Construction starts on Naturbad Riehen by Herzog & de Meuron


Construction has started on Naturbad Riehen, a natural swimming pool for the municipality of Riehen. A project that dates back to the founding of Herzog & de Meuron in 1978. After winning a competition in 1979 and developing several unrealized projects in the following years, Herzog & de Meuron were commissioned to rethink the concept of a new pool in 2007.
Continue reading Construction starts on Naturbad Riehen by Herzog & de Meuron

Cities must make radical changes to transport infrastructure

Recently Forum for the Future released a report – Megacities on the Move(pdf) a collaboration with Vodafone, EMBARQ and the FIA Foundation, is a practical toolkit designed to help governments, city authorities and businesses understand the challenges of the future and develop strategies which will allow people to live and travel more sustainably in the major cities of the 21st century.

Stackable electric cars which you can hire all over big cities, a website where you can rent out your vehicle when you’re not using it, lifelike ‘telepresence’ screens which let you talk to people in different countries and feel you’re in the same room – these are just some of today’s innovations which hint at what life may be like in 2040, according to a new report from Forum for the Future.

Megacities on the move argues that cities need to radically reengineer their infrastructures to cope with much larger populations. By 2040 two in three people will live in cities; the world’s urban population will grow from 3.5 billion to 5.6 billion.

Read more about the report

Download Megacities on the Move(pdf)

China to reach 50% urban population by 2015

Recently Li Shouxin, director of the Development Planning Department stated that China’s urban population had reached 622 million by the end of 2009, with the urbanization rate standing at nearly 47 percent with the urban population growing by just under 1% annually over the last five years.

Zhang Qin, deputy director of the Urban-Rural Planning Department under the Ministry of Housing and Urban-Rural Development (MOHURD), said the rapid urbanization of China will continue for 15 to 20 years and China will become an urban society during the “12th Five-Year Plan” period (between 2011 and 2015 ).

The process will create a market of at least 1 trillion yuan ($146 billion) in the coming 20 years, according to a report by the Xinhua News Agency.

[SOURCES: People's Daily Online and Global Times]

Suburbs stop growing due to housing bust

USAToday reports

The recession and housing collapse have halted four decades of double-digit growth for nearly half of the nation’s biggest rapidly expanding suburbs.

Twenty-four of the 53 cities of 100,000 or more that grew by at least 10% every decade since 1970 lost population in the last two years.

SOURCE: USA Today – Housing bust halts growing suburbs


The State of Town Planning in Ghana

Accra

Accra, Ghana - Image via Wikipedia

Kwadwo (Kojo) Fordjour, AICP has written a great article published at Ghana Web which looks at the state of Town Planning in Ghana. Ghana has a population of 22 million with 385 towns and cities, however there is little planning and few universities offering courses in Town Planning. Kwadwo states that the envisioned plan for Ghana for 2015 will be dream unless planning is made the focus of the vision.

Kwadwo also gives an overview of how the APA is assisting Ghana by providing USA tours and job training to members of the GIP. If you are interested in learning more about how you can help they can be contacted via [email protected]

To read the article that inspired this post go to article at the [SOURCE: Ghana Web]