Sentencing in Major International Cyber Crime Prosecution
Sonya Martin, 45, of Nigeria and Chicago, Illinois, a manager of a Chicago cell in one of the most sophisticated and organized computer hacking and ATM cashout schemes ever perpetrated, was sentenced today by United States District Judge Steve C. Jones to serve two years and six months in federal prison on charges of conspiracy to commit wire...
Announcing the 2012-2013 editorial board
We are pleased to announce the selection of the 2011-2012 editorial board. Thank you to all who applied and congratulations to the new board: Jon Grosh, Editor in Chief Denise Wilson, Managing Editor Ronald Davis, Senior Editor Aarti Ramachandran, Senior Editor Ca-Mie De Souza, Senior Editor Ludmilla Ngan, Senior Editor Rebecca...
Call for Global Public Policy Network Essays
v:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE Global Public Policy Network (GPPN) Essay Contest The Journal of International Affairs is seeking student submissions for its semiannual GPPN Essay...
Call for Cordier Essays
v:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} o:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} w:* {behavior:url(#default#VML);} .shape {behavior:url(#default#VML);} Normal 0 false false false EN-US ZH-CN X-NONE The Andrew Wellington Cordier Essay Contest The Journal of International Affairs is seeking submissions for the Winter 2012 Cordier Student Essay Contest for...
Rezoning Hollywood
A rezoning plan that would turn parts of Hollywood into a mini-city has won the support of key Los Angeles officials and set off a storm of opposition from residents. “More is not better, bigger is not better,” Sarajane Schwartz, the president of the Hollywoodland Homeowners Association, told City Council members and...
Vertical Gardens Alleviate Pollution in Mexico City
Eco-sculptures and vertical gardens are the latest indication that Mexico City has become a leader in environmental efforts for the developing world. The vertical garden aims to scrub away both the filth and the image. One of three eco-sculptures installed across the city by a nonprofit called VerdMX, the arch is both art and...
White Roofs in New York City
A recent study of New York City's pilot CoolRoofs program in the summer of 2011 found that the white surfaces painted on rooftops reduced peak rooftop temperature by an averages 43 degrees Fahrenheit. The program is an attempt to address the urban heat island effect in order to reduce energy use and greenhouse gas emissions. ...
Thought Leadership Forum on the Future of the City
Event: Thought Leadership Forum on the Future of the City Date: Monday, April 23, 2012 Time: 6:30 pm Location: Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs, Kellogg Conference Center, International Affairs Building, 420 West 118th Street, 15th Floor Register for the event here!...
NY Growing Faster than Anticipated
In the 15 months ended July 1, 2011, New York City gained nearly 70,000 residents, bolstering city officials’ claims that thousands of people in Brooklyn and Queens were undercounted in the 2010 census. Read more here.
Financing the 2012 London Olympic Games
The current $15 billion estimated cost for Britain to host the 2012 Summer Olympics is nearly $10 billion more than its original bid. It is not the first time Britain has struggled financially to make the Olympics a reality--war-torn London hosted the 1948 Olympics--and with a stagnant economy and the highest unemployment in 17 years, there...
Retrofitting Old Buildings for New Use
The New York Times discusses retrofitting old buildings for new use in Paris. With 80 percent of buildings in the US built in the last fifty years, is this the wave of the future? In Paris, a converted 50-year-old cement block tower is successfully remade into a sparkling new building. "This half-century-old tower used to be...
The Secret to Seattle's Booming Downtown
In a blog post on The Atlantic Cities website, urban scholar Richard Florida discusses downtown Seattle's growth since the 1990s. The city has encouraged the long-term growth of its core through large-scale infrastructure investments and encouraging downtown retail. Nevertheless, the area was heavily affected by the recession, and lost...
Las Vegas Growth From 1973 to 2011
A time lapse video of Las Vegas growth from 1975 to 2011. The large red areas are actually green space, mostly golf courses and city parks. You'll notice the images become a lot sharper around 1984, that's when new instrument designs greatly increased their sensitivity. Read more here.
IBM Takes "Smarter Cities" to Rio
Over the weekend the New York Times ran a long piece on IBM's push into smart-city technology, focusing on Rio de Janeiro and Guru Banavar, the company's chief technology officer of the global public sector. Consider Carnaval. The biggest challenges for the city are the street performances, which involve about 425 mobile samba bands...
Edged Out by the Olympics
As Rio makes way for the World Cup in 2014 and the Olympics in 2016, many of the city's favelas are being knocked down and paved over: "As Rio recovers from a long decline, some of the new projects are largely welcome, like an elevator for a hillside favela in Ipanema, or new cable cars in the Complexo do Alemão slums....
Everybody Inhale: How Many People Can Manhattan Hold?
Though down from its 1910 population peak of 2.3 million residents, Manhattan's current population of 1.6 million--plus 2.3 daily visitors--is growing, projected to increase by almost 300,000 residents in the next twenty years. Amy O'Leary of The New York Times surveys the options of growth in New York City by citing several books an Urban...
Airline Routes Are a Pretty Good Predictor of Twitter Connections
A new study by three Canadian researchers finds that many Twitter connections are either formed between users in the same city, or are between users in cities with frequent airline links between them. The research demonstrates how the Internet follows trends seen in the real world, though it does not explore whether similar...
How Cities Can Build a Cultural Identity
On the occasion of carnival, the last big Roman Catholic-influenced celebration before Lent's Ash Wednesday, Kaid Benfield explores the vibrancy the cultural celebration brings to cities. Certainly, cultural festivities contribute to the character of a city, while at the same time the festival takes on a life of its own inside the culture...
Moscow's High-Tech Ambitions
Skolkovo, an ambitious project to turn Moscow into a leading high-tech hub, is now in its third year. Progress has been on the slow side, but project managers are confident that the new ultramodern complex will boost Russia’s global competitiveness along five dimensions: aerospace, IT, biomedical science, energy efficiency and...
Have you visited Inside Out Project lately?
Since the Inside Out Project launched last year at TED, more than 70,000 individual photos have been shot and pasted in almost 9,000 locations around the world, sharing a vision of individual identity for the world to see. To house this astonishing collection of portraits online from around theworld, Inside Out recently...