Horizons research magazine: Cities are the future
As the decades-long wave of urbanisation continues apace around the world, solutions for dealing with global warming must also work for metropolitan areas. All roads lead to the city.
Cities are becoming ever greener. Soon, urban residents will be no more than a 10-minute walk away from their workplace. At least, that is the vision of city planners. The current issue of Horizons casts a lens on urban reality. Stroll through Zurich West with a researcher from the ETH’s Future Cities Lab and find out what it takes to be a smart city. Then, take a tour of the Tuscan city-states of the late Middle Ages to see how walls brought freedom in those days. Finally, a close look at an apparently unbridgeable divide questions whether urban and rural Switzerland are really so far apart.
In addition, Horizons compares international sources of research funding and tallies the similarities and differences between the NIH, a US public agency; the Wellcome Trust, a large private organisation; and FWF, a small state agency in Austria that promotes innovation.
Other highlights include an encounter with Loretta Seglias, who has been exposing the ills of past welfare policies for decades; a detailed view of the inside and outside of the sun; and the experiences of sleuths who uncover fraud in science.
As always, the current issue of Horizons is as varied as the research it covers – and accessible to all.