poverty
« Previous EntriesWorldwide, cities are good for women
Tuesday, March 9th, 2010In honour of International Women’s Day this week, I offer the following argument:
The global shift toward cities and more urban based economies has benefited women — and the status of women — in at least three ways.
First, urban women and girls typically need to spend fewer hours doing household chores, including ensuring basic survival, than […]
Intriguing idea: Charter Cities
Saturday, October 10th, 2009Why is it that in hundreds of cities around the world, average citizens can own and use cel phones every day, but don’t have electricity or running water in their homes? They have a new, 21st century technology, but not a late-19th century one.
From this premise, Stanford University Economist Paul Romer develops an explanation, and […]
Blog action day: Dynamic cities and poverty
Wednesday, October 15th, 2008Dynamic cities with great employers, fantastic restaurants, great streets and pleasant parks also often have both significant numbers of impoverished people as well as wealthy individuals. In some ways, this makes sense — great cities attract everyone.
In Who’s Your City, Richard Florida found that the most innovative centers in the United States — Silicon Valley, […]
Book Review: The Concrete Dragon
Thursday, June 5th, 2008The Concrete Dragon: China’s Urban Revolution and What it Means for the World by Thomas J. Campanella
Reviewed by guest blogger, Dave Atkins.
Thomas Campanella’s book is a timely, eye-opening analysis of the wrenching urban revolution transforming China. Written in a clear, conversational tone, but packed with data and anecdotal stories that demonstrate the author’s insight into […]
Innovation, spiky-ness and poverty
Tuesday, May 27th, 2008 In Who’s Your City, Richard Florida notes that economic spikes and valleys are becoming ever more pronounced.
What I found most intriguing, and simultaneously worrying, is his finding that the most innovative centers in the United States — Silicon Valley, Boston and the Research Triangle — also contain the USA’s “highest levels of inequality.”
Is poverty a […]
Crowding out the locals
Wednesday, April 16th, 2008In Honolulu this week. Amidst the sunshine and drier weather — a contrast from Vancouver of the past 18 months — I’ve noticed a remarkable similarity: Homeless people are everywhere.
From reading the local papers, guidebooks and chatting to residents it seems that a leading cause (or at least the believed leading cause) is tourism and […]
“3 cups of tea:” Lessons from those who’ve never seen a city
Wednesday, April 9th, 2008Greg Mortenson and David Oliver Relin, Three Cups of Tea: One Man’s Mission to Promote Peace…One School at a Time (New York: Penguin, 2006).
They live in isolated villages deep in the Karakorum Mountains at the western edge of the Himalayas. On our paper map abstractions, they live in Pakistan or Afghanistan. In reality, […]
“The Missing Class”
Wednesday, December 19th, 2007Review by guest blogger David Atkins
The Missing Class: Portraits of the Near Poor in America by Princeton University sociologist Katherine S. Newman and Victor Tan Chen offers a glimpse into the lives of many urban, working Americans who live above the official poverty line, but are not quite middle class.
This book is based […]
Moving away from the car-tropolis
Wednesday, December 12th, 2007How might cities change over the next 20 years?
Here’s one theory for North America generally: they will switch from evolving to facilitate, primarily, automotive travel to allowing citizens more time for leisure, which intriguingly will mean less automotive travel on a daily basis. This shift will also re-make who, socio-economically speaking, lives where within the […]
Dubai - a microcosm of globalization?
Monday, October 29th, 2007What does globalization really mean? It’s a loaded term with many meanings. Perhaps one way to understand what the shrinking distances between people, economies, cities and countries really means is to look at life in one city that exists in its current form because of global trade and travel - Dubai.
Dubai is a […]