Cities

Bank partners with global mayors to green cities

15 Dec 17 - A European development bank has partnered with city mayors from all over the world to mobilise more than $1.5 billion in urban investment to help combat climate change.

Outlook grim for warmer Auckland, warns report

7 Dec 17 - Floods, fires, droughts, storms, slips, pests and diseases are Auckland’s future, threatening primary production and human health, warns a new report.

Nature's drying up, so maybe we should be mining our cities

5 Dec 17 - Instead of extracting dwindling raw materials from nature, the time has come to start re-using materials from buildings and infrastructure in cities.

Don't bury bike-sharing, there's still room on the road

4 Dec 17 - Dramatic images of bike graveyards shouldn't be taken at face value – there's hope for bike-sharing schemes yet.

City trees feel the heat ... and love it

27 Nov 17 - City trees are responding to climate change and urban growth, making the most of the heat island effect.

Three ways cities are leading the climate change fight

21 Nov 17 - Cities account for 75 per cent of the world’s energy use and 76 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions.

The inconvenient truth about smart cities

20 Nov 17 - Plans for more wired, networked, connected urban areas face challenges if they fail to account for existing, local, non-digital elements such as government and socioeconomic conditions.

Cities could save billions while saving the planet

15 Nov 17 - Climate change action at the local level has the potential to save as much as £7 billion each year across the 50 largest cities in the UK.

Big cities sign emissions pledge (but not ours)

13 Nov 17 - The mayors of 25 cities with more than 150 million citizens between them say they will start cutting emissions before 2020 and will be carbon neutral by 2050.

Auckland - clean power but lacking environmental protection

8 Nov 17 - New Zealand’s clean electricity supply has won Auckland 48th place in the 2017 Smart City Index – but its traffic congestion and lack of environmental protection have let it down.

Merchants believe in the business case for bikes

2 Nov 17 - Merchants in an Oregon town believe new walking and biking infrastructure will attract cusatomers to their businesses.

CARS CRUNCH: More and more cities say they don't want them

1 Nov 17 - After more than 100 years of living with cars, some cities are slowly starting to realize that the automobile doesn’t make a lot of sense in the urban context.

Twelve major cities vow to buy zero-emissions buses

25 Oct 17 - Twelve major cities including London, Paris, Los Angeles and Cape Town have promised to buy only zero-emissions buses from 2025.

World's choking cities need fewer cars, not cleaner cars

18 Oct 17 - Electric cars won’t eradicate city gridlocks and air pollution, but carbon footprints could be cut by favouring pedestrians, cyclists and mass transit.

Green-building rating is sustainability's secret weapon

27 Sep 17 - Green building rating systems are an essential tool in the fight to achieve a net zero emissions built environment.

TRASH TOWERS: Eleven-storey mansion made from rubbish

22 Sep 17 - First prize in a tropical architecture design competition went to an 11-storey marvel built using recycled building materials, waste plastic and glass bottles.

Vancouver wants to be the world's greenest by 2020

20 Sep 17 - Vancouver - the mountain-fringed, bicycle-friendly, pot-loving host of the 2010 Winter Olympics - wants to be the world’s greenest city by 2020.

PEDESTRIAN POWER: Where is the world's most walkable city?

14 Sep 17 - From New York’s cafe squares to the laneways of Melbourne, pedestrian paradises combine safety, beauty and comfort. Now urban planners are taking note as they seek to hand back cities to the walkers.

Going to Dubai? Take a bike

6 Sep 17 - Dubai has approved the construction of 500km of bicycle lanes as part of air pollution mitigation efforts.