Stories from Notable Cities

Cities large and small are constantly trialling (and succeeding with) groundbreaking ideas, projects, and policies. We’ve located some of the most forward-thinking places that have been brave enough to test out innovations – and risk the failures. Among the challenges, they have faced outspoken opposition, financial constraints, ingrained behaviours, legislative hurdles, and setbacks caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Their experiences in how they deal with this and much more can set other cities well on the way to change. So, whether you’re looking for stories about citizen participation, funding models, communication strategies, or the latest concepts and technical solutions, our Notable Cities are bound to be of interest.

d-Lab: Reviving Social Infrastructure via Architectural Design

Preserving historic architecture seems at odds with renovating buildings to meet modern sustainability standards. One Spanish university, however, is bridging these two worlds – by reviving traditional construction methods. It just so happens that...

#17: Heart & Seoul

How did Seoul turn a backed-up expressway into a tranquil urban stream? We take a look at the landmark Cheonggyecheon River Restoration project and ask why, almost 20 year later, this peaceful pocket in...

Lessons from Edinburgh’s Retrofit Programme, Which Runs Hot & Cold

Inefficient building envelopes are huge carbon emitters. Retrofitting promises results but the time left to attain climate targets is narrowing. This calls for urgent, scaled-up action. With an abundance of social housing, city authorities...

Utilising Untapped Space: Food Security with Rotterdam’s Floating Farm

Space in cities is limited. Urban farming signals better times for food security but if there’s a future in it, we need to find ways to make it fit around existing land uses. When...

The Grounded Community: East New York Farms!

From farming fish in high-tech warehouses to growing mushrooms under city streets, interest in urban agriculture is well and truly coming into season. But producing food in urban areas is nothing new, and there’s...

Back to the Farms of the Future: A Viennese Vision for Urban Agriculture

What will the farms of the future look like in an increasingly urbanised world? We take a trip to the Zukunftshof, a pioneering initiative in Austria that wants to model a more sustainable approach...

From the Linear to the Circular: How Guelph-Wellington is Closing the Circle on Food Waste

What would it take to create the first truly circular food economy? In Southwestern Ontario, Canada, the small city of Guelph and the surrounding county of Wellington have set themselves the goal of finding...

Notable City Haarlem: Advertising a Better Food Future

In 2021, the city of Haarlem, in the Netherlands, submitted a draft to became the first city in the world to ban meat advertising in public spaces. The move was a lightning rod for...

Notable City Paris: The Cultivated Capital

The French capital’s ambitious vision for urban agriculture is in full bloom. We take a look at the city’s signature Parisculteurs programme to understand why its unique approach is receiving world-wide attention. From ‘the city...

Notable City: Tanga – Generating City-Wide Benefits by Boosting Youth Social Mobility

Through population growth and in-migration, cities are only going to increase in number and size. This presents a challenge: how do we ensure citizens’ needs are addressed adequately as urban environments sprawl at an...

Cooking Up Community: Transforming a Town Square into an Open Air Kitchen

This article is part of a paid collaboration between Urban Future and Pop Up City Amsterdam, implemented in the run-up to UF24 in Rotterdam. The featured "recipe", the Open Air Kitchen, is one of...

#1 Rotterdam Rooftops

Facing their fair share of challenges on the ground (from housing shortages to climate change) cities like Rotterdam are looking skywards for solutions – to the rooftops. There’s plenty of opportunity but also headwinds...