Urban Environments - societal aspects

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Contrary to popular belief, living in densely populated cities can offer many health benefits – even during a pandemic.

Links between urban pollution and respiratory diseases drive most calls to clean our cities’ air. But the effect on our lungs is only one reason to be concerned by city living.

This piece by The BBC from 2013 holds true today. Without being smart, future cities cannot be sustainable. But without retrofitting them for happiness, they are bound to become centres of decay. 

As this video clip by The BBC describes, after the Sant Pau gym in Barcelona went bankrupt in 2012, its own employees acquired it for 1 euro and turned it into a self-managed community project where membership is free for those who can’t afford to pay. The gym sits at the border between Raval, a low-income neighborhood, and the more affluent Sant Antoni, which makes it an unexpected meeting point.

Cities on the Frontline is a weekly speaker series co-organised by the Resilient Cities Network and The World Bank Group’s City Resilience Program since March 2020.

The “last line of defence” against the cost of living crisis is under threat as churches and other community hubs could be forced to close their doors because of spiralling bills and shrinking donations, two UK elder statesmen have said.

With the Outcomes Fund, GPRBA is building on what it already knows: strategically designed, results-based blended finance approaches can unlock resources for development projects while ensuring the poorest and most vulnerable benefit from these investments through careful targeting.

This blog by the World Bank describes planning, infrastructure, and construction practices related to fire prevention and mitigation significantly increase the potential for fire ignition and spread. Fire risk reduction requires articulated institutional measures to strengthen fire suppression capability, education and training.

Faced with the prospect of 50-degree-plus summers, experts say highly urbanised parts of Australia may become unliveable within decades.

The race is on to re-imagine, redesign and rebuild the Australian suburb.

Together with co-author Joseph G. Allen, a professor at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Macomber explores “nine foundations for a healthy building”.

As society looks to rebound from COVID-19, the ideas and resources we need to cope and succeed will look different than before.

This article from The Guardian describes the nine Elms development on London's Riverside, and what learnings we can take from it.