Amsterdam – fewer parking spaces making room for green oasis

Amsterdam transit commissioner Sharon Dijksma announced that the number of people allowed to park in the city center will gradually decrease. At the moment, these people require a permit to access a specific space, but the cost of it will also rise in the near future. The proposed strategy is to reduce this number by 1500 …

How about car-free streets?

Focusing on sustainable mobility As a solution to heavy traffic in the center, followed by a lack of attractiveness in the central area, cities nowadays are turning their traditional streets into pedestrian thoroughfares, this way claiming city’s streets for people. Jane Jacobs, a journalist and great activist that influenced the urban studies of the 20th …

The Green Promise to Financing Sustainable Cities: Green Bonds

Sustainalytics has been a key player in the green bond markets worldwide by supporting municipalities, governments and multinational companies accelerate their sustainability agenda and investment ambitions and align them with globally accepted market standards for sustainable development and green finance such as Green Bond Principles, Social Bond Principles, Sustainability Bond Guidelines, and Climate Bonds Initiative. …

New insights into urban concentration and economic growth

Urban concentration, according to the dominant view, brings with it an array of benefits which include reductions in poverty, pollution and inequality. Apart from this, one of the most widely acclaimed one is economic agglomerations and productivity gains, which in turn, redound to faster and better national economic growth. The prevailing notion is that a …

Romanian cities opening up to digital public services

As governments face new types of challenges, from higher expectations of citizens regarding quality and efficiency, integrating new technologies in administrative processes as well as a higher degree of participation, to the extent of co-creating solutions, the digital transformation has no way of being successful unless is being built on collaboration and partnership. But the …

INTERVIEW | Prof. Albert-László Barabási on networks, global inequality and artificial intelligence

UrbanizeHub had the opportunity to meet Prof. Albert-László Barabási, a distinguished professor from the Northeastern University, Central European University and Harvard University. He introduced in 1999 the concept of scale-free networks and proposed the Barabási–Albert model to explain their widespread emergence in natural, technological and social systems, from the cellular telephone to the World Wide Web or online communities.  Author of …

The Urban Sustainability Framework: a comprehensive guide for more livable cities

Making cities smart is one thing. But making them green and sustainable in the future takes them to a higher level. Making cities sustainable makes them even smarter. This is what the World Bank and the Global Environment Facility could have had in mind when they first conceived and launched the Urban Sustainability Framework (USF) …

15 Mobility and tech firms pledge to create livable cities

If cities are the engines of economic growth, an efficient transport system is the oil that prevents these engines from seizing up. With that said, one of the features that should define the future of our cities is a sustainable transport. Urban transport is undeniably an indispensable component of city life that should be taken …