URBim Edge

It is widely accepted today that cities are a positive force in global development and that the future of the planet depends on the future of its cities. But experience shows that there is often a 20-25 year time lag between new ideas and their incorporation into public policy. For example, in many countries it has taken decades for policy makers to stop looking at slum neighborhoods as problems, and instead see them as solutions developed by families seeking a better life for themselves and contributing to economic growth through the cities' informal economy. Only then have appropriate policy responses followed, where policy makers focus on providing land-tenure instead of bulldozers. But not every city is at this same juncture, and many individuals and institutions throughout these cities are hungry to learn how they can advance their own solutions. Read more.

Several years ago in Beyond Smart Cities, I wrote about cities on the prowl. By the thousands, cities from around the globe are flying every which way, searching like so many hunters and gatherers to learn and share information. By one estimate, the 1,000 cities on the planet that have more than half a million people are engaged in many thousands of exchanges every year. Why so much prowling? It’s much cheaper and less risky to pick up the secrets of success by examining innovations at close range in other cities, where new practices have been tried out, than to reinvent the wheel back home. Nothing has slowed that pace, but some of the consequences of so much international inter-city exchange is smartness that is now appearing in three flavors. Read more.

Upon exploring how just and inclusive cities can emerge a key component of analysis is social life — how people act in cities, the complex character of sociability, and the factors designing urban life. Multiple concepts have been raised to define what a city is — and has become, and further, what kind of life materialises within urban spaces. Over time cities have been conceptualised as 'misanthropic', expressing disorganisation, violence, and a dense concentration of people whom adopt different mentalities and motives. Such urban personas are expressed through space. Read more.

As competition for land intensifies in Africa's rapidly growing towns and cities, planning laws assume a fundamental importance. They determine how urban growth is managed and directed. In most countries outdated, inappropriate and unintegrated laws are exacerbating urban dysfunction. Read more.

With urbanisation becoming a rising topic on the research agenda it is interesting to see how new models for urban planning, and laws, are being constructed. Recently, an event by the African Research Institute raised such ideas. The speakers introduced how the contextual diversity across Africa required exploration, and consultants need to focus on adapting a checklist of rule making, rather than make the rules, in planning Africa's emerging cities. Current African cities were presented as 'un-planned', or in need of a re-visioned approach to become inclusive and equitable. Urban planning was the solution — a means of enabling tax reform, effective management, and equal rights to the city. However, urban planning law needed to be re-written to work for 'African cities'. Read more.

It is widely believed that urbanisation is occurring faster in sub-Saharan Africa than anywhere else in the world, as migrants move from rural to urban settlements. This is a fallacy. While the populations of numerous urban areas are growing rapidly, the urbanisation levels of many countries are increasing slowly – if at all. Natural increase, rather than net in-migration, is the predominant growth factor in most urban populations. African governments, policymakers and international donors need to acknowledge fundamental changes in urbanisation trends, and respond to the irrefutable messages these impart about urban employment, incomes and economic development. Read more.

Africa's cities are growing — and changing — rapidly. Without appropriate planning, they will become increasingly chaotic, inefficient and unsustainable. In many countries, planning legislation dates back to the colonial era. It is ill-equipped to deal with contemporary urban problems. A shortage of urban planning and management professionals trained to respond to urban complexity with progressive pro-poor approaches exacerbates urban dysfunction. Read more.

The trend towards experiential travel will be the major force shaping the future of the travel industry, and there is significant potential to create sustainable travel economies in developing nations with the rise in popularity of this form of travel. All one needs to do is look at the rise of sites such as Yelp and Lonely Planet to understand that people no longer necessarily want what is easy to access and convenient, but seek unique attractions that make travel more varied and interesting. Read more.

Last week, the New Cities Foundation's Executive Director, Mathieu Lefevre, wrote an article for Ashoka’s Next Billion on the results of the Foundation's E-health project in Rio de Janeiro. The project was the first major study looking at the impact of integrating e-health technology in low-resource, densely populated, urban settings. The New Cities Foundation is currently looking to dramatically extend the project with the city of Rio to cover most of the city's favelas. Read more.

The sharing economy, which really took hold in in the US following the 2008 Financial Crisis, looks to expand into the developing world as increases in mobile penetration are driving people to use the internet for more daily activities. The central idea behind the so-called collaborative consumption trend is to capitalize on underutilized capacity and give both "lenders" and "borrowers" the chance to benefit in the process. Read more.