Mural at Rockaway Brewing Company in Long Island City, Queens, New York, a longtime industrial and transportation hub that now is rapidly redeveloping.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Many homes, parks and businesses in US cities stand on former manufacturing sites that may have left legacy hazardous wastes behind. A new book calls for more research into our urban industrial past.
Australia’s sprawling cities present many challenges to sustainability, but planning innovations can help achieve at least half of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.
Nils Versemann/Shutterstock
Planning innovations around the world offer inspiration, but ultimately the innovations needed to make Australia’s sprawling cities more sustainable must be shaped by local conditions.
Unloading packages and arranging them for delivery in New York City.
AP Photo/Mark Lennihan
Rising e-commerce means more delivery trucks and urban gridlock. Lockers at transit centers, where carriers can leave packages for people who live or work nearby, are a potential solution.
Children’s travel needs are a big factor in private car use.
Pablo Rogat/Shutterstock
The private car is the default transport option for many families. This reduces physical activity and increases greenhouse gas emissions, with unhealthy results for their children and the environment.
Most of Kyoto’s narrow streets could become no-car zones.
The city where the Kyoto Protocol was signed resolved some years ago to move away from cars and towards low-emission alternatives for getting around. And it’s making real progress towards that goal.
Conspicuous consumption is one of the main ways that China-born migrants come to mirror Australian society.
Nils Versemann/Shutterstock
Peter Newton, Swinburne University of Technology; Christina Ting, Swinburne University of Technology e Wendy Stone, Swinburne University of Technology
Australian cities are world-leading – in the worst sense – for resource use and greenhouse emissions. China-born residents have embraced these consumption patterns, which is bad news for the planet.
Barangaroo is a development on Sydney Harbour with strong green credentials, but it’s overwhelmingly the well-off who enjoy the benefits.
Brendan Esposito/AAP
Barangaroo is an example of a development with admirable green credentials, but it is also an exclusive precinct that has played a role in displacing the disadvantaged from this part of Sydney.
Australia is a long way from achieving responsible consumption and production – SDG 12 – and China exposed the reliance on shifting the problem elsewhere when it stopped accepting waste for recycling.
Joe Castro/AAP
Australia has yet to properly acknowledge that the Sustainable Development Goals aren’t just an issue for other countries. The problems that demand our attention are much closer to home.
The Morris Inn on the University of Notre Dame campus has had a green roof since 2013.
Ashish Sharma
Taking this step may improve the quality of life for vulnerable people and reduce the amount of air conditioning they use, making their neighborhoods less prone to power outages.
Street in Hangzhou, China, with trees separating a cycle track from road traffic and from the sidewalk.
Xu Wen
Many US cities are investing in bike infrastructure and shade trees. Properly located, these additions can make streets cooler, cleaner and safer for all users – even those who drive.
In many US cities, ride-hailing apps are luring riders away from public transit and increasing traffic congestion. But with the right rules, they could enhance public transit instead.
Planning and design for healthy, liveable communities in the Australian tropics can involve quite different considerations from those that apply down south.
Silvia Tavares
There’s no such thing as a one-size-fits-all plan for sustainable, healthy urban living. Urban diaries help identify what works – and doesn’t work – for tropical cities like Cairns or Townsville.
For a megacity, Tokyo is rich in trees.
gillyberlin/flickr
Theodore Endreny, State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry
In an increasingly urban world, trees can make a major difference. One study found that, for every dollar invested in planting, megacities saw a $2.50 return on their investment.
Citibike station in midtown Manhattan.
Jim Henderson
Dozens of US cities have launched bike-share programs in the past decade. There have been bumps – critics want wider access, and cities want bikes stored out of the way – but bike sharing is on a roll.
Small tankers unload along New York’s Newtown Creek in 2008.
Jim Henderson
Gentrification is not the only path for improving urban neighborhoods. A cleanup in Brooklyn and Queens offers another, more inclusive model that scholars have dubbed ‘just green enough.’
Cars sit in flood water from Boston Harbor on Long Wharf during a coastal storm on Jan. 4, 2018.
AP Photo/Michael Dwyer
New York soon may charge a fee to drive into central Manhattan as a way of reducing traffic and raising funds for public transit. An urban scholar says this step is overdue in the United States.