Using Forests for Water Treatment: An Example from Rio de Janeiro
Ecosystem loss and degradation contributes to water insecurity worldwide – natural infrastructure strategies that protect and restore natural systems aim to halt and reverse this trend. Suzanne Ozment and Rafael Feltran-Barbieri discuss how water utilities can profit from restoring ecosystems.
What Hides Behind the Concept of Digital Water?
How can digitalisation of urban services increase sustainable urbanisation? What different approaches and innovations already exist and have proven successful? Kala Vairavamoorthy, director of the International Water Association addresses these questions.
Promoting Innovative Financing Solutions for Cities
About 75 per cent of the infrastructure that needs to be in place by 2050 does not exist today. Getting such an immense scale of infrastructure development right will be critical to whether or not the world locks into a high- or low-carbon growth path. The newly established City Finance Lab tries to contribute innovative, replicable and scalable solutions to reach this ambitious goal.
Understanding and Tracking Affordable Housing Investment Opportunities in Africa
Housing has become a policy issue that interests not only housing departments and local construction authorities, but Central Banks and financial players as well. Kecia Rust from the Centre for Affordable Housing Finance in Africa (CAHF) explains why housing has become an investment opportunity, and the role that policy makers play.
A Place Like Too Many Others: Gender Inequality in Bawana, Delhi
In urban settlements around the world, city administrations struggle, and often fail, to provide essential services, safe spaces, and socio-economic securities to residents. While this poses difficulties and dangers to all inhabitants, the consequences of such neglect are especially severe for low-income women and girls.
Escalating to Peace: How a Simple Investment Helped Change the Face of Colombia’s Most Dangerous Neighbourhood
Comuna 13, also known as San Javier, used to be the most dangerous part of Medellín, cut off from the rest of the city and a place to avoid by all means. An ambitious infrastructure project has changed that, turning the district in a tourist destination.
The (Un)walkable City: The Pedestrian Crisis in Kyiv
Street design in Kyiv, Ukraine leaves something to be desired: walkability. Oleksandr Anisimov analyses how it needs to change so that everyone can use public space.
Don’t Build Spaces, Build Ecosystems
When opening creative spaces, it is not enough to simply designate a space and add tools and technology, says Roman Vydro, co-Founder of Garage Hub, a community workshop in Kharkiv, Ukraine. What is way more important, is to include a variety of people and let their input create an entire creative ecosystem.
An Untapped Pool of Talent: Young Women in Latin America
Across Latin America, software developers are urgently needed. Laboratoria, an organisation launched in Lima, Peru, focusses on meeting this demand – and, at the same time, opens urban labour markets for women.