I had the pleasure of attending the Cities of the Arab World conference at Michigan State University last week. I have to admit I wasn’t sure what to expect, given it was the first academic conference I’ve attended in a long time. What I found particularly valuable was the interdisciplinary nature of the conference, with […]
Cities of the Arab World – thoughts on an interdisciplinary conference Read More »
Provocation In his recent book, The Well-Tempered City, Jonathan Rose describes the development of cities from 3100 BC to the present day. I was struck by his description of the “Islamic City”: “Islam offered the cities it captured a coherent, integrating vision, accompanied by economic and religious freedom that encouraged diversity and contributed to prosperity.” (p.80) Rose
Planning the ‘Islamic City’ Read More »
Note: I am honoured to be a contributor to the The Nature of Cities virtual magazine, and very pleased to shared excerpts from my first essay below. As a start, let us remind ourselves of the figures published by WHO last year: air pollution is responsible for over 7 million deaths a year. Out of those, around
Air Pollution: Urban Myths and Realities Read More »
Earlier this week, I gave a talk in Dubai about the concept of One Planet Consumption and how built-environment professionals can and are ‘fixing’ the planet. After thirty minutes of listening to me talk about cities taking action, the questions from the audience seemed to all point in one direction: how do we translate this momentum to more sustainable
Advice to frustrated champions Read More »
A couple of years ago, I was introduced to the concept of City Resilience by some of my colleagues at Arup. Initially, I considered ‘resilience’ to be the likely next step for the ‘sustainability’ movement. However, as I look more into it, I am changing my view and realising that resilience is its own field, with potentially
Resilience…the New Sustainability? Read More »