Urban Planning News

KATHMANDU — Stuffed garbage bags float gently down the Bisnumati River in the western part of Kathmandu. The river, sacred to Nepal’s Hindu and Buddhist populations, is one of the…

Water-sensitive urban design (WSUD), a holistic sustainable approach to water management, could give the world’s cities a viable means of dealing with the climatic shocks ahead. Cape Town and Singapore point the way.

Rodents live among us, but we rarely see them. Nondescript, tiny, and often nocturnal, they slip through the cracks of society, largely unnoticed. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has brought the…

Manual Pintado spent the past 15 years raising cattle in El Pangui, a municipality nestled in south-eastern Ecuador´s Amazonian region. Now, he receives an income for leaving his 15 hectares…

Smart cities are held up as beacons of hope in meeting the climate crisis. This is because they reduce greenhouse gas emissions by paring back energy use and urban waste.…

Tim Beatley will humbly tell you that he’s not a birder. But in his new book, there are enough appearances by obscure members of the class Aves to suggest that…

Today we’re exploring nature in cities with author Kelly Brenner and urban forester Georgia Silvera Seamans. Listen here:   According to the UN, more than half of the world’s human…

Air quality in Metro Manila is returning to its usual noxious levels as COVID-19 lockdown measures are loosened up. But this backslide into business-as-usual can be preempted if local governments…

Wild boars have descended from the hills and entered Barcelona, and sika deer have been seen strolling deserted metro stations in Japan. While such unusual visitors will retreat as Covid-19…

JAKARTA — The Waladuna mosque is submerged in a meter of seawater, about 3 feet deep. It’s low tide in northern Jakarta. During high tide, the water creeps up to…

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam — As the largest urban area in Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh City is known for its kinetic pace of life, rivers of motorbike traffic, and…

JAKARTA — The Indonesian government’s plan to relocate the country’s capital from Java to Borneo has hit a wall amid the COVID-19 pandemic, with a top official saying they would…

As countries around the world experience rapid urbanization, many animal species have been forced to adapt to the encroachment of humans into their habitats. For species like the vervet monkey,…

LUSAKA – On a chilly August afternoon in Chongwe, about 40 kilometers (25 miles) east of the Zambian capital, Lusaka, a handful of children warm themselves around a small fire…

After the United States pulled out of the 2016 Paris Climate Agreement, combating climate change at local scales in the U.S. has become increasingly important to meet greenhouse gas (GHG)…

JAKARTA — Bali’s mangrove-rich Benoa Bay is now legally off-limits for any reclamation or development activities, following the government’s designation of the area as a maritime conservation zone. Spanning some…

MANILA — It’s said that when the mayor of the Philippine capital Manila looks out the window of his office, he often sees four things: the murky yet thriving Pasig…

GEORGETOWN, Guyana — “Growing up in the country, I never knew about coffee and Milo. I grew up on lime leaf tea, pear leaf tea, fever grass, sweet broom, all…

KENDARI, Indonesia — Next year will mark the completion of a nearly mile-long bridge being built over this booming industrial city’s iconic bay, say government officials here. But researchers studying…

Today we speak with Dawn Biehler, an associate professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, whose research focuses on the history and public health impacts of rats and other…

JAKARTA — Indonesia’s anti-corruption agency has charged a governor from the island of Sumatra with bribery in connection to a land reclamation project, in the latest high-profile case of environmental…

JAKARTA — Indonesian President Joko Widodo’s administration will withhold a key permit for a plan to build artificial islands in Bali’s Benoa Bay as long as strong opposition to the…

Traffic is a decades-old problem in Penang, a common complaint shared across class, race and political lines in this Malaysian state. When it’s brought up, Siti Fadhilah, a 31-year-old selling…

As an environmental journalist I’m bombarded every day with headlines like “The Insect Apocalypse is Here” or “Half of Global Wildlife Lost.” The end of nature, at least as previous…

Whether Asia’s tiger populations bounce back, or they evaporate into the pages of history depends on the decisions humans make about how we live on this planet, new research suggests.…

Many pollinator insect species like bees, butterflies, and hoverflies are on the decline, due in large part to habitat destruction driven by conversion of land to agricultural fields and urbanization.…

JAKARTA — Four months after activists in Bali celebrated what they believed was the end of a controversial plan to develop part of the island’s mangrove-rich Benoa Bay, the scheme…

JAKARTA — The Jakarta administration says it has finally pulled the plug on a $40 billion land reclamation project pushed by the Indonesian government off the coast of the nation’s…

DENPASAR, Indonesia — Hundreds of people in Bali are celebrating a key victory against a multi-billion-dollar land reclamation project that would have destroyed vast swaths of mangroves on the resort…

KUALA LUMPUR — Before the May 9 election that swept Najib Razak and his Barisan Nasional coalition from power, the then prime minister of Malaysia presided over one of the…