Read the latest articles about Green Cities on UrbanizeHub.
Green cities make significant changes in order to protect the environment and create a more pleasant and healthy living space for their citizens. In order to be considered ‘green’, a city doesn’t just have to cover itself in trees and plants, but also move towards renewable energy, make its infrastructure more efficient and concentrate efforts to manage waste in a sustainable way.
“Via Verde” (Green Way) tries to reduce high pollution levels and make Mexico City less grim. It plans to give clean oxygen to 2500 people and filter all type of contaminants. However, despite the motivations, the Via Verde has received criticism of all types. The project first came to light when Change.org published the initiative and collected …
The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) has certainly had its hand in turning the gizmos and gadgets we used to dream of into a reality. The agency is still hard at work blazing the trail for future tech, issuing challenges for the creation of the most advanced things on this Earth. It has now taken on a new challenge, this …
Vilnius (Lithuania) has the cleanest air among urban agglomerations in Europe, but it is also one of the most motorized cities in the world, along with Athens (Greece) and Los Angeles (US) – see the top 10 motorized cities here. It seems unlikely for these two facts to be true in the same city, as …
A new paper in Atmospheric Environment suggests that wood-fired ovens in Sao Paulo are highly contributing to air pollution. The city is already switching to biofuels, but this new finding could present a setback for Sao Paulo’s green initiatives. Sao Paulo is the world’s fifth largest metro area with 21 million inhabitants and it is considered …
China has made remarkable advancements in many aspects of development (civil engineering, industry, urbanization, etc.), but landscape architecture can certainly be seen as the most outstanding of all. Here are ten examples of projects where sustainability, functionality, creativity and concern for the environment all come together. 1. Zhengzhou Vanke Central Plaza, by Locus Associates, Zhengzhou …
Freeing busy city areas from cars for a few hours is a policy initiative that seeks to reduce high pollution levels as well as allow people to enjoy a few hours of cycling and walking through iconic streets. Civil society has played an important role bringing up this initiative to their local municipalities, to the …
The Eixample district of Barcelona is the centre of a new initiative: Superblocks. This project plans to tackle air pollution and high noise levels by creating car-free spaces. Ildefons Cerda is considered one Barcelona’s architecture and urban planning pioneers of the 19th century. He is famous for having designed the Eixample district, an extension of …
We are seeing the use of solar energy increasing every year, at the expense of coal which is slowly, but surely being replaced – according to Spencer Dale, BP chief economist, it doubles its capacity every 20 months. How can solar technologies be made more attractive to businesses, institutions and, most importantly, regular citizens? One …
‘Cities Alive – Rethinking green infrastructure’ is a report focused on the role of green infrastructure in addressing the challenges of the 21st century. The report was the product of a collaboration between the Landscape Architecture and Foresight & Research & Innovation teams at Arup and has involved a wide range of specialists. In the …
Vancouver’s goal for 2050 is to get 100% of its energy from renewable sources. They have a 35-year ambitious and achievable Renewable City Strategy. “We can accelerate change by being a leader in the use of renewable energy in our operations” say experts from the city of Vancouver. Achieving the targets in the Greenest City Action Plan …