Over the 2026 summer, the UK planning sector saw two critical developments. The Greater London Authority (GLA) shared the Draft London Plan 2026 for consultation in mid-July, followed by the revision of the National Planning Policy Framework (NPPF) on 17…
Mapping Haringey’s EV equity gap, neighbourhood by neighbourhood* Every time we build a spatial intelligence map at CityFutures, something we didn’t expect to find ends up being the most important thing on it. We’ve been working on an interactive map…
What the TEN-T SUMP Mandate Actually Requires. By 2027, 431 European cities must have adopted a Sustainable Urban Mobility Plan. That’s not a target — it’s a legal obligation under Regulation (EU), the revised TEN-T Regulation. Most of those cities…
Good plans fail not in design, but in delivery. The missing layer is governance. Most sustainable mobility plans begin with good intentions. Reduce car dependency. Improve walking and cycling. Strengthen public transport integration. Make streets safer. Cut emissions. Improve access…
Most cities don’t have a data problem. They have a decision problem. They have transport data, land-use data, demographic data, environmental data, infrastructure data, satellite imagery, sensor feeds, survey results and policy documents. The problem is different. Cities often have…
Data doesn’t make the masterplan obsolete. It makes good masterplanning more important. Every few years, someone declares that the masterplan is dead. Too static. Too slow. Too top-down. Too detached from how cities actually behave. I understand the criticism. Many…
Smart city projects start with sensors and platforms. Almost never with a specific street. That’s the problem. In nearly every smart city project briefing, the conversation starts with technology: sensors, connectivity, platform integration, data governance. It almost never starts with…
Transport accounts for around one third of global carbon emissions. Active travel (walking, cycling, and wheeling) is the mode that simultaneously reduces car dependency and builds climate resilience. Istanbul’s GCAP and SUMP show how these two goals become one. At…
Targets are the easy part. The hard part is the spatial logic that makes them real. Every time I hear a city announce a net zero target, I think the same thing: that’s the easy part. Amsterdam net zero by…