About

Our societies are no strangers to dense, urban living. But urbanization today is an uncontrolled experiment of unprecedented scale and speed. This new urban world presents tremendous opportunities – the incentives to move to cities in the first place.

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Though the costs, from impacts on the most vulnerable populations to the global commons, are stark, and the rapid rise of mega-cities means the response to their ills needs to be matched with equal speed to solve urgent social, environmental, and economic issues. This is a space to look at the intersection of how current urbanization in the world’s cities is experienced first-hand.

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This blog began as a collective project my graduate urban planning students at NYU’s Wagner School in 2010. Today one of these former students continues to use this platform to take a hard look at not only tragic circumstances but also the champions of change, the technical solutions, and the empowerment of local voices in cities. She hopes to continue this exercise that will bring together policymakers and planners, artists and advocates to share how they experience these dynamic places, diagnose the problems, and implement solutions.

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Cities are drivers of economic development, culture and innovation.  The underlying principles of what drives cities to form in the first place might just be how the problems they pose are solved.

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Urbanization coming full circle.

All content on this blog is the original work of the writers and is not to be used without permission. The majority of the images on this blog are taken by the authors, all other images are linked to their original sources. Please contact the writers with any questions.