Volume 1 Issue 1, January 2024

As urban challenges mount, community-driven placemaking is gaining traction, with cities empowering residents to shape public spaces like parks and plazas through informal partnerships and decentralized decision-making. This global shift toward a range of partnerships is reshaping urban governance from the ground up.

Leonie Sandercock’s five-decade career has been instrumental in shaping and shifting the field of urban planning to recognize and incorporate feminist, indigenous and intercultural worldviews and to pursue social, cultural and environmental justice. Her World View reflects on the importance of local, community-engaged action to grow ‘beloved community’ with an ethos of interconnectedness.

Born in Colombia 50 years ago, a simple concept is providing the ground for new experiments in cities of the Global South.

US cities are regulating private use of technology more actively than the federal government, but the likely effects of this phenomenon are unclear. City lawmaking could make up for national regulatory shortfalls, but only if cities can thread the needle of special interests and partisanship.

In this interview, sociologist María José Álvarez-Rivadulla talks about her experience with urban research in Latin America and the USA. She also reflects on the Global South’s contributions to urban scholarship.

Climate change is worsening heat waves across American cities. New research compares the benefits of urban infrastructure adaptation — such as the addition of trees and parks to cities — with those of reducing greenhouse gases on the effectiveness of cooling US cities.

The relationship between cities and infectious disease spread has been heavily debated due to the perceived risk of high urban population densities. A new study examines this relationship in US cities, finding the influence of inequality looms larger than population density per se.

Based on an analysis of mobile-phone data, students experience greater income-based and racial isolation than adults, and this gap is largest in the biggest metropolitan areas. Students also experience less urban mobility than adults. Yet, differences between students at different levels of income are even greater than those between students and adults.

This article critically reviews the literature on the politics and government of cities, from classical contributions to contemporary debates in sociology, political science, development studies and other social sciences.

Humanity is increasingly urban, but urban living is not new, and past examples showcase striking variation. This Review synthesizes methodological and other advances in archeology to illustrate how compellingly the past can inform current urban science and understanding.

As the Earth’s climate warms, cities must balance how they adapt, by greening roofs and streets, and how they mitigate, by reducing their greenhouse gas emissions. This study finds that, for US cities, these two strategies are synergistic but that the potential for offsetting heat exposure varies by region.

This Study identifies current population trends for US cities based on population projection data up to 2100, given various climate change scenarios. These population trends vary regionally and by degree of urbanization, income level, vehicle ownership and immigration.

Addressing interdependencies between urban buildings and the urban environment for urban heat mitigation and energy conservation, this study models eight heat mitigation scenarios for Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. These heat mitigation scenarios use super-cool photonic materials combined with properly designed green infrastructure to lower peak temperatures by up to 4.5 °C, reduce cooling demand by up to 35%, and contribute to cooling energy conservation by up to 16%.

Cities offer higher wages and more opportunities for adults but provide limited upward income mobility for children. This study finds that movement around cities varies more among US students of different income levels than among students and adults. Students from higher-income families spend more time outside the home and explore more unique locations, suggesting urban income mobility echoes physical mobility.

This study analyzes the influence of density on COVID-19 infection rates in cities across the United States and their relationship with socio-spatial inequalities. Its main finding is that density has a nonlinear relationship with infection rates and that socioeconomic factors influence mitigating behaviors in neighborhoods.

Workers’ skills shape their job opportunities and where they live, thus making skills a vital part of understanding cities and their economy. Modeling urban labor markets as occupation networks, this study finds that more-specific skill information better predicts career mobility and that workers tend toward jobs in cities where their skills are locally rare, thus raising their wages.

An early image in your mind’s eye can frame your view of a city. Poet Arundhathi Subramaniam leverages a literal window to consider lessons from her evolving relationship with Bombay.