Last week I attended the seventh World Urban Forum in Medellín, Colombia, where more than 20,000 city leaders, urbanists, and planners from more than 160 countries met to discuss the future of cities across the globe. [...]

Unfortunately, a number of important countries, the U.S. and Canada among them, remain worryingly undecided about joining this widespread call for a city-specific SDG from countries as diverse as Germany, Colombia, and Ghana. — theatlanticcities.com

Just two years ago [...] Australia’s previous government created the Major Cities Unit which outlined key long-term priorities for urban productivity and sustainability. Highly regarded by academia, as well as infrastructure, planning and property councils, the Unit showed promise for strategic city alignment, including investment into high-speed rail.

Today, all investment into the Unit has been withdrawn and momentum towards a national urban strategy has come to a halt. — thisbigcity.net

Britain’s decades-long planning “chaos” has left London a city of great individual buildings, such as the Gherkin and the Shard, standing in a sea of “woeful” architecture, the Government’s design czar said today.

Marylebone-based architect Sir Terry Farrell called for a “revolution” in the planning system, to end the culture of Nimbyism and put the creation of well designed places to live, work and shop at the heart of policymaking. — London Evening Standard

A city that is connected -- in all senses of the word -- is a good city. The finalists of the Dallas Connected City Design Challenge offered numerous solutions in how Downtown Dallas can be linked to the Trinity River.

To guarantee a variety of ideas for Dallas' future development, the competition invited submissions in a Professional Stream and an Open Stream. Three Professional and 4 Open entries won. — bustler.net

The face of London is about to change.

[...] The development surge, fueled by wealthy foreigners looking for a safe place to invest, has spawned concern that the city is sacrificing its heritage for the sake of luxury homes.

"London is in danger of becoming a sort of Abu Dhabi, a sort of Hong Kong," warned Nigel Barker of English Heritage, a body devoted to protecting the nation's inheritance. — npr.org

By intervening in the local planning process, the mayor of London is creating a more exclusive, divided city of private enclaves, designed only for the needs of the rich. [...]

While the Mount Pleasant case might be dismissed as the usual cast of nimbys set against the inevitable steamroller of market forces, it in fact reveals some disturbing truths about how the mayor's planning machine is actively working to make the city a more divided, exclusive place. — theguardian.com

In the latest edition of the Working out of the Box series Archinect interviewed Steven Fleming an architectural-theorist of cycling... Slightly was inspired "For me, this type of work is more inspirational than the glossy renderings I see that is all too common in architecture work these days! Seriously, bike friendly movement needs to be in the forefront of cities around the world!"...