Topic Page: Smart Cities

Technology is changing the way we live…and the way we govern. See how some communities are using tech innovations to spur green innovations. Have an idea in Smart Cities? Tell us

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Ideas Related to Smart Cities

Webisodes Related to Smart Cities

Cities: The Answer to the Sustainability Question?

Think “green” means rural or suburban? According to Dr. Lisa Benton-Short, the real way to a green future lies in the density of cities.

From Suburban to Urban: Walkability Factors into DC’s Population Explosion

People move around for lots of reasons, and sustainable living is becoming one of the big ones. Is DC’s recent population explosion due to the increasingly sustainable nature of the city?

TV Segments Related to Smart Cities

Taking on Climate Change One Bulb at a Time

Can money vanish into thin air? For some businesses, the idea is a ghastly specter; for others, a sober reality. Carbon Lighthouse, a startup based in San Francisco, works to plug up the money pits that curse operations directors. The company’s founders, Raphael Rosen and Brenden Millstein, act as the Ghostbusters of energy efficiency: sporting …Read More…

Urban Wheels of the Future: Why Fight Over Parking?

This week on Bloomberg West we featured City Car, a new electric car concept that makes getting around a city much easier!

Inside Pecan Street: Re-Inventing Energy Delivery

This week we feature the Pecan Street Project, a non-profit research group that offers unprecedented insight into how much energy we use in our homes!

Articles From the Blog Related to Smart Cities

Floating Into the Future

Floating Into the Future You know houseboats, you know cars that are build to swim or tanks. But can you image to live on water in a real house? That is reality for example in Nigeria, where the people of Makoko build their houses on stilts above the lagoon. What is tradition there, might be a …Read More…

The German Concern for America’s Future Energy Consumption

Yolanda Rother was in for a rude awakening when she took her first steps on the campus of Georgetown University in January. It did not take much for her to realize life in D.C. would be much different than she originally anticipated. All she had to do was look up. “Lights were always left on. …Read More…

Lessons From Biking in Berlin

Here in D.C., we have a growing population of proud bicyclists. They’ve got a reason to feel good too– the district has the highest percentage of commuters in any (non)state of the union. But when only 3.13 percent of daily commutes happen by bike, it’s hardly a figure that illustrates a bike-loving populous. That’s too …Read More…

A Princess in Peril

In the outskirts of western Berlin, a princess is in trouble. Prinzessinnengarten, which translates to Princess Garden in English, is an urban garden located in the Moritzplatz Kreuzberg area, a withdrawn section of what used to be West Berlin. It is within this 20,000-square-foot lot that a laboratory for a sustainable city collides with a …Read More…

Prinzessinnengärten: A Garden Grows a Community

Morritzplatz. Kreuzberg, Berlin. A harbored slice of industrial West Berlin that once hugged the infamous Berlin Wall was once known for its factories and working class Turkish immigrants. Now, the neighborhood that is so often the focal point of Berlin gentrification is seeing a different kind of redevelopment⎯an agricultural one. Prinzessingarten, or princess garden, was …Read More…

Urban Development and Sustainability

Sustainability in the City! This week we’re headed to the city, a place of great opportunity but also environmental dilemmas.  Cities are often criticized for high volumes of traffic and pollution, making them a difficult place to navigate and live.  But they can also be more sustainable.  Check out these ideas submitted by Planet Forward …Read More…

Green Building At Its Best

This weekend, the quadrennial global spectacle that is the Olympics kicks off in London.  The athletes are no doubt champions in their own right, but so are the Olympic planners and developers who say these Games will be the greenest ones yet.  In honor of this achievement, this week we focus on PF members who …Read More…

The Smartest of them All

This week we feature Planet Forward innovators who are working to make our energy grid more efficient, modern, and sustainable.  Believe it or not, many aspects of our energy grid are based off of models created 100 years ago.  Can you imagine if you were still using 100-year telephone technology?  Be sure to tune into …Read More…

Aloha Alternative Energy

In the past week I was lucky enough to be asked to travel to Hawaii with a good friend of mine over spring break.  It was my first trip to Hawaii and I was unsure of what was to come—I knew there would be beaches, surf and sun but what surprised me most when I …Read More…

Smarter Ways to Get from Here to There

Yale’s Great Energy Blog, launching today on the Great Energy Blog, is where students from across the university will answer a question we pose to them. This week: Smarter Ways to Get from Here to There: Perugia, Italy, is a city that has made a concerted effort to eliminate car traffic from the urban environs, …Read More…