Awareness campaigns to promote cycling have been rolled out in countless cities, multiple times. Cycling campaigns have taken various angles –from letting us know how good cycling is for our health, environment, bank account or time management, through to persuading us to cycle using...

Walther Ploos van Amstel is lecturer for city logistics at Amsterdam University of Applied Sciences (HvA). The article was originally published on his website http://www.waltherploosvanamstel.nl. Countless books and articles have been written about urban distribution centers, logistics decoupling points, city hubs and urban consolidation centers....

"In the 1950s we thought the car would save our cities, now we have to reverse it." We spoke to Senior Urbanist and expert city planner Paul Lecroart to find out more about what ‘recycling a highway’ really means, and why it’s important in...

Although currently not one of the most widely used bio-based materials, cork is still a viable option in construction, with countless benefits making it well worth considering. As more and more bottle stoppers are being made of plastic corks or screw tops, the sustainable...

Vienna is a pragmatic city, bursting with exuberance, diversity, and political action. In terms of decarbonising, it’s a place where people are making definite, positive urban change at the street and policy levels. We caught up with Peter Kraus, City Council Member for the...

There is no one-size-fits-all solution to decarbonising older properties. Each building has its own character, history, and flaws that need to be considered when choosing appropriate measures to make them energy efficient. These can be done in one go or piecemeal. That’s the fundamental,...

Cities emit seemingly endless cascades of greenhouse gasses. Carbon dioxide is the number one offender. Rectifying this is pivotal to halting global warming and preventing irreversible climate damage. But decarbonising cities at a mass scale is an unprecedented task with an unforgiving deadline. So,...

Growing up in an established cycling culture, Klaus Bondam never thought of cycling as something political - that is until he got elected to Copenhagen’s City Council. We sat down with him to hear more about his achievements in politics and why he quit...

After waking up one day and ‘smelling the petrol’, activist, mother, and neighbour Clare Rogers decided to turn her dream of child-friendly streets into a reality. From swapping her car for a tandem bike on the school run to getting politicians on board for...

When more than half of the population doesn’t own private vehicles, but the city still has no significant cycling infrastructure, change is overdue. We talked with CityChanger and Young Leader Seble Samuel, co-founder of the open streets movement in Addis Ababa, about cycling in...

Using fossil fuels emits a lot of carbon dioxide. This enters the atmosphere and traps heat, warming the climate. Unless we curb our energy use, temperatures will rise beyond the 1.5 degree-maximum we’ve set ourselves. Retrofitting is a key tool in decarbonising human activity...

Canada, similar to the US, has a heart for single-family houses and suburbs. A concept not really suitable for rapid urbanisation and the need for sustainable and affordable housing of the future. Thankfully, there are architects like Naama Blonder who are trying to change the...

Petra Jens has been Vienna’s walking commissioner since 2013, aiming to make the city a pedestrian paradise. But what is it exactly that a walking commissioner does, and does every city need one? We sat down with Petra to talk about her tasks, the...

There’s a lot to be said for going vegan. That must be why they drone on about it all the time! Like other drones, don’t you wish they would just fly off? But let’s give our nutrient-deficient cousins a break. Whether it’s for dietary or...

This article was written by Juan Azcarate, Deputy Director of Energy and Climate Change in Madrid City Council, and was originally published on Apolitical, the global learning platform for government. It was originally published here in August 2020. We’re featuring the article with kind permission by Juan...

Sustainable buildings provide plenty of environmental, economic, and social benefits. So why are we hesitant to build more of them? A common explanation (and misconception!) is that they are simply too expensive. To bust this and other myths around financing the construction of sustainable...

Humans and wildlife have much in common. Urban sprawl deprives both of the resources, protection, and environmental stability that the natural world offers. Rewilding cities can reverse these fortunes. We explore what’s to gain from welcoming wildlife into urban spaces and how easily it...

Our cities are car-obsessed. The result? Urban space that is invaluable and useless most of the time because it only serves one purpose: a place for cars to park. But have you ever stopped to think how we could be up-cycling high rise or...