New studies suggest that all cities—big, small, primitive and contemporary—grow in similar ways
cities
When It Comes to Disaster Resilience, Washington Is Leaving City Officials Out to Dry
Cities have become the laboratories of democracy and the engines of economic growth. But a disengaged, miserly national government is making it harder for mayors to prepare for the next catastrophe
In Town vs. Country, It Turns Out That Cities Are the Safest Places to Live
A generation of movies have made us think that the American city is an inherently dangerous place. But a new study shows that you’re more likely to die violently in the quiet countryside
Why Dwindling Snow — Thanks Largely to Climate Change — Might Dry Out Los Angeles
Southern California depends on the mountain snowpack for part of its water — and that snow is about to get less reliable
SXSW: Don’t Fight City Hall—Hack It
At SXSW, learning how techies can hack their way to a better city government
Urban Planet: How Growing Cities Will Wreck the Environment Unless We Build Them Right
More and more people are moving into cities around the world—and those cities are getting bigger and bigger. The urbanization shift could wreck the environment—unless we can plan the transition.
The 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities in the World
Environmentalists here in the U.S. are not happy with President Obama, in part because he pulled back on a promise to tighten ground-level ozone and smog standards for air pollution. But American greens should remember: much of the rest of the world has it far, far, far worse.
That’s one takeaway from a new report by the World …
Ranking North America’s Greenest Cities
In part because we have a political press obsessed with Washington, we tend to gauge the success of climate and energy legislation only through the national lens. And the picture from Capitol Hill is deeply depressing. One party completely ignores the science of climate change and only wants to engage on fossil fuels, and that doesn’t …
An Urban President Hails America’s Great Outdoors
This afternoon, President Obama took time out of what has already become a bruising budget battle to announce the release of a new report on America’s Great Outdoors Initiative. It’s a program the White House launched last year to preserve parks and open space across the country. (Access the report, which gathered the opinion of more …
Weather: How the Troubled Response to the Blizzard Is Just the Beginning for a Warmer World
Yesterday afternoon, as we were closing this week’s issue of Time, I ended up in a debate with one of my editors over how the air travel system had responded to a December of terrible weather. I’d written a short piece coming out in the magazine describing the travel Armageddon the storm had created for airline passengers—not just …