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TCLab Enters New Partnership With UN-Habitat

We are especially pleased to announce a partnership with UN-HABITAT, the UN’s flagship agency on urban and regional issues. The focus of our joint efforts will be technological innovation, employment, and the urban economy in multiple cities facing rapid urbanization and unplanned growth. Our goal is to rethink the urban economy in practice, relative to economic theory and current policy trends. We place critical emphasis on a cross-sector toolbox of innovative approaches to intractable urban problems.

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Columbia TCLab Spring 2013 Urban Planning Studio: Learning, Employment, and Urban Infrastructure Projects

Learning and knowledge opportunities are at the heart of economic growth but also social opportunity and equity. Cities across the world, however, are struggling to generate employment and better quality learning opportunities even as they invest heavily in urban infrastructure. The 2013 Columbia India studio is focused the conditions under which employment, apprenticeship systems, and learning opportunities could be redesigned and structured into urban infrastructure projects to boost economic and social opportunities for low-income workers.

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TCLab Partners with NYC Digital for the "Reinvent Payphones" Challenge

Today the City of New York manages over 11,000 payphones kiosks across the five boroughs – and we know that with the rise of mobile phones and digital media, the way that New Yorkers share information is changing rapidly. In order to modernize our powerful communications infrastructure, the City of New York is hosting Reinvent Payphones, a public design challenge that seeks to rally urban designers, planners, technologists and policy experts to create physical and/or virtual prototypes that imagine the future of payphones.

 

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Highlights from "Narrate - Market Menagerie: Health and Development in Late Industrial States"

On Monday, February 4th, TCLab convened a conference to discuss how we could more effectively communicate complex narratives in health.  Traversing fields of journalism, communication, urban planning, and political economy, this interdisciplinary conversation interrogated narrative constructs of illness and health, and raises the need for new ones. 

Participants included:

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How Columbia University is Facing the Challenge of Rapid Global and Technological Change

Lee C. Bollinger, President of Columbia University, talks with Thomson Reuters Consumer News Editor Chrystia Freeland.  See the video here.

Planning and Health in Asian Cities

In the last several decades, Asia has experienced tremendous growth and prosperity, especially if we look to the transformation of Asian cities. The continent accounts for over 60% of the world's population, and countries such as China, India, Vietnam, Pakistan, the Philippines and Bangladesh will provide over half of the increase of the world's urban population (Ling and Phua 2006).

How Developed Are We?

This is a controversial and troubling question for nations and citizens (especially if they are feeling insecure). But daily reality brings more important questions than this: the need to find food, shelter, and preserve or improve one’s health. “Development” in the abstract is a little distracting if it doesn’t speak directly to these essential concerns. Are developed societies those with healthy citizens and residents?

Robert Frosch Ph.D. Joins TCLab's Advisory Board

Former General Motors Vice President of R&D and current Co-Chair Emeritus of the Report Review Committee of the U.S. National Academies, Robert Frosch brings a wealth of knowledge and experience to TCLab's advisory board.  Frosch also holds distinction with the American Association of Engineering Societies and is a fellow of the American Association of the for the Advancement of science.  Read more about Robert Frosch here.

 

Why We Need Innovation To Prepare For The Global Aging Society

A startling new United Nations Population Fund report projects that in 2050 there will be more people over the age of 60 than those under 15. Put another way, there will be more pensioners than children by 2050. In just 10 years from today, there will be 1 billion people in this age group.

 

Read more here.

MIT Industrial Performance Center Highlights Market Menagerie, Health and Development in Late Industrial States

Pharmaceutical and life science industries can reinforce economic development and industry growth, but not necessarily positive health outcomes. Yet well-crafted industrial and health policies can strengthen each other and reconcile economic and social goals. This book advocates moving beyond traditional market failure to bring together three uncommonly paired themes: the growth of industrial capabilities, the politics of health access, and the geography of production and redistribution. Order the book.

 

Industrial Planning Has So Far Failed to Integrate Urban Planning

"You have to plan for the economy. You look at where the clusters are and try and anticipate where growth will take place."

 

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TCLab Director Smita Srinivas Guest Edits Eminent Social Protection Scholars in Prayas Issue “Social Protection Floors for 21st Century India?”

Invitation to Participate in an eDebate on Productive Cities: Urban Job Creation

What are the linkages between economic policies, including infrastructure investments, and job creation?

Urban Omnibus Features TCLab

What makes a city innovative? And in what ways does innovation need the city (or not)? As the panelists at the recent “Building Blocks: Knowledge and Innovative Cities” conference addressed, innovation is not inevitable; it is the result of intentional policies and regulations with implications for social equity and economic development. “Building Blocks” was presented by the Technological Change Lab (TCLAB) at Columbia’s Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation (GSAPP).