Recent Posts by Madeleine
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sustainable Food Production for a Resilient Rosario won the 2020-2021 Prize for Cities on June 29, 2021. Learn more here. (June 29, 2021) The residents of Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city, are no strangers to crises. When the country’s economy ...
Half a century ago, a lethal haze of smoke and fog, otherwise known as the Great Smog of 1952, covered London and killed as many as 12,000 people. More recently, in 2013, Ella Adoo-Kissi-Debrah died at the hands of air pollution. ...
During Caroline Owala’s childhood, flooding during rainstorms was a normal occurrence. “When it rained, it would be very difficult for us to even sleep because the flooding would get into the houses,” she told WRI. Caroline grew up in Kibera, ...
Monterrey, like other major Mexican cities, rapidly expanded outward during the end of the 20th century. New policies favored investment in new suburban neighborhoods, attracting residents and businesses to the periphery, and provoking several decades of insecurity and population decline. ...
During the summers, in the crowded informal settlement she calls home in Ahmedabad, India, Meenaben would lay wet jute on the floor and hay on the roof of her home to lower the temperature inside. If she didn’t, her home ...
EDITOR’S NOTE: Sustainable Food Production for a Resilient Rosario won the 2020-2021 Prize for Cities on June 29, 2021. Learn more here. (June 29, 2021) City life can be deeply unfair. This was true before the COVID-19 pandemic exposed just how ...
Big ideas can forever alter the fate of cities when they are written into cement, steel and stone. When St. Petersburg, Russia, was created in 1703 by Peter the Great, he envisioned the new capital as an emblem of a modern ...
Warwick Junction is a finalist for the WRI Ross Prize for Cities. Warwick Junction’s maze of stalls, arches and bridges can elicit wonder in any first-time visitor to South Africa’s largest marketplace. The area’s nine distinct markets are wedged between ...
SARSAI is a finalist for the WRI Ross Prize for Cities. Chaos often reigns on the streets of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. Minivans, cars and motorcycles careen along half-finished roads without markings, sidewalks or traffic lights. Pedestrians walk ...
Eskişehir Urban Development Project is a finalist for the WRI Ross Prize for Cities. Many cities are looking for a new future after the decline of traditional manufacturing industries. From the American Rust Belt to Europe’s industrial heartlands, mayors are ...
SWaCH is a finalist for the WRI Ross Prize for Cities. Pinky Sonawane spent her childhood gathering garbage on the streets of Pune, India. She’d join her mother in pulling plastic bottles, cans and cardboard from roadside dumpsters, selling ...
Metrocable is a finalist for the WRI Ross Prize for Cities. Medellín, Colombia, used to be the murder capital of the world. With the explosion of the global drug trade in the 1980s, crime burgeoned, plunging the city into ...
Urbanization is changing the face of the planet – for better and for worse. City populations, GDP and investment are increasing exponentially. At the same time, carbon emissions are rising, more and more people are living in slums, and air pollution ...
