What can governments do to improve peoples’ preparation for the new labor market in a “glocal,” or global, economy? The concept of work is as old as civilization. Aristotle, the great Greek philosopher, used the expression praxis for doing something for its own purpose, and poiesis to...
Cities are the ultimate space-savers. Once you own chickens, everything starts to look different. When I happen upon a picture of Guantanamo Bay, for instance, I can’t help but see the gleaming barbed wire-enclosed prisonscape as the ultimate man-sized coop. It’s the tops in terms of...
Data collection and analysis have played an important role in smart cities, but should citizens’ privacy be used as a foundation? The real-time analysis of data procured over various electronic platforms has become integral to the development of infrastructure, planning and policy formulation...
How do you turn one room into 24? Gary Chang, a Chinese architect, has lived in a 344-square-foot apartment in Hong Kong for almost his entire life. His parents and three sisters occupied the tiny space, then divided into three rooms, and even managed to sublet one room to a tenant. This is not...
How will we define cities in the next century when most populations will feel the influence of globalization? In summer 2002, I was driven from Nanjing to Shanghai through Suzhou, a distance of about 250 kilometers. I was struck by the fact that we journeyed through almost continuous urban...
With half the world’s population currently living in urban areas, cities are key to the future of sustainable development. Background With over half the world’s population living in cities, the 21st century has been described as the urban century. It is estimated that 75% of the...
Former Irish Prime Minister John Bruton argues that Ireland has done exceptionally well to develop critical masses of skilled people. In global terms, the pull of ever bigger cities seems inexorable. In 1970, a third of the world’s population lived in cities, while more than half do so today....
