Cities

WHAT'S NEXT?: Smart cities are the talk of the town right now and so they should be to cope when over 60% of us will live in cities by 2030. E-bikes, Driverless- connected vehicles, buildings that talk to each other will help but many cities are susceptible to climate change and pandemics. Explore the issues faced by cities and the new ideas that will change the way urban dwellers live in the 21st century.

[New] More cities are adopting low emission or clean air zones in the UK, with nine new English and Scottish cities set to introduce them in early 2021 and around 70 councils throughout the UK considering similar measures.
[New] York City Council is ploughing ahead with plans for a car-free zone by 2023 after launching the UK's first voluntary clean air zone in part of the city earlier in 2020, applying only to buses.
[New] Alongside the ECAP, City Council adopted a carbon neutrality target to formalize Oakland's commitment to achieving a zero-carbon local economy by 2045.
[New] By the end of 2020, there could be more than a dozen clean air zones in Britain, with many imposing charges on older diesel cars that are driven into city centres.
[New] Average rents are down 7% in New York City and Los Angeles, and 3% in Boston Nationally, real estate firm CBRE predicts multifamily rents will fall by about 8% in 2020 and not fully recover until 2022.
[New] The African Clean Cities Platform is the regional chapter of the WWC programme, and strives to achieve clean and healthy cities in Africa by 2030.
[New] If cities, states, businesses and all other non-federal institutions made maximum effort to curtail their emissions the US could reach a nearly 40% reduction by 2030.
[New] More than 600 million people or 60% of the population living in sub-Saharan Africa have no access to electricity an Africa's population is projected to double over the next 30 years to over 2 billion and 50% of Africans will potentially be living in cities by 2030.
[New] By 2050, Bangladesh's large cities may become the first in the world to experience heatwaves that exceed the survivability threshold - where conditions become dangerous even in the shade - if greenhouse gases continue to be emitted at current levels.
[New] China plans to expand its railway network, the second largest in the world, by one-third in the next decade and a half, as part of a long-term plan to rev up urbanisation and stimulate local economies.
Both the City of Portland and Multnomah County have adopted resolutions establishing a goal of 100% renewable energy to replace natural gas communitywide by 2050.
Nairobi, an emerging tech hub, is becoming one of Africa's largest cities, and the U.N. predicts Nairobi will become a megacity - cities with a population of 10 million or more - by 2040.
Southern and central Europe will experience more drought, with one study projecting that European cities will become much hotter, with London forecast to have a climate more like Barcelona by 2050 and southern and central European cities seeing more extreme levels of heat.
With $135 billion in technologies projected to be spent on cities by 2021, smart cities will evolve from discrete flagship projects to sizable market opportunities which will improve the quality of life for citizens and visitors.
Before we reach 2030, the technology war between China and US could delay more sophisticated functions of smart cities that need advanced semiconductors.
The world produces more than 2.01 billion tonnes of waste each year and, without urgent action, that number is expected to increase to 3.4 billion by 2050 driven by growing populations and growing urbanization.
The 10-point manifesto includes calls for a new national innovation policy, every UK region to have a centre of world-class research excellence by 2040 and greater collaboration between UK cities and regions to adopt a global mindset.
Most quicker investments into the smart cities will grow in Latin America and Japan.
Cryptocurrency millionaire, Jeffrey Berns, plans to transform a large parcel of Nevada's desert into a smart city powered by blockchain technology.
The estimation of overall market of smart cities will equal $2.57 trillion by 2025, increasing at a clip of 18.4% per year on average.
For cities intending to transition to all zero-emission new car sales, such as Amsterdam or London, public charging availability may need to grow by 30% to 40% annually from 2020 to 2025 and expand by a factor of 6 to 10 from 2020 to 2030.
In Eastern Europe, the city of Moscow (12.5 million inhabitants, with 20 million people in its metropolitan area) is currently revising its Master Plan 2010-2035, Investment Strategy 2025 and Smart City 2030 projects in order to integrate the SDGs.
The Plan Zero City Landscaping Service is being trialled in London and will be rolled-out to other major cities across the UK later in 2020.

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Last updated: 19 September 2020