World

The explosion of amateur mapmaking opened up by online services like Google Earth has expanded the reach of maps for a variety of uses. Professional mapmakers, on the other hand, foresee problems of quality and accuracy.

David Bollier debunks the idea that the magic of 'private property' is saving fisheries from being overfished.

An artist recently drew an interpretation of a speech by author Richard Florida about the "creative class", competition between cities and the importance of place.

Neal Pierce of Citiwire.net returns to the population issue, this time addressing U.S. federal foreign and domestic policies regarding the issue.

According to one study, cities are often wrongly blamed for 75 to 80% of greenhouse gas emissions; the figure is closer to 40%.

This piece from Scientific American looks at plans for three "eco-cities".

Urban areas are filled with cars, and this creates an unsafe environment for children. This commentary argues that officials need to regain their faith in the power of planning to address the issue.

Architects and researchers are looking into the influences of African and African-American culture on urbanism.

Wired Magazine calls Mitchell Joachim 'a Frederick Law Olmsted for the 21st Century'. Joachim is at the forefront of thinking about the ecological footprint of cities, and one of Wired's 'People the Next President Should Listen To.'

Humanity has over-engineered the world's hydrology through dam-building, writes Rachel Olivieri.

Cathleen McGuigan, Newsweek's architecture critic, is disdainful of the hype surrounding green architecture, particularly because it so often doesn't address the main problems with land use: proximity to jobs and services, and oversized development.

The question, as WorldChanging's Adam Stein says, is whether it works well enough. A company called Zero Pollution Motors claims that its new, improved model will go 848 miles on one tank of compressed air.

GM will soon unveil its SUV of the future – the 'plug-in' hybrid known as the Volt. Mitsubishi's new mini, all-electric car will soon go to market in Japan. The days of the gas-powered car are numbered- or are they?