Author Archives: valentinschipfer

How Night Mayors Harness the Power of Cities After Dusk

by Valentin Schipfer Slowly but surely cities around the globe realize that there might be a slight relation between a vivid night club scene and a flourishing creative industry, including tech start-ups. The global competition for these promising economic branches … Continue reading

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Private Cities: When Ikea and Co. Develop Your City

by Valentin Schipfer Concrete gold is back. Since the financial crisis in 2008 real-estate has become one of the most popular types of investment. No matter whether you are an international developer or a speculator, most cities welcome you with … Continue reading

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Genuine Street Art by the Invisible Hands of the Cities

by Valentin Schipfer The old parts of European cities are beautiful examples for what develops when coincidence acts as the main city-planner. While in most of these cities master-planning has replaced this uncoordinated interaction, coincidence is still active in cities … Continue reading

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New Ways on how Cities are buying Technologies and Services

by Valentin Schipfer Each week another one million reasons arise which ultimately consolidate cities as the main sceneries of the 21st century’s world population. One million – that’s the number of people moving from rural to urban areas every seven … Continue reading

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Open Data – What Now? 7 Ideas for Your City

by Valentin Schipfer Everbody talks about smart cities while nobody really knows what hides behind it. Is it about open data and communication technologies or about mobility? Is it about energy-efficient buildings or social innovations? Or is it an integrated … Continue reading

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7 Best-Practices of Social Architecture

  by Valentin Schipfer As you know my blog entries regularly deal with social innovations being realized in bottom-up co-operational projects. Vivid examples are the Bicycle Empowerment Network in Namibia’s capital Windhoek, Babajob.com connecting informal sector employers and job seekers, … Continue reading

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Crowdfunding Urbanism – Breaking New Ground in Civic Participation

by Valentin Schipfer To be honest, I have never parted with Euros for any crowdfunding project until today. I suppose ideas on http://www.kickstarter.com , http://www.indiegogo.com or similar platforms have not yet convinced me enough. Probably I did not enthuse and … Continue reading

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Nation Branding: Has Austria become a case for the psychoanalyst?

by Valentin Schipfer What does a nation stand for? A question almost as hard to answer as the most fundamental question about the meaning of life. On behalf of Austria’s Federal Ministry of Economy the policy consultant Simon Anholt from Great … Continue reading

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Pick of the day: A 140-Acre Forest Is About to Materialize in the Middle of Detroit. On the atlanticcities.com by Sarah Goodyear

After nearly five years of planning, a large-scale attempt to turn a big chunk of Detroit into an urban forest is now underway. The purchase of more than 1,500 vacant city-owned lots on the city’s lower east side – a … Continue reading

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Pick of the day: 5000 Payphones Relive New York City’s Gritty 90s. On popupcity.net by Daniel Rotsztain

“The popular image of New York City today is of a shiny global capital — a sleek and modern, 24-hour city with a booming economy and internationally influential art and design scene. How quickly the world has forgotten New York’s gritty … Continue reading

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