Modern city planners are aware of the need to survey and involve future residents. The magic word: participation. Over the past decade or so, involving children in urban planning processes has become the norm. More and more local and international organizations offer kids the opportunity to take an active part in shaping their environment.

One of these projects is “Block by Block,” a program initiated by the UN in 2012 together with Microsoft and the developers of the computer game Minecraft.

As cities have soared higher and higher, some have ignored street-level life – an essential component for residents to build relationships to each other and their surroundings. By literally taking it down to a child’s level, people can increase the intensity of urban interconnectedness, and strengthen the fabric of a good quality of life.

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Urbanization and the evolution of cities across 10,000 years
About 10,000 years ago, hunter-gatherers, aided by rudimentary agriculture, moved to semi-permanent villages and never looked back. With further developments came food surpluses, leading to commerce, specialization and, many years later with the Industrial Revolution, the modern city. Vance Kite plots our urban past and how we can expect future cities to adapt to our growing populations.

How the world’s first metro system was built
It was the dawn of 1863, and London's not-yet-opened subway system — the first of its kind in the world — had the city in an uproar. Most people thought the project, which cost more than 100 million dollars in today's money, would never work. So how did they do it? Christian Wolmar explains how the London Underground was built at a time when no one had built a railway under a city before.