Former Chief Minister Kalaignar Karunanidhi should be a happy man if he gets hold of a copy of Architecture in India since 1990 by Prof. Rahul Mehrotra, well-known Mumbai architect and Chair of the Department of Urban Planning and Design, Harvard University (U.S.). Mehrotra might during his presentation on the book in Madras recently have made passing reference to the Kalaignar's obsessive project as being a building more akin to a modern Reichstag, but he obviously had thought enough about it to include it in his book as one of the landmark creations of the last 20 years. Of the building raised in a rush to be a new Millennium Tamil Nadu Legislative and Secretariat Complex, Mehrotra writes, “One of the first examples of a state assembly building in the post-liberalisation era in India is the State Assembly.” And he added in his presentation that it was probably intended to reflect the modernity and internationalisation prevalent in a State seeking global investment in almost every field from industry to infrastructure. The one feature of the building which struck Mehrotra the most was “the creation of a courtyard element for usage in various forms — a central plaza, an access and distribution area, and an open water tank …” He adds, “The urban plaza circle marks the perimeter for all other subordinate bracketing structures, thus notionally forming the ‘hinge' between the people and the elected government.”

The state government has turned down the proposal of Municipal Corporation of Gurgaon (MCG) to drastically reduce the land requirement for developing high rise townships, saying that the existing civic infrastructure of the Millennium City may collapse if more residential complexes are allowed. The MCG had mooted the proposal to reduce the land requirement under its jurisdiction to facilitate developers to set up more projects. However, the town and country planning department that regulates the real estate development turned down the MCG request, saying that more real estate development would put extra pressure on the existing civic infrastructure such as sewerage and water supply lines, drainage system and road network. It was proposed to reduce land requirement to five acres from minimum 100 acres for a plotted colony and to one acre from minimum 10 acres for high rise gated community projects.

One of Jawaharlal Nehru National Urban Renewal Mission's (JNNURM) visions is to have cities where the public mass transport system rules. Which is why projects like the Bus Rapid Transit System (BRTS) have become so important in Pune and Ahemdabad . But experts say that in states like Maharashtra where urban corridors in the vicinity of the cities are emerging as a result of intensified urbanisation, the city-centric focus of urban transportation must change to include a larger area that will cater to an urban conglomeration.

Derbyshire town centre plans for more improvements
BBC News

Residents in a Derbyshire town are set to find out what plans are in store for their town centre.
Derbyshire Dales District Council began work to regenerate the centre of Matlock three years ago, improving Crown Square and Matlock Bridge. A consultant's report into the next phase of work will be presented to the council on 9 September. Latest plans include a major new retail scheme on Bakewell Road and extra car parking for the town centre.

Comprehensive parking policy the need of the hour'
The Times Of India

The Pimpri-Chinchwad Municipal Corporation (PCMC) is planning to come up with a comprehensive parking policy for the twin township area.
Expressing the need for such a policy, municipal commissioner Ashish Sharma on Tuesday said that pedestrian safety issues need to be considered comprehensively while planning for road traffic and transportation projects.

State to amend Town Planning Act: Minister
Webindia123.com

Karnataka Urban Development Minister Suresh Kumar has informed that government is planning to bring an amendment to the Karnataka Town and Country Planning Act, 1961 based on model of a legislation developed by Town Planning Organisation, New Delhi.
Speaking to newpersons after reviewing the work of Department of Urban Development here today the minister said the Town Planning Department has been asked to prepare a draft of the Act in two months time.

Mexico City is demonstrating environmental leadership that can be adopted by other megacities around the world.
Residents and visitors alike can enjoy the many benefits of Mexico City’s progressive Green Plan. The sweeping 15-year plan will transform the city through strategies and actions that foster sustainable development and reduce the risks and effects associated with climate change. The plan encompasses a wide range of programs and activities to address climate change, reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, and encourage businesses and citizens to adopt climate-friendly behavior.

Following official plan critical to city governance - Gordon Drysdale
Northernlife.ca

In case anyone has not grasped the concept of good municipal governance, this is how it works. The provincial government has mandated that every city have an official plan, and they have provided the template to follow.

City Hall opens hotline service
National Post

The Iloilo City Government has activated two hotline numbers for the public. The hotline PLDT number 3333-533(JED) is now open for inquiries, feedbacks, complaints, suggestions and recommendations during office hours, from 8 .a.m. to 5 p.m., Mondays to Fridays.

China builds political system reform on courage and soap boxes
Peopleforum.cn

Politicial system reform has always been a sensitive issue, revolving around the redistribution of power and vested interests of government. Rather than copying the prevalent multi-party system in the West, China aims to blaze a different trail by expanding democracy and autonomy for its 1.3 billion people based on existing political framework. The reform is aimed at securing the governing party status of the Communist Party of China (CPC), under whose leadership other parties jointly participate in state affairs through political consultation.

Bigger city needs smaller council:Watson
Ottawa Citizen

Seeking to tap into growing dissatisfaction with city government, mayoral candidate Jim Watson Sunday unveiled a plan to shrink council by up to a third, to improve governance and save taxpayers $2 million a year.
In a dramatic move, Watson said he wants the number of councillors reduced from 23 to between 14 and 17. The reduction in the number of councillors, combined with a new borough system, is the governance blueprint Watson believes will free council to focus on "big-picture issues" and still empower local decision-making. The system he has proposed -- to have area councillors constitute a borough or community council with no taxing powers, but ability to make decisions on local or neighbourhood issues -- is perfectly legal, he argues.

Shenzhen - after money comes politics
Global Times

As Shenzhen observes the 30th anniversary of becoming the nation's first special economic zone today, expectation is high that this innovative city will also pave the path for political reform that will match its economic achievements. Experts say that Shenzhen is poised to set an example for the rest of the country to follow since economics is closely tied to politics.
In recent years, Shenzhen has developed a reputation for administrative reform that included a downsizing plan in 2009 that successfully slashed the city's government departments from 46 to 31. The plan also resulted in a 31 percent reduction of the workforce in government agencies.

City of Houston Expects to Save $7.2 Million Annually with Kronos [R]
The Free Library

The City of Houston, Texas“Houston” redirects here. For other uses, see Houston (disambiguation). Houston (pronounced /the fourth-largest city in the U.S., selected an end-to-end workforce management Workforce Management (WFM) encompasses all the responsibilities for maintaining a productive and happy workforce. Sometimes referred to as HRMS systems, or even the larger ERP systems (Oracle, PeopleSoft, SAP). There are many software vendors within this space.  suite of solutions from Kronos([R]) Incorporated to control labor costs, minimize compliance risk, and improve productivity. The city expects payback Payback The length of time it takes to recover the initial cost of a project, without regard to the time value of money.  within 18 months of implementation and annual savings of $7.2 million through complete automation and increased accuracy of critical workforce business processes. The City of Houston selected Kronos' time and attendance, employee scheduling, workforce analytics, activities, and absence management solutions for 24,000 employees.

Can New Orleans Reinvent its Criminal Justice System?
Open Society Foundations

Long before Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans’s criminal justice system was broken. Rates of violent crime as well as the use of arrest and detention were many times higher than in other U.S. cities. Most arrests, however, were for minor offenses, and once in jail people would languish for over a month waiting for a formal charge. The situation was only made worse by a public defenders office overwhelmed by unworkable caseloads.
In the Spring of 2007, the city council adopted the report’s recommendations and Vera, along with the council and Baptist Community Ministries, began working to put them into practice. The Criminal Justice Leadership Alliance, made up of government partners and supported by non-profits, was born.  Working groups—still active today—began driving the plan’s implementation.

What's an Indian city? - Think India
ThinkIndia.com

UNLIKE "rural", "urban" suggests higher standards of living, more employment opportunities, better access to education and health, superior physical infrastructure and more public subsidies too. That's the reason we speak of Bharat Nirman. Bharat doesn't possess drinking water, sanitation, housing, road connectivity, electricity and telephones. India does.

The City of Gresham installed new water management technology worth $4 million for automated metering Sensus, the product manufacturer, announced Wednesday. The AquaSense system, including a communications network and 16,000 residential water meters, was deployed late last year and the city is no expanding to some 400 commercial water customers.The tower-based advanced metering infrastructure, among the first to be installed by a large water utility in Oregon, will provide real-time data to customers to encourage conservation and operational efficiency. "Intelligent water management furthers the culture of sustainability fostered by Gresham by reducing our carbon footprint and enhancing our stewardship of precious resources," said Brian Stahl, water division manager for the City of Gresham, in a press release.The project was partially funded by the American Reinvestment and Recovery Act and a grant from Oregon's Infrastructure Finance Authority.

Call for public policies to prevent generation of waste and abuse of dumping sites. Waste is a term that has taken on new significance – a paradigm of the evolution that has taken place in this matter. Today there is more awareness about processing rubbish in the sense that the dumping site should be the last option. Ms Miren Artaraz, director of the Business Studies Faculty in the Basque City of Vitoria, not only shares this thesis, but also holds that, as important as managing the waste, or even more so, is avoiding producing the rubbish in the first place. In her thesis, defended at the University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), she studied public policy for waste management without taking them to waste dumping sites. The thesis is entitled Public policies for sustainable management of municipal waste. An analysis applied to the municipal authority of the city of Vitoria-Gasteiz. Ms Artaraz's hypothesis is based on public policies being an effective instrument for promoting solutions for municipal waste. To this end, she identified the most efficacious and viable ones, taking as a reference those implemented in the most advanced EU countries in this sphere. She also evaluated if they could be applied to Vitoria-Gasteiz. It is precisely in the context of the Comprehensive Plan for the Municipal Waste of the City of Vitoria-Gasteiz (2008-16) that this PhD thesis should be understood as, at a theoretical level at least, some of those policies are included in it. Concretely, the plan argues for prioritising prevention, followed by reuse, recycling, taking advantage of energy and, as a last resort, opting for the dumping of the fraction that currently cannot be valued.

HCM City plans to promote strongly the development of renewable energy over the next decade. The municipal Department of Industry and Trade has completed a power development plan up to 2015 with a vision to 2020, in which particular focus is given to the wind and solar power generation, as well as generating power from waste processing. A plant to generate electricity by burning waste will be built in the city's Southwestern solid waste management complex in Cu Chi District by 2015. The plant will have a capacity of 40MW. The plan estimates total investment for the city's power development until 2015 at more than VND20.9 trillion (over US$1 billion), in which more than VND1 trillion (nearly $52 million) will be spent on developing renewable energy. The plan aims to keep pace with the city's power needs as it grows at a rate of 12 per cent in the 2011-15 period and at 11 per cent in the next five years (2016-20). The city generates more than 7,000 tonnes of waste every day and it costs over VND235 billion ($11.4 million) to treat it, according to the department.

Salt Lake City — Salt Lake County's new recycling initiative hopes to make curbside recycling increasingly goof proof. Residents in unincorporated Salt Lake County and five cities no longer have to keep track of whether it's recycling week or not because, beginning Sept. 1, curbside recycling will be picked up once a week The weekly pickups, which will be in unincorporated Salt Lake County, Holladay, Cottonwood Heights, Taylorsville, Herriman and a portion of Murray, were instituted largely because of consumer demand and their willingness to pay for it. While four other service providers offer weekly recycling in the valley, this effort will be the largest municipal recycling collection statewide and presumably will add life to the joint city-county landfill. "With weekly recycling, we have the ability to capture more that is ending up in the landfill," said Ashlee Yoder, recycling coordinator for the Salt Lake Valley Solid Waste Management Facility. The weekly pickups will coincide with weekly refuse collections. The county's waste audits — where employees have literally sorted through truckloads of refuse to study what people were discarding — suggested a significant amount of recyclable material has gone into the city-county landfill. Environmental Protection Agency statistics say up to 60 percent of materials that go into landfills could be recycled.

Despite Ahmedabad Municipal Corporation (AMC) pumping in several crores and employing over 6,500 sweepers, the problem of solid waste management has not been completely solved. It is believed that the city generates over 3,200 TPD tons of garbage in a day. To help AMC form a better channel to segregate waste at source, 180 students from Centre for Environmental Planning and Technology University's (Cept) school of building science & technology (SBST) have taken up the socially relevant topic of 'Plastic Waste Management: from Source to Resource' as part of their Engineer's Day activities. The survey, to be carried out in 12 wards in four zones, will cover residential, commercial and public places, retail shops and paan parlours. Post the survey, the team will analyse ways of value creation with plastic and explore recycling options, efficient waste management options and optimal usage of plastics.

The city will soon boast of a cleaner shoreline. The Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) has drafted a concrete phase-wise plan to tidy the entire stretch from Colaba to Tardeo and Haji Ali to Worli village. Eighty metric tonne of waste will be extracted every day along these stretches.  The civic body will pump around Rs1.5 crore into this clean-up operation. Tenders will soon be floated to commence the task. The proposal was adopted after the Bombay high court raised concerns over the dirty coastline. A PIL was filed in the court by the residents of Gulistaan housing society near Mahalaxmi temple.

Cops undergo crisis-management training
ABS CBN News

Police are undergoing 4-day crisis-management exercises at Camp Bagong Diwa in Taguig City to prevent a repeat of the August 23 hostage crisis. Chief Superintendent Antonio Vernes, Philippine National Police (PNP) training service chief, said the activity, which started Tuesday, comprises lectures, training sessions, and simulated crisis-management situations.

BBMP plans better traffic management in city
Indiainfo.com

As anticipated, BJP has accorded 'top priority' for providing basic infrastructure in its maiden civic budget. It has allotted Rs4,878 crore, more than 58% of the total budget outlay, to address the problem of traffic congestion. But still, it will not be a cozy ride for commuters as the civic body also proposes to levy road toll on the motorists for the first time in the city.

Grand plans to build city of the future
The Times Of India

You have an ambitious agenda to transform Kolkata into London. Cleanliness will be your biggest challenge. With garbage dumps scattered all over Kolkata, what impression do tourists take back home?

Technology helps city prepare for storms
Suffolk News-Herald

Trial and error is never a good approach when it comes to flood preparation. With Hurricane Earl lumbering toward the East Coast with the possibility of turning back into a Category 4 storm, some might be wondering what kind of precautions they should be taking. The city’s Department of Emergency Management has the resources to help.

City councils wage a new war on motorists
Telegraph.co.uk

Rather than restructure, local authorities have spotted a chance to tax parking spaces Despite the Government's promise to end the "war on motorists", it seems as if we drivers have not even reached what Churchill called "the end of the beginning". On the contrary: local councils are planning to open a new front in the war by forcing thousands of motorists to pay a £250-a-year tax on business parking spaces from 2012.

Pedestrians, motorists set to get more pain
The Times Of India

Encroachments by shopkeepers and hawkers on city roads have reached alarming levels due to the upcoming season of festivals. Despite the menace spreading with each passing day, the authorities seem to be turning a blind eye.
With shopkeepers in almost all markets occupying footpaths and 'hawkers' at every nook and corner of the city, there is hardly any space left for pedestrians, who are now using roads and disrupting the flow of traffic.

8 more TTMCs in the City
Deccan Herald

As many as eight Traffic and Transit Management Centres (TTMCs) will become functional across the City in the next three months.
The Centres provide bus bays, multi-level parking lots and commercial space.
First in the line is the Bannerghatta TTMC to be inaugurated on August 29. The Centres at Banashankari, Vijayanagar, Koramangala, Shanthinagar, ITPL, Yeshwanthpur and Domlur are at various stages of construction and are expected to be operational by October 2010, Transport Minister  R Ashok said here on Monday. Two TTMCs - Jayanagar and Kengeri -  have already become operational.

Shimla : Himachal Pradesh has developed a master plan to promote non-conventional energy and is developing solar-powered cities, Chief Minister Prem Kumar Dhumal said here Saturday. "Shimla and Hamirpur towns are being developed as solar-powered cities," Dhumal said at a state-level function to mark Akshay Urja Divas or non-conventional energy day to commemorate the 68th birth anniversary of former prime minister Rajiv Gandhi. He said more cities and towns would be included in the energy conservation scheme. "Two energy parks are also being developed in Dr. Y.S. Parmar University of Horticulture and Forestry in Solan and the National Institute of Technology in Hamirpur," he added. The state's first solar energy plant of 200 KV capacity has been set up at Baru Sahib in Sirmaur district while 216 police posts would soon be getting 2 KV solar power plants. The chief minister said a proposal to install 8,564 solar street lights has been sent to the central government for approval and this would benefit 250 gram panchayats (rural civic bodies). He reiterated the resolve of the government to accord high priority to non-conventional energy generation by making optimum use of solar, wind and biomass energy. An official said solar panels would be installed in most government buildings in Shimla and Hamirpur for lighting and heating. US-based Bergamo Acquisition Corp is also aiming to tap solar energy in the state by setting up a mega solar thermal power plant with an investment of $400 million near Baddi industrial area in Solan district. The state government distributed compact fluorescent lamps (CFLs) to every household free of cost last year. This has resulted in saving of about 270 million units of power worth Rs.100 crore in a year.

Quick Take: Tropos started out selling to the municipal market for multiple uses. They installed broadband networks cities could use for public safety, transportation and more. Most recently they've been focused on selling to utilities for smart grid projects. But as the world gradually broadens its thinking from smart grid to smart cities, Tropos is returning to its multipurpose roots. The partnership described below will vault Tropos into the Asian market, where both smart grids and smart cities are increasingly top of mind. - By Jesse Berst Tropos Networks and Taiwan-based Billion Electric Co. will merge their network and communications technologies to provide Asian power utilities with a hybrid smart communications network they say is reliable, scalable and high-performance. nder the terms of the new partnership, Billion will market and support Tropos' secure wide-area network smart grid solution. The offering means utilities can take advantage of Billion's PLC/BPL and Tropos' IEEE 802.11 mesh broadband network technologies to aggregate communications for a variety of smart grid applications like advanced metering, distribution automation, substation security, mobile workforce and more. Also, the Tropos Wi-Fi mesh system can be used as reliable backhaul communications infrastructure for Billion's existing PLC/BPL-based neighborhood communications technologies.

In the past few years, the technology landscape in Tier II and III cities and smaller towns of India has undergone a drastic transformation. Be it televisions, laptops, cameras, washing machines or air conditioners, technology companies are launching entry-level products aimed at consumers in these markets. As part of Panasonic’s strategy to increase its reach in Tier II and III markets, the electronics maker has recently launched an air conditioner and television range with superior speaker quality. Since rural people love to turn up the volume, Panasonic has designed these special televisions specially for these markets. Panasonic India director, marketing and sales, Manish Sharma says: “We have realised the need of localising products for regional consumers. Before the production begins, we research/survey/visit the consumer durable markets to understand the nature of requirements of the customers.”

More than two weeks after the Brihanmumbai Municipal Corporation (BMC) decided to try out new technologies for improving the condition of city’s roads, four out of the nine firms have either backed out or have been shown the door by the civic body. As a result, only the remaining five technologies will be tested from next week onwards. The trials had to begin about 10 days ago after chief minister Prithviraj Chavan intervened and directed the civic body to introduce new technologies in constructing and repairing new roads.In an attempt to improve the quality of city’s roads, the municipal commissioner Subodh Kumar had invited nine firms to take trial patches on the city’s roads, which would then be checked for quality. In case the work done by any of these firms was of good quality, the technology would then used in the next road improvement tender.The backing out of these four firms will be a setback for the civic body, considering that all its previous attempts at bringing in new technology had been resisted by the contractor lobby that exists in the civic body.

Regional development in Canada is increasingly based on factors of knowledge, innovation and geographical accessibility.
Innovation led or knowledge based development of cities and regions has become the model with which most cities and regions will try to adopt and adapt to new conditions.
Linking innovation and regional development requires a nexus of co-operation between different industry sectors to enable intelligent city stimulation. This goes beyond traditional technology institutions and reaches into the disciplines of digital media, clean-tech, geo-local (mobile) entertainment, architecture and design rallying around a vision beyond infrastructure but reaching to a vision where collaboration and innovation growth outcomes are realized.

Cities owe competitive advantage to technology, not size
Sify

Smaller cities can now compete with huge metros like New York and Chicago, thanks to advances in technology. The rise of commercial aviation, high-speed rail, the internet and other technological advances have helped smaller cities give their much bigger counterparts a run for their money.

While coastal cities like ours talk - and, in Canada, talk is about all we do - about the threat poised by what appears to be an inevitable rise in sea level, people in most parts of the world are doing something about it. They’re making it worse. Because the mad pace of urbanization underway in so much of the world is even madder - in more ways than one - in low-lying coastal areas that are most at risk. More than a third of the urban areas examined in a broad study published by the journal PLoS One were in low-lying, at-risk areas, and their growth rate for the last 30 years has been 5.7 per cent a year - faster than anywhere else. The amounts of land in question are huge. Urbanization is likely to overrun a total land area as large as 1.5 times the size of British Columbia in the next 20 years, according to a New York Times story that caught my eye. With the accompanying growth of urban population, the economies and infrastructure that supports as much as 13 per cent of the world's population could be at risk if sea levels rise as most scientists expect.With nearly two-thirds of urban areas with populations greater than five million located in low-elevation coastal zones, coping with climate change in these rapidly growing coastal urban settlements will require a combination of strategies, including adaptation and mitigation measures such as migration and modification of existing urban space," the report says.But it seems to me it would be easier, cheaper and safer to find ways to encourage growth somewhere else.

In Scientific American’s special issue on tomorrow’s cities, Carlo Rotti argues that smart-city planning needs to focus on people, not gadgets. Planned smart cities and houses, according to Rotti, will never succeed, because they attempt to anticipate residents’ needs—and those predictions will never quite get it right. Furthermore, heavily planned smart cities are too inflexible, locking people into systems that can’t be adjusted to individual needs and uses of technology. Instead, truly smart cities will follow a bottoms-up model: Rather than focusing on the installation and control of network hardware, city governments, technology companies and their urban-planning advisers can exploit a more ground-up approach to creating even smarter cities in which people become the agents of change. With proper technical-support structures, the populace can tackle problems such as energy use, traffic congestion, health care and education more effectively than centralized dictates. And residents of wired cities can use their distributed intelligence to fashion new community activities, as well as a new kind of citizen activism. A true smart city will be more like Cairo—where protesters pooled knowledge during the campaign to overthrow Mubarak—not the uber-planned Masdar in the United Arab Emirates, says Rotti. City systems have to have the flexibility to accommodate new uses of technology; 20 years ago, the smart-city models might have anticipated roadways lined with sensors to detect traffic, but now there’s a cheaper, more efficient way to monitor congested highways: Google Maps, using information from volunteers’ cell phones, can pinpoint where the traffic is the worst.

Accenture, this report of the GSM Association (GSMA), which represents the interests of mobile operators worldwide, looks at the challenges of global urbanization. “The flood of people to the cities is placing huge stress on cities’ energy, road and water infrastructures, and even their ability to provide clean air. Smart cities that optimize these scarce resources are emerging as the solution. They employ innovative digital services layers that use sensing and control, analytics and ubiquitous communications, to enable better allocation of these resources. This approach will help cities to save costs while moving to a low-carbon economy”. The report argues that “no agreed definition of an intelligent or smart city exists, but they should provide enhanced information flow to citizens and service providers, combine disparate data sets to offer productivity insights; maximize economies of scale across multiple infrastructure layers, and use innovative technology and innovation. The report argues that mobile operators have a fundamental role to play in this emerging multibillion dollar value chain.

During a recently conducted meeting, Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy announced that the awaited Smart City ITproject will begin September-end. The road map for the mega project, which is expected to come up on a 250-acre plot in Kochi, is expected to provide close-to 100,000 jobs. Chandy informed that the things were moving fast and the work would begin next month according to their timetable drawn up since the time they took over. "All the hitches are over and it is going to be on the fast track," said Chandy. Incidentally, it was Chandy who had first finalized the proposed mega IT project in his previous tenure. The succeeding Left Democratic Front, headed by V. S. Achuthanandan, laid the foundation stone for the project, but nothing else happened during his rule. The road map that has been prepared indicates that the first phase would be commissioned before October 31, 2012. The Dubai meeting also gave directions for the necessary fund allotment.

Dubai The second meeting of the project monitoring committee of SmartCity Kochi, which was held on Sunday, set a timeframe for the first year’s activities and allotted funds for the same, according to a press release from the company. The meeting, held under the chairmanship of Ahmed Humaid Al Tayer, Member of Supreme Fiscal Committee of Dubai government, was attended by Abdul Latheef Al Mulla, vice-chairman of SmartCity and Group CEO Tecom, Adnan Chilwan, Deputy CEO of Dubai Islamic Bank, Suresh Kumar, CEO of Emirates NBD, Yusuffali MA, vice-chairman of Norka Roots, Government of Kerala, and Baju George, managing director, SmartCity. Work on the SmartCity Pavilion, which will showcase the technological advancements of the project, will begin on September 29. This pavilion will house the offices of the administrative and project management team. “Work on the headquarters building will commence on November 19 and rest of the work be implemented in a time-bound manner,” said Abdul Latheef Al Mulla after the meeting.The committee decided to induct Kerala Chief Minister Oommen Chandy as special invitee to the SmartCity Kochi Board. Kerala Ports & Excise Minister K Babu and Yusuffali MA have also been made special invitees. “I am sure, with the inclusion of Chandy and fixing of timeline for various activities, the project is going in right direction and we can soon see the impact of this,” said Yusuffali.

Bristol City Council has won £300,000 of European Union funding for two green tech projects Bristol City Council has won more than £300,000 in funding from the European Union as part of its Smart City Programme. Essentially the funding will be used from the New Year and will be invested into two projects involving green technology, specifically energy saving and ICT. The first project involves creating a model in order to monitor and measure energy usage within public buildings such as schools or libraries. The council said that it is partnering with a unnamed ‘British systems manufacturer’, as well as 30 other partners including tech giants IBM and Cisco… Smart Cities :“His report shows that there are real benefits to be gained in terms of reducing our emissions through the use of user-friendly data and technology,” she added. “The more information that we have as consumers, the more likely it is that we choose to go green and save energy.” Dr Tuppen’s report recommended three key areas as a focus for Bristol’s smart city work: smart grid and meters, smart transport and smart data. “Smart cities will rely on high quality information streams which are used for everything from effective energy management to integrated transport systems,” said Dr Tuppen. “This data will also need to be presented to users in simple and engaging ways. This new funding will help Bristol develop the necessary systems and help it on its path to becoming one of Europe’s leading smart cities.”

The Minister for Housing and Urban Poverty Alleviation Kumari Selja has said that the first five States having largest slum population in the country as per Census 2001.She said, as the Census 2011 slum figures are not available, it is not possible to indicate the growth in the slum population. The Minister said, the existing urban planning models and urban land policies are one of the key reasons for growth of slums. The other major reasons are :- (i)Increased urbanization leading to pressure on the available land and infrastructure, especially for the poor.(ii)Natural increase in the population of urban poor and migration from rural areas and small towns to larger cities.(iii)Sky-rocketing land prices due to increasing demand for land and constraints on supply of land. (iv)Absence of programmes of affordable housing for the urban poor in most States.(v) Lack of availability of credit for low income housing. (vi) Increasing cost of construction.

Stockholm, - The rapid growth of urban population - described as one of the world’s major demographic trends - has triggered an explosion of "mega cities" in Asia, Latin America and Africa, causing a breakdown in basic services, including water supplies and sanitation facilities. And by 2050, about 70 percent of the world’s population will live in urban areas causing horrendous problems, predicts a new 80-page study released here by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF). The current world population of over 6 billion is expected to reach a historic high of 7 billion by the end of October, according to figures released by the U.N. Population Fund (UNFPA), which also estimates a figure of 9.1 billion for 2050.As city infrastructure cannot keep pace with massive urban growth, many people will be left without adequate access to drinking water and sanitation, says WWF.In most developing countries, urban growth is "inextricably linked" with slum expansion and poverty. In 2000, nearly one third of the world’s urban dwellers lived in slums, the current figure is much higher. The study focuses on six of the world’s "exploding mega cities": Mexico City, Mexico, with a population of 21.1 million; Buenos Aires, Argentina, with a population of 12.8 million; Kolkata, India, with a population of 15.4 million; Karachi, Pakistan, with a population of 18 million; Nairobi, Kenya, with a population of 3.5 million; and Shanghai, China, with a population of 23 million.

Urbanization is one of the most powerful, irreversible forces in the world. It is estimated that 93 percent of the future urban population growth will occur in the cities of Asia and Africa. The persistent problems of poverty and slums are in large part due to weak urban economies. Cities act as engines of national economic development. Strong urban economies are essential for poverty reduction and the provision of adequate housing, infrastructure, education, health, safety, and basic services. Un-Habitat has recently published the report ‘Public-Private Partnerships in Housing and Urban Development’ which examines how the public-private partnership (PPP) model can be applied to help promote sustainable housing and urban development for countries around the world. The first part of the report identifies key opportunities and challenges faced by PPPs in general, and it provides PPP best practices and guiding principles adopted by governments at various levels of economic development. The second part describes global patterns in the most prominent urban PPP sectors followed by case studies that have been adopted and implemented by various governments around the globe.

The inevitable march of rural population into towns and cities in India has become a very definite trend in the last two decades, resulting in a high degree of urbanisation. This has ushered in its own set of challenges and opportunities for the political system, administration and planners.

What will Johannesburg look like in 2040? What we do today will affect generations that must live in this city for many years to come and we have to put the building blocks of that tomorrow in place today. Hence the recent launch of the growth and development strategy for the city, an attempt to start answering this critical question. It is a question that we, as the leadership of the city, cannot answer alone but should answer with the people we serve.

Lagos an Overpopulated State: a Case of Continous Spatial Restructuring and Interaction
Worldaudience.co.uk

Lagos an Overpopulated State: a Case of Continous Spatial Restructuring and Interaction Lagos has witness continous restructuting due to increased population. Therefore the paper focus on the various demenssion of spatial restructuring that have occurred , the reasons or what informed such restructuring , the effect and possible solution.

African cities: development opportunities
Real Estate Web

How fast must we build houses and infrastructure to cope with population growth? Experts predict urbanisation trends.
African countries must create the same amount of urban space between now and 2025 as has been created since the beginning of the process of urbanization, according to Jean Marie Cour, a development consultant addressing a United Nations University workshop in Cape Town recently.
Between now and 2050, the world population will increase from six to nine billion individuals, and the urban population will double from three to six billion.

Where are the policies to address Australia's most harmful issue – Immigrated Overpopulations? Candobetter.org

Australia's greatest social, environmental and economic problems are 'root (cause) driven' by immigrated (human) overpopulation.
Human overpopulation (from immigration and record migrant births) is putting unsustainable pressures on Australia's economy (demand driving higher prices, interest rates, raising the cost of living, reducing housing affordability, unemployment, record consumerism driving import demands and a spiralling trade deficit.

Chinese migrants: Stuck in the middle
Whydev.org

China is a nation on the move. 211 million rural migrants – roughly equal to the population of Indonesia – have moved into its cities in search of a ticket of the poverty of the countryside. It is the largest migration movement in human history.
According to Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, China is indebted to the liudongrenkou, or ‘floating population’, for its unprecedented economic growth and the skyscrapers that dominate urban skylines. Yet, what is life really like for the workers of the world’s biggest factory?

Commonwealth uniquely placed to tackle urban growth
Vanuatunews.com

Progress towards the UN’s Millennium Development Goals across the Commonwealth will require a concerted focus on managing urban growth better. This is the main message from a new study that scopes the state of Commonwealth cities.
The planning and management of cities is also integral to attempts to mitigate and adapt to climate change, the report says.
The Commonwealth’s urban population is growing by 65,000 people a day, over 23.5 million a year. This urban growth reflects the youthful age structure of cities. It is also fuelled by rural to urban migration and the redefinition of the boundaries of urban areas.

Rising Middle Class in China to Drive Domestic Consumption
Proactive Investors UK

Amid concerns about the widening gap between the very wealthy and those living in poverty, the think tank Chinese Academy of Social Science (CASS) has estimated that by 2023 about half of the urban population in China will be middle-income residents.China currently has a middle class population of 230 million in the cities, making up 37 percent of the total urban population. A 2.3 percent annual increase is projected from 2010 to 2025, resulting in a middle class population over 450 million.CASS defines China's middle class as families with their Engel's coefficient, or the proportion of income spent on food, standing between 0.3 and 0373, and typically of those having assets valued between $18,000 and $36,200.The McKinsey Global Institute defines the Chinese middle-class as having an annual income group of between $13,500 and $53,900 while China's National Bureau of Statistics puts middle-class households in the range of $7,250 to $62,500 income bracket. In 2010 it was estimated that about 25 percent of China's population fell into this last bracket as determined by the National Bureau of Statistics…The urbanization process is expected to accelerate as the Chinese government moves away from its long-held "dual structure in urban and rural areas", which in effect restricts the relocation of rural residents to urban areas. Although the full spending potential of the new middle class will only be realized in 20 years, household saving and consumption patterns have already begun to take shape. By 2025, some estimate that the urban households in China will make up one of the largest consumer markets in the world, spending about 20 trillion RMB annually.

Model city Singapore shows symptoms of urban stress
Yahoo News Asia

Flash floods along posh Orchard Road. Packed subway trains. Traffic gridlock in the morning and evening rush hours. Intensifying competition for public flats. What happened to squeaky-clean, smooth-flowing Singapore?
Widely acclaimed as one of the worlds most "liveable" cities, Singapore is now experiencing urban growth woes as it moves to expand its population to 6.5 million in 20 years, up 30 percent from the current level of five million.

Farmers' protest in Delhi underscores India’s Land Woes
Flash News Today

Thousands of farmers marched to India’s parliament on Thursday to protest against a government takeover of land to build a new highway, underlining a wider problem of land acquisition in the rapidly-growing Asian giant.
The protest follows the death of three farmers in northern Uttar Pradesh state this month, when police fired at protesters demanding more compensation for land taken to build a $2 billion highway connecting the Taj Mahal city of Agra with New Delhi.