By Andrew Hickey Art can play a powerful and valuable role in healing community and fostering dialogue about public policy. I experienced a striking example of this when a Portland art and music venue became a center for talking about community issues that failed to be addressed in other spaces, like the gender divide in … Read more

Suzanne Crowhurst Lennard was keynote speaker at the Norwegian Architectural Institute’s Annual Conference in Oslo, November 24. “The built environment is health policy in concrete”, she reminds the audience, and if we want to make our cities healthy we must first make them healthy for children: the environment a child grows up in shapes their … Read more

This eReport presents six presentations and slides dealing with different aspects of community engagement, including a methodology for eliciting a community vision, children’s involvement in improving their neighborhood, a history of civic engagement in a city, and community-led improvements in a neighborhood, as well as case studies showing how to involve more diverse skills in … Read more

In Moscow and St. Petersburg where Maxim Atayants works, new buildings continue to be constructed using one of two styles – either classical, or 1960s concrete/glass style.  As an architect, Maxim believes it is important to create a continuous, human scale urban fabric that provides a hospitable background and setting for people’s lives. Classical architecture … Read more

Presenting the latest achievements and research from Europe, North America, and around the world, this eReport contains 10 presentations (papers and slide sets), on city strategies, and tools for sustainable infrastructure, innovative research and state of the art solutions. Currently, the EU aims to reduce domestic greenhouse gas by 40% by 2030 and to increase … Read more

This eReport, consisting of 7 papers and slide sets, presents some of the most innovative and advanced achievements worldwide for creating a healthy city through protection of green areas and waterways. Deputy Mayor Tjasa Ficko explores how the City of Ljubljana, Slovenia is looking to create a “green living room” in the city’s center through … Read more

I am very pleased this issue is receiving attention from Steve Price.  I hope he and others will take this much further. It is an issue I addressed some time ago in my article Loneliness is Life Threatening: We Can Design Cities to Foster Community. So much more needs to be done! The connections between … Read more

Pope Francis’ encyclical, Laudato Si is an urgent call to humanity to become aware of the negative and immoral impact bad city-making has on the planet, and on humans. The Pope, explained Father Alejandro Crosthwaite at his presentation at the 53rd IMCL Conference in Rome, calls for a global initiative, to reach across national borders … Read more

Ferdinand Johns, FAIA gave a gorgeously illustrated, impassioned speech at the 53rd Conference in Rome arguing that the way our buildings and cities are designed really matters. We cannot let the market decide, and we cannot let big corporations or starchitects make all the decisions or we end up with a very unlivable city. There … Read more