The COVID-19 pandemic is laying bare two unavoidable facts about our new reality: we are more interconnected than ever, and cities are at the front lines of this crisis and will be at the front lines of any similarly globalized crisis in the future.
Urban areas that are designed to shape and enable new mobility — by rethinking streets, parking, and more — can lower emissions, enhance health, and improve equity. Experimentation is key to best realize the potential of new mobility while avoiding negative and unintended consequences. Rocky Mountain Institute’s (RMI’s) recent report, Cities Designed to Shape and Enable New Mobility, describes the concept of MOD Cities — living test sites where local municipal governments, developers, financiers, vehicle manufacturers, mobility service providers, and urban designers and architects actively collaborate to co-innovate at the nexus of urban design, vehicles, and new mobility services. MOD Cities would put people first and be seamlessly integrated with the communities and urban fabric at their edges.
In areas of sub-Saharan Africa with underdeveloped infrastructure, children have died too many times on the way to participate in education — many more children die than in other parts of the world due to traffic accidents, and other parts of the world are still too high.
Thirty-six people died in traffic crashes in Washington, D.C., last year, a 20% increase from 2017. Eight people, six of whom were walking or biking, have already been killed this year, prompting a major public rally just two weeks ago. Residents are angry that the city isn’t succeeding in curbing road deaths, despite the fact that Mayor Muriel Bowser committed to end traffic fatalities entirely by 2024.
Imagine Lagos, Nigeria, a city of 22 million. What was once a small coastal town just a few decades ago has exploded into a sprawling megacity spanning 452 square miles. Its rapid growth has stretched the city’s services impossibly thin: Less than 10 percent of people live in homes with sewer connections; less than 20 percent have access to tap water. Many houses are in slums and informal settlements at the city’s periphery. Now picture Lagos twice as big.
Electric scooters are the latest “new mobility” tech to disrupt the transportation sector. Chances are you’ve seen someone passing by on one of these small-but-nimble two-wheelers in a city near you. Following the explosive growth of bike-sharing and ride-hailing, scooters reached 38.5 million U.S. trips in 2018.
The WRI Ross Prize For Sustainable Cities is chosen by a jury of multidisciplinary experts together evaluating the merits of world-class social improvements and sustainable city progress.
Medellín, Colombia used to be the murder capital of the world. With the explosion of the global drug trade in the 1980s, crime burgeoned, plunging the city into a state of lawlessness. Slum communities, stacked up along the perilous slopes of the surrounding Aburrá Valley, were on the front lines of the violence and mayhem.But today, Medellín is transformed.
The story of how Warwick Junction bucked the global trend of replacing informal markets with malls and shopping centers is a testament to the compromise, conflict, and resourcefulness of a small set of actors – informal workers, local officials and the small non-profit Asiye eTafuleni (Zulu for “bring it to the table”). It is a story of social healing and the enduring contradictions of a modern African city.
Chaos often reigns on the streets of Dar es Salaam, Tanzania’s capital. Minivans, cars and motorcycles careen along half-finished roads without markings, sidewalks, or traffic lights. Pedestrians walk single-file within reach of speeding vehicles. Groups of children in matching school uniforms hold hands as they linger at the road’s edge. They scan for breaks in traffic and dart across before the bell rings for the start of class. Every day, this journey puts their lives at risk.
