Two laws on city size / growth.

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.

Many of these stories support the wider definition of Smart cities as above which incorporates: a)  Investments in human and social capital b) Investments in traditional (ex transport) and modern(ex ICT) communications infrastructure c) Sustainable economic development d) Higher quality of life with a wise management of natural resources  e) Participatory governance

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.

The complexity of participation: learning from slum dweller mobilisation in Dar es Salaam Putting the practice of resident participation in displacement planning under the microscope, Michael Hooper provides six practical lessons for implementing a participation programme that recognises the differences between residents and makes all their voices count, based on research in Dar es Salaam.

But the question remains: How exactly - in what ways and through which channels - does density make our cities more productive? That's where a recent study published in the Journal of Regional Science breaks new ground. Conducted by economists Jaison Abel of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, Ishita Dey of the University of Georgia, and Todd Gabe of the University of Maine, the study provides new evidence of the relationships between density, human capital, and urban productivity. It uses detailed statistical models to gauge more precisely the effects of density and human capital, separately and together, on productivity of more than 350 metro areas.

In his just-released Planet of Cities, Shlomo Angel argues that urban policy-makers and planners must do more to meet the challenge of urbanization. Angel, who is a member of the Urbanization Project at New York University and who conducted his research as a visiting fellow at the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, provides a detailed, data-driven analysis filled with maps of world urbanization patterns, as well as charts and tables documenting the challenges facing global cities. He took time out from his busy schedule to talk to Atlantic Cities about the key challenges facing our increasingly urban world.

Urbanization usually leads to higher GDP because of higher levels of productivity, the report says, which is illustrated in the graph to the left. All five of the East Asia and Pacific countries in the graph show a steady increase in GDP per capita as people move to cities. But that did not happen for Sub-Saharan Africa; the graph on the right shows a sporadic relationship between urbanization and GDP.

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good read in general about keeping things simple and not assuming too much.

News and analysis of cities around the world

the Singapore Housing agency. Over the last 50 years, Surbana has sculpted the unique skyline of Singapore, creating a million homes for over 85% of the population in an integrated living environment. With the support of our majority shareholder Temasek Holdings, as well as our new shareholder CapitaLand, we have grown to be a premium international building consultant and township developer with offices in 16 cities across Asia and the Middle East. Our value proposition lies in our expertise across the whole real estate value chain, encompassing development, fund management, architecture, engineering, project and construction management, urban planning, coastal engineering, infrastructure, sustainable design technologies and city management.

Also read: http://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/2/6/from-the-mayors-office-part-1.htmlhttp://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/2/20/from-the-mayors-office-part-2.htmlhttp://www.strongtowns.org/journal/2012/3/12/from-the-mayors-office-part-3.html Fictional Mayor addressing his staff on sustainable urban development. Great tone.

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