Startup Cities Institute

"Beginning this year old phone booths will be transformed into about 10,000 sleek metal slabs that will provide high-speed digital access throughout the entire city"

NYC’s Plan for Free, Citywide Wi-Fi Private companies are paying the city $500 million to transform old pay phones into high-speed Internet hotspots. Is it a plan other cities can copy?

"Teams of young mappers and adult facilitators spend roughly 45 days traversing their slums. They learn the shape of their neighborhood, how streets interconnect (or don't), and the the density of homes there. This information becomes the map's skeleton. Then, they fill in the specifics. They stake out what's needed through the eyes of children—where underserved public areas could become play spaces, where trash bins could be added in an area they regularly see littered with filth. Their ideal neighborhood is drawn and detailed onto the map."

Kids Mapping Their Slums in India Are Influencing Urban Planning Policies A new project aims to give young Indians a voice in the city-development process.

When government signage sucks

Guerrilla Public Service At some point in your life you’ve probably encountered a problem in the built world where the fix was obvious to you. Maybe a door that opened the...

"As anchor brands such as JC Penney, Sears, and Macy's close stores and Americans show a preference for shopping online or in walkable urban centers, more malls are expected to close"

America's Dying Malls Are Getting a Second Chance as Hospitals,... One-third of enclosed shopping centers are failing, so developers are getting a bit more creative.

Can new industry hubs really be built from scratch?

Zappos' CEO Has Poured $350 Million into Revitalizing Downtown Vegas, Is... Spending millions to revitalize a struggling portion of the city might seem like a good bet, but the current effort led by a billionaire CEO is...

Startup hubs can compete with Silicon Valley on price

How a City's Business Culture Helps Mold Its Startup Scene By all accounts, 2015 is a strong year for startup companies; I know this first hand, having worked with more than a few. When consumer confidence...

An interview with Paul Romer

Urban Expansion in Colombia | Paul Romer Blogging on my side interest in macro and growth theory has been crowded out by my day job, which has me in Colombia this week. This translation of...

17,000 of the roughly 70,000 homes in foreclosure in New Jersey in the second quarter of 2015 were "zombies"

Zombie foreclosures: Why it's a problem and what one N.J. county is... While a "zombie foreclosure" may sound like something you would find on a particularly messy episode of The Walking Dead, the term actually...

Transforming Detroit

Before and after: How volunteers transformed 100 blocks of Detroit More than 1,000 vacant lots were cleared of debris, 100 vacant homes boarded, 500 tires removed, and 20 acres of grass mowed during a three day...

"An average resident of Mumbai consumes 48 sq ft of space. Curiously enough, the Federal Bureau of Prisons allots 45-60 sq ft to prisoners. Yet, this limited space costs a fortune in Mumbai."

The World's Most Paradoxical Real Estate Market Is In India? [Infographic] Mumbai, one of the world's densest cities, is now facing a paradox. With the floor space person declining at a fast pace, the Mumbaikars are...

"Building a real city from scratch isn’t like playing Minecraft, Civilization or SimCity. Well, it is a little. But problems arise in reality that don’t come up in cyberspace, including vainglorious dictators, pompous architects, bureaucratic impedimenta and the fact that much of the best land is already inhabited by those intractable objects: pesky humans."

How to build a city from scratch: the handy step-by-step DIY guide From Songdo, South Korea to Lavasa, India via Egypt’s unnamed new capital, everywhere you look it seems someone’s building a brand-new city. How...

"Policymakers at the metropolitan level are increasingly working on designing their own unique policies and programs, and seeking to build organically grown entrepreneurial ecosystems with unique character, seeing that merely trying to copy Silicon Valley as America’s most visible success story has become irrational and futile."

Cities as Labs for Entrepreneurship Policy | Kauffman.org Cities are delivering smart solutions to big challenges.