Today we hosted an audience Q&A about the global plastic pollution crisis for Earth Day.

Read the questions that we received — and our answers: trib.al/FB18R5D

Great session on Safer Streets today facilitated by Rehana
#StreetsForPeople

The best apartments in the world are being built in France

This by Parages Architectes has cross ventilation to all living spaces and straw insulation

Apartheid urban planning did the hard yards of building highly unequal cities in South Africa. Post-apartheid South Africa has not invested sufficiently in a better system of public transport to make mobility affordable & a time-saver for people living away from employment nodes.

My dear South Africans, we really need to let go of the saying/phrase:

“all protocol observed”

It’s become meaningless and cringeworthy.

Let’s rather use “Greeting everyone” or “Good morning” or whatever meaningful greeting in any of our many beautiful languages.

This is incredible. World Bank comparison of how much a worker making $1,000 in Soweto keeps after taxes and transport costs vs a similar worker in Vietnam.

A damning indictment of both apartheid's spatial legacy and subsequent failures to expand public transport.

So not what it sounds like, but actually a better measure of how much transport 'costs/taxes'! Includes monetary cost AND time you lose stuck in transit. Andrew Kerr finds SA transport taxes are unusually high. Our cities really are unusually dysfunctional onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.11…

Looks like a good campaign being launched around government parking lot sites in Cape Town CBD - many of which were part of “regeneration” projects eons ago, earmarked for development, with concepts that included social housing, but still stand empty.

Cashless tickets for trainless railways. The greatest Lesufi-ism I’ve ever seen.

Study finds 'e-bikes should be at the core of planning for decarbonised travel in modern towns and cities,'
A fifth of e-bike owners get rid of their car, they are an entry point to cycling & they help people keep cycling!
thx Fiona Campbell 4 link. globalcyclingnetwork.com/general/news/s…

Joburg Water shock: Grid near collapse as authorities do not have funds to fix ageing infrastructure news24.com/news24/investi…

Daily Maverick makes you think. Debate. React.
Disagree. Vehemently so.
Or agree. Always based on facts.
If Daily Maverick & Journos in SA cannot hold up a mirror, do not work towards our collective freedom to disagree, we will all be in trouble.
Let the debate ever continue.

Globally, 36 million people are now employed in the clean energy industry.

32 million people are employed in the fossil fuel industry.

- IEA

In South Africa, the current system shows only 68% of eligible voters are registered. The ruling party governs with the consent of just 25.5% of eligible voters. This highlights a critical gap in our democratic participation. #VotingRights

It's a triumph of failed integrated planning, failed public transport, failed urbanism. Congestion tolling works if all these other things work.

In 2007, Zoran Janković, the mayor of Ljubljana, was slapped and mobbed by protesters for proposing to make downtown car-free. It’s been so wildly successful that a recent survey of city residents showed that 97% of residents supported keeping the streets car-free.

18 storey housing project planned for Paris, by MVRDV

190 apartments, 30% social housing

150 different plant species, with nesting boxes for bats and birds

8 social housing apartments under construction, with rammed earth walls

Dechelette Architecture

I am on the lookout for energetic, passionate urbanists to enrich our work and perspectives.

ourfuturecities.co/opportunities