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On population growth and family planning: Bill Ryerson: Well, you brought up Population Media Center. One of the things that we do - and that is the primary thing we do - is to use a strategy of communications that has turned out, from everything we have been able to measure, to be the most cost-effective strategy for changing behavior with regard to family size and contraceptive use on a per-behavior change basis of any strategy we have found on the planet. And this is the use of long-running serialized dramas, melodramas like soap operas, in which characters gradually evolve from the middle of the road in that society into positive role models for daughter education, delaying marriage and childbearing until adulthood, spacing of children, limiting of family size, and various other health and social goals of each country. And we have now done such programs in forty-five countries. And I can give you a couple of statistics. For example, in northern Nigeria, a program we ran from 2007 to 2009 was listened to by 70% of the population at least weekly. It was a twice a week program. It was clearly a smash hit. And it was a smash hit because it was highly suspenseful and highly entertaining. But it had a storyline dealing with a couple deciding to use family planning, which is almost taboo in northern Nigeria because less than 10% of the people in that region use any modern method of contraception. We had eleven clinics have healthcare workers ask clients what had motivated them to come in for family planning, and 67% percent of them named the program as the motivation.

In a piece called The Beauty of Urban Planning from Space, the Sustainable Cities Collective highlights views from space of uniquely designed street pattern designs in various cities around the world. There are ten examples that illustrate the zenith of urban planning. As attractive as the street patterns are, they highlight the inevitable inability of designers, or anyone else for that matter, to influence much more than small changes in the overall urban form.

Macro forces continue to have an impact on the global influence of cities. Political power is rotating back from West to East, and with economic drivers having shifted from agrarian to industrial to information-based, more people live in cities than in rural areas. While New York, London, Paris, and Tokyo still rank among today's top cities, it appears that Beijing and Shanghai may become significant rivals in the next 10 to 20 years. These are among the highlights of the 2012 Global Cities Index (GCI), a joint study performed by A.T. Kearney and The Chicago Council on Global Affairs. In addition, a panel of academic and corporate executive advisors informed and challenged the study results. We've expanded this year's study; in addition to classifying the current global influence of 66 cities, we have also developed an Emerging Cities Outlook (ECO) to project which emerging-market cities may eventually rival the established global leaders for dominance. Figure 1 summarizes the 2012 results, along with the rankings from our 2008 and 2010 findings of major world metropolitan areas. (The censorship metric added in 2010 affected the positions of several emerging-market cities.) In the first section of this report, we explore the results and implications of the 2012 GCI rankings. The second section summarizes the results of our Emerging Cities Outlook, which analyzes the strengths and weaknesses of cities in developing markets by examining the rates of change and key factors that will affect their ability to capitalize on future globalization trends (see Appendix: About the Study).

policy and design research for urban computational systems in Amsterdam. VURB is a European framework for policy and design research concerning urban computational systems. The VURB foundation, based in Amsterdam, provides direction and resources to a portfolio of projects investigating how our cultures might come to use networked digital resources to change the way we understand, build, and inhabit cities.

We are experiencing an unprecedented change in the way we live. Populations are growing and expectations changing. We need to make places of habitation that are efficient, culturally appropriate and environmentally accountable. Arup is uniquely placed to provide these places in the 21st century.

As transport commissioner, Janette Sadik-Khan faced down critics to transform New York with 400 miles of cycling routes, a bike share scheme and the remodelling of Times Square. Any city can do it, she tells Peter Walker

Here are some tips for how you can enliven this site with your inspiration, stories, and projects.This site is most fundamentally about-city dwellers, urban entrepreneurs, organizers, dreamers, doers.