Solution Tracks

The frightening prospect of greener, people-friendly streets has sent the online right – and Tory MPs – into a tailspin, says Guardian architecture critic Oliver Wainwright

China 🇨🇳 15 minute cities. Urban incarceration.Each neighborhood zone is separated by a barbed wire fence. Anyone who wants to leave their zone requires a QR code/Covid passport and a face recognition scan.A dystopian hell on earth. pic.twitter.com/yJQmH7FkK4— James Melville 🚜 (@JamesMelville) February 17, 2023

This is Oxford today.People from across the UK have come together to protest the 15-minute dystopia they have planned for us.Oxford is one of the first cities to announce a new scheme where car owners will be fined for driving outside of their local area. pic.twitter.com/vISFgQZ2k7— David Morgan 🏴󠁧󠁢󠁷󠁬󠁳󠁿 #StayFree (@david_r_morgan) February 18, 2023

The idea of 15-minute cities is pretty simple: Everything you need should be within a roughly 15 minute walk or cycle. Yet it has become the subject of a conspiracy theory, fast gaining pace globally, which has rebranded them as “climate lockdowns.”

Conspiracy theorists have a new, unlikely target: The world of urban planning.

The 15-minute city concept has repeatedly made the news this year. Here, we explain the key details of the urbanism concept and why it has become so controversial.

What are the needs that people have for the 15-minute city, and how do these needs differ for different groups of users? We conducted four exemplary analyses.

More than 60 ready-to-print home designs. High-design and high-performance residential architecture available at all price points.

Cheap, strong and plentiful, bamboo has been used in Hong Kong for ages as an ultra-sustainable building material. Other countries are catching on.

Architect David Benjamin is bringing his biology-inspired recipe for construction materials to an affordable housing project in Oakland, California.

In Maine, an enormous 3D printer is turning natural materials into sustainable, carbon-sequestering homes.

By making manufacturing technology available and affordable, maker spaces like BLOQS are knocking down barriers.

With “green corridors” that mimic the natural forest, the Colombian city is driving down temperatures -- and could become five degrees cooler over the next few decades.

We are currently at a 42 year low for murder, says Karyn McCluskey, and it's not low enough. McCluskey is the chief executive of Community Justice Scotland a...

À Cadenet, village du Vaucluse, des habitant·es ont réfléchi ensemble, durant plusieurs mois, à leurs aspirations pour une alimentation désirable. Leur convention citoyenne locale a débouché sur la création (…)

UNSW Sydney solar experts say we need bespoke technology designed to recycle important elements inside solar panels.

A 12-year industry roadmap has been unveiled to address the rising amount of solar panel waste headed for the tip

Public ownership is flourishing across Europe!

Face aux Deliveroo et autres Uber Eats qui se développent dans le secteur de la livraison de repas à domicile, des coursiers à vélo s'auto-organisent dans de nombreuses villes européennes avec la volonté (...)

Depuis le début du confinement, face à l'absence de réactivité des pouvoirs publics marseillais, plusieurs groupes de citoyens organisent des collectes et des distributions de nourriture au profit des (...)

slow hand design thailand lures visitors into a thai temple fun fair where wasted banana peels turn into shoes and eggshells into pottery.

Form Energy, co-founded by MIT materials scientist Yet-Ming Chiang, is incorporating renewables into the grid using their iron-air batteries and research from the lab of MIT IDSS Professor Jessika Trancik.

Governments have promised to plant an area larger than the Amazon to help save the planet. The goal is laudable. But is it plausible?

Architects use local materials and merge traditional techniques with modern technology to make schools and orphanages cool, welcoming places

Research reveals area size of France is under threat by restoration projects taking place in unsuitable landscapes

Savant's latest change to its home energy software makes it easy to customize all the ways you want to use -- or not use -- your electricity.

Two new solar paths spanning the picturesque provinces of North Holland and North Brabant are building on the Dutch tradition

In an effort to combat the plastic waste crisis, biotech startup Sway has created a seaweed-based alternative to plastic packaging.

Shoes are notoriously hard to recycle and the vast majority are sent to landfill. Can a new design help reduce the environmental impact of our footwear?