of cities through policy advice, technical assistance and capacity building, drawing on its longstanding normative and operational experience in the fields of education, sciences, culture, communication and development.
Some key links include:
UNESCO Creative Cities Network
UNESCO Global Network of Learning cities
The World Bank
The World Bank provides development resources and funding for projects around the world.
The OECD
The OECD provides policy and statistical information and data about urban environments.
Support from the International Energy Agency (IEA)
The IEA provides a raft of information about energy and our future.
A Report on Net Zero Cities from July 2021 contains information about resilient, smart, sustainable urban energy systems.
An associated section on Buildings provides a range of guidance.
An associated Report on Transport in 2021 also contains valuable information.
7. Businesses
Many businesses provide support and expertise for urban environments. Here are just a few...
Accelerating Action
The Accelerating Action tool exists to help people work out how their efforts are contributing towards the SDGs.
Arup on Cities
The Arup on Cities centre explores issues affecting our cities today and how we are shaping them for the future.
Citizen Lab
Citizen Lab is a dedicated community engagement platform, backed by a team of experts.
Henning Larsen
Founded in Copenhagen with offices worldwide, Henning Larsen is an architecture, landscape architecture, urbanism and interior, graphic, and lighting design studio. They carry out a lot of work on urban landscapes with built
PwC on urban infrastructure and energy
As this piece from PwC describes, global governments continue to shape the energy transition, cities are playing a vital role in developing, implementing and overseeing energy policies.
8. Academic Research Collators
A large amount of valuable, detailed and peer-reviewed research and information is published by academic publishers. There really is a rich seam of rigorous academic information at our fingertips. Just a few examples are provided below (in alphabetical order).
Frontiers
Frontiers research journals are community-driven and peer-reviewed by editorial boards of over 202,000 top researchers. A variety of papers on urban environments exists, for example:
https://www.frontiersin.org/journals/sustainable-cities
Research Gate
Research Gate has over 135 million publication pages and more than 20 million researchers contributing their work. It is a place where everyone can access science.
Urban search summary:
https://www.researchgate.net/search?q=urban
Cities search summary:
https://www.researchgate.net/search/publication?q=cities
Towns search summary:
Sage Journals
The Urban Studies section of Sage Journals is an international peer-reviewed journal for urban scholarship.
Springer
Springer journals and publications including books offer a broad perspective on urban matters.
A variety of aspects on urban environments exist, for example:
https://www.springer.com/series/13196 (Advances in 21st Century Human Settlements)
https://www.springer.com/journal/11252 (Urban Ecosystems)
ScienceDirect
ScienceDirect is a source of peer-reviewed journals and articles.
Urban search summary:
https://www.sciencedirect.com/search?qs=urban
Towns search summary:
9. Academia
Universities around the world are carrying out valuable research and activities for urban environments. Just a few are listed below.
The Stockholm Resilience Centre (Sweden)
The SRC has a vision for a thriving and resilient biosphere that enables well-being for all.
NYU Stern Marron Institute (USA)
The Institute champions a new model of academic research to address these challenges and improve the opportunities available to the billions of urban residents around the world.
Carnegie Mellon Remaking Cities Institute (USA)
The Remaking Cities Institute (RCI) conducts regional, national, and international research in urban design including the impacts and opportunities of changing mobility, changing work, resilient regional communities, engagement, and citizen participation planning processes, and sustainable development.
MIT Senseable City Lab (USA)
The mission of the Senseable City Laboratory - a research initiative at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology - is to anticipate these changes and study them from a critical point of view.
National University of Singapore (NUS)
The Centre for Sustainable Asian Cities serves as a platform to develop cutting-edge urban planning and design solutions as well as building technological innovations for high density environments that will be applicable to many cities in Asia and other developing countries.
University of Amsterdam (the Netherlands)
The Centre for Urban Studies combines longstanding expertise across the social sciences and humanities.
University of Bristol (UK)
The Centre for Urban and Public Policy Research is at the forefront of multi-disciplinary research at the intersection of urban studies and social and public policy.
University of Cambridge Martin Centre (UK)
The Martin Centre is a research centre in the Department of Architecture at the University of Cambridge. The Centre was founded by Professor Sir Leslie Martin in 1967 as the Centre for Land Use and Built Form Studies, and formally became The Martin Centre in 1974.
UCL Urban Laboratory (UK)
UCL provides a laboratory for the invention of new methods and innovative comparative frameworks in order to address conditions of globalisation, and challenge epistemological and geographical hierarchies in urban studies, because difficult urban challenges demand new modes of working.
University of Sydney (Australia)
UoS researches the design, characteristics and processes of urbanism (living in cities) and the policy and planning solutions proposed to create better cities.