Neal Peirce
World Urban Campaign Aims To Spark Cities' Global Learning

If you're interested in the future of the planet's cities, you need to know about the World Urban Campaign -- the world's first concerted effort to draw attention to the future of its great human settlements. Cities are where it's at for this majority-urban, ever-more-urban century. They're the central problem, the solution, the message, the medium, and the glue of how mankind makes it through challenging times.

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Eugenie L. Birch
Istanbul -- A Megalopolis That's Beginning to Work

Istanbul This fabled world city has a remarkable story to tell. Recently the European Union awarded it the highly competitive "European City of Culture 2010," title, the first for a non-EU member. More important, Istanbul is becoming a viable model for the 21st century megacity -- places of 10 million or more inhabitants, likely by 2050 to house 20 percent of the world's urban population.

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Birgit Heitfeld
Red Scarf Power
Berlin's "Neighborhood Mothers" program reaches out to immigrants, suggests global model
Zeinab-El-Hassoun, one of many 'Neighborhood Mothers' bringing empathy, experience, and good advice to new migrant famililes in Berlin's Northern Neukolln neighborhood

Berlin Turkish bakeries, delis, Oriental supermarkets and Döner Kebab (burger) stores. Mosques, hairdressers, a Turkish Airlines travel agency and Arabian shops. The mix gives the Berlin neighborhood, or "kiez," of Northern Neukölln a colorful, quirky feel. Some call it "Little Istanbul," others Berlin's "Lower East Side" for its companion mix of artists and intellectuals. But Northern Neukölln with its 160,000 residents is also a poster child for the difficulties of Germany's migrant communities. Sixty percent of the the working age population is jobless, and 72 percent of residents live on social welfare, according to the local government authority. Seventy percent of school children do not finish high school. Plus, criminality has soared since the 1990s.

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Jay Walljasper
Surprise Climate Leader
Chicago models ambitious Climate Action Plan to slash carbon emissions and handle warming

Chicago Nation states' failure to reach far-reaching accord at the Copenhagen summit may have dashed-- for now -- hopes of unified global action on climate change. So who must now step forward to face the 21st century's gravest problem? Clearly, it's cities and metropolitan regions, home now to a majority of mankind, generators of 80 percent of the world's carbon emissions.

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Anthony Flint
Delta Cities' Challenge
Peril, Promise, and a Watery Future For the World's Coastal Cities

New Orleans Global attention has been focused on the horrific oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico. But oil pollution, as serious as it is, isn't the only peril facing many tidal cities in this century, as a recent conference here underscored.

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