The media outlet ‘Time Out’ made a big splash when it announced that certain Canadian streets were ranked ‘coolest in the world.’ But are they really?
Trees are one way to cool down a city. Architects in ancient Rome also designed buildings with porticos for shade and air flow.
Laszlo Szirtesi/Getty Images
As summer temperatures rise, finding ways to build cities that don’t hold in the heat and can provide some cooling is increasingly important.
City councillors in London, Ont., look on as Prime Minister Justin Trudeau speaks at the construction site of an affordable housing project in September 2023.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Nicole Osborne
Many municipal politicians identify strongly with a political party, but some don’t. In fact, more than a quarter of municipal politicians are genuine non-partisans, with no party affiliation.
Spiking rodent bait with birth control is a temporary approach to addressing rat infestations.
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Using birth control to manage rat infestations is a temporary and inefficient approach. Any successful rat management programs would require multiple collaborative approaches.
Hong Kong is a prime example of effective land value management.
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African countries can learn a lot from Hong Kong on how to use the gains from rising urban land prices to fund infrastructure and other public services.
Workers on a trolley at 5 p.m. in Baltimore, April 1943.
Marjory Collins/Library of Congress
When US cities offered low-cost, high-quality public transit during World War II, buses and trains were full. Some cities are trying to revive that formula, after decades of disinvestment.
Adelaide Botanic High School/South Australia Department of Education
Montgomery once closed all of its parks rather than desegregate them. Today, the city’s long history of racial inequality is still reflected in the state of its parks and green spaces.
Planting more trees in urban environments is a simple, affordable and effective way to improve health.
THE CANADIAN PRESS/Frank Gunn
While trees are beautiful and benefit the environment, the most practical argument for planting more is that they provide a clear public health benefit, both in the preventive and therapeutic sense.
The River Clyde runs through Glasgow city centre.
richardjohnson/Shutterstock
Connecting the rich, and often unknown, histories of open swimming in urban waterways to the growing swimmable cities movement could help to shape the futures of urban swimming.
The mayor of Montréal, Valérie Plante, the mayor of Chicago, Brandon Johnson, and his counterpart from Milwaukee, Cavalier Johnson, at the annual conference of the Great Lakes and St. Lawrence Cities Initiative, on May 15, 2024 in Montréal. Cities must unite to discuss their major issues.
(Canadian Press/Ryan Remiorz)
What will our daily lives be like in 50 years’ time? What will our challenges be? Scientific data and analysis are essential, and municipal diplomacy is the key to sharing knowledge.
African countries are urbanising fast but without investment in public infrastructure and services, resulting in congestion, contagion and the rise of informal settlements.
Housing activists demonstrate outside the Supreme Court on April 22, 2024.
Matt McClain/The Washington Post via Getty Images
In a major homelessness ruling, the Supreme Court holds that cities and municipalities can punish people for sleeping outside, even when they have nowhere else to go.
Poverty, fiscal stress and abandoned homes have fueled a long-standing stray dog problem in Detroit.
AP Photo/Carlos Osorio
A study in Detroit finds large areas without pet resources, mainly in lower-income and minority neighborhoods. Better access to supplies and services could help owners and animals thrive together.
A car fails to yield as a family attempts to cross a road in Long Beach, Calif.
Brittany Murray/MediaNews Group/Long Beach Press-Telegram via Getty Images
A traffic engineer argues that, contrary to his profession’s view, ‘human error’ is not the main cause of deaths in car crashes in the US.
A lot of lead from gasoline, house paint and industrial emissions has ended up in soil, and it poses serious health risks.
Jamie Grill, Tetra Images via Getty Images
The answer depends in part on where you live. If it’s extremely hot and humid, the health risks are much higher.
Rooftop construction at a high-rise building undergoing conversion to apartments in Manhattan’s financial district in New York City, April 11, 2023.
AP Photo/Bebeto Matthews
Turning excess office space into apartments isn’t a panacea for the housing shortage, but it’s producing thousands of new units yearly and is more sustainable and economical than new construction.
Police drag away a tent from a pro-Palestinian encampment at the University of California, Irvine on May 15, 2024.
Leonard Ortiz/MediaNews Group/Orange County Register via Getty Images
Framing dissent and poverty as a menace to public order can threaten fundamental rights, particularly when it’s used to justify the deployment of predictive technology.