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Megacities: The Latest Architecture and News

World’s Cities Day 2021: Resilience, Climate Crisis and Sustainable Urbanization

As cities grow in scale, dimensions, and amplitude, taking in 60% of the world population, the United Nations has designated the 31st of October as “World Cities Day”, an opportunity to talk furthermore about global urbanization, addressing challenges, encouraging opportunities across borders and highlighting responses. Focusing this edition on the theme of “Adapting Cities for Climate Resilience”, this day, part of Urban October, seeks to raise awareness about the climate crisis and its repercussions on the built environment.

Cities, at the center of the global challenges, are hubs for institutions, society, economy, commerce, and transportation. Understanding the importance of “Thinking the City”, we have compiled in this roundup, articles published by ArchDaily’s editors that offer planning tools and guidelines, tackle the different components of the urban realm and highlight worldwide as well as contextual questions and responses.

Call for Entries: "Lost and Found" - Reclaiming Architecture of Nobody

Have you ever had the idea to occupy a space that is soulless and lacking of identity? When you are in a transitional space, for example, can your surroundings leave you any meaningful/memorable expressions or a positive impact?

Residual spaces. They are spaces of nothingness, physically and psychologically. Ironically, their widespread existence tend to be abandoned/forgotten and considered useless and hopeless.

"Lost and Found" challenges you to explore and address meaningful expressions of these spaces. How far can we dig in the potentials that correspond to the surroundings of these residual spaces? Either solving an issue or embracing a local phenomenon, architecture contributes to kick-start positive changes to our society.

Just look around you.
After all, they are just lost spaces, in need to be found.

8 Projects that Exemplify Moscow's Urban Movement

When it comes to urbanism these days, people’s attention is increasingly turning to Moscow. The city clearly intends to become one of the world’s leading megacities in the near future and is employing all necessary means to achieve its goal, with the city government showing itself to be very willing to invest in important urban developments (though not without some criticism).

A key player in this plan has been the Moscow Urban Forum. Although the forum’s stated goal is to find adequate designs for future megacities, a major positive side-effect is that it enables the city to organize the best competitions, select the best designers, and build the best urban spaces to promote the city of Moscow. The Forum also publishes research and academic documents to inform Moscow’s future endeavors; for example, Archaeology of the Periphery, a publication inspired by the 2013 forum and released in 2014, notably influenced the urban development on the outskirts of Moscow, but also highlighted the importance of combining urban development with the existing landscape.

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Moscow Urban Forum Announces This Year’s Program

Last month, the eleventh edition of the Moscow Urban Forum released the topic of the 2016 forum: "Fast-Growing Megacities: Technologies for Dynamic Development." The forum will seek to answer the following questions: Why is it so important to discuss growth and development of megacities at this time? What are the rules that determine their existence? With three days to go, organizers have announced this year’s program.