Cities are never truly complete and done; instead they are always changing, always evolving. One positive change is the rise of regenerative cities—urban centers designed to have a restorative relationship with the environment that protects and enhances local ecosystems.

WIRED Japan collaborated with the urban design studio For Cities to highlight some of the world’s best sustainable urban developments, which are harbingers of what is to come. From using local materials and construction methods to restoring ecosystems, these projects go beyond merely making green spaces and provide hints of how cities of the future will function as well as how they will be built. Here are some places where the future is now.

About 23,500 of the 1.5 million customers that lost power in western North Carolina still lacked electricity on Sunday, according to Poweroutage.us. Without it, they can’t keep medicines cold or power medical equipment or pump well water. They can’t recharge their phones or apply for federal disaster aid.

The Footprint Project is scaling up its response to this disaster with sustainable mobile infrastructure. It has deployed dozens of larger solar microgrids, solar generators and machines that can pull water from the air to 33 sites so far, along with dozens of smaller portable batteries.

With donations from solar equipment and installation companies as well as equipment purchased through donated funds, the nonprofit is sourcing hundreds more small batteries and dozens of other larger systems and even industrial-scale solar generators known as “Dragon Wings.”

The surge in online shopping, accelerated by COVID-19, has driven up the demand for package deliveries, and that demand continues to rise.

As traditional delivery methods contribute to urban traffic congestion and pollution, cargo bikes - a staple of bike-friendly countries like Denmark and the Netherlands - are becoming a common sight in cities across Europe as a sustainable and efficient alternative to vans.

These larger, typically electric bikes with separate carriers can transport a wide range of loads, from small parcels to larger items, making them ideal for urban deliveries.

In Europe, it is estimated that up to 50 per cent of motorised trips involving the transport of goods in cities could be made by cargo bikes and bicycles, according to a recent study.

On Tuesday, service workers rallied at major airports in Charlotte, North Carolina, and Phoenix. They called for immediate action from employers to ensure their safety in the workplace, including adequate breaks and access to drinking water during periods of extreme heat.

In Phoenix, where earlier this year local officials enacted a heat ordinance mandating many of these protections, workers and legislators sounded the alarm that the ordinance has led to inadequate improvements, and questioned how the protections are being enforced. “Why is it after passing an ordinance we’re still asking for the basics? Water. Breaks. These are humans rights,” said City of Phoenix Councilwoman Betty Guardado at the rally. Later this week, laborers across the country will be taking a coordinated water break to signify the need for access to drinking water at work.

As human-caused climate change continues to make the planet hotter, extreme heat in the workplace is increasingly becoming a lethal threat. Organizers say “Heat Week” is also spurred by the recent sudden deaths of Wednesday “Wendy” Johnson, a postal worker in North Carolina, and Ronald Silver II, a sanitation worker in Maryland. Both Johnson and Silver are believed to have died, in part, because of on-the-job heat exposure, which kills dozens of workers every year.

From January through July of this year, wind and solar in the U.S. generated more net electricity than power from coal, according to recent data from the U.S. Energy Information Administration (EIA).

According to the EIA’s Monthly Energy Review for July 2024, electricity net generation from renewable energy outpaced coal for the first seven months of the year so far, a first for the U.S.

Further, wind energy generation alone beat coal energy generation in two consecutive months: March and April. As CleanTechnica reported, wind energy installations produced 45.9 gigawatt-hours (GWh) in March and a record high 47.7 GWh in April, compared to the 38.4 GWh in March and 37.2 GWh in April generated by coal-fired power plants.

Researchers at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg (MLU) have discovered a new method to increase the efficiency of solar cells by a factor of 1,000. The team of scientists achieved this breakthrough by creating crystalline layers of barium titanate, strontium titanate, and calcium titanate, which were alternately placed on top of one another in a lattice structure.

Their findings, which could revolutionize the solar energy industry, were recently published in the journal Science Advances.

Companies whose futures depend on plastic production, including oil and gas giant ExxonMobil, are trying to persuade the federal government to allow them to put the label “recyclable” on bags and other plastic items virtually guaranteed to end up in landfills and incinerators.

They argue that “recyclable” should apply to anything that’s capable of being recycled. And they point to newer technologies that have been able to remake plastic bags into new products.

I spent months investigating one of those technologies, a form of chemical recycling called pyrolysis, only to find that it is largely a mirage. It’s inefficient, dirty and so limited in capacity that no one expects it to process meaningful amounts of plastic waste any time soon.

Clayton Page Aldern is a former neuroscientist turned environmental journalist. He is currently a senior data reporter at the climate magazine Grist. His work focuses on the intersection of climate change and human health, particularly the neurological impacts of environmental factors.

Below, Clayton shares five key insights from his new book, The Weight of Nature: How a Changing Climate Changes Our Brains.

There are a handful of states that are doing a great job crafting solar policy that makes it affordable and accessible for homeowners and renters alike to go solar. No state has created the perfect set of legislative conditions that make it easier or cheaper for residents to install solar panels, but these are the states that have the best solar incentives right now.

When looking at the majority of comments going on certain online forums you can end up thinking that the vast majority of solarpunks all think the same way on certain issues.

Whether it’s plant-based diets, or the role of traditional media it can seem like 80%+ of the people are in agreement, sometimes very strong agreement and denounce alternative interpretations as not solarpunk at all.

This is why the pioneering research by Benjamin Maldonado Fernandez is so interesting. As part of his studies at the university of Leiden he conducted a survey of people in the solarpunk scene which gained 571 respondents, making it one of the largest, if not the largest so far. It had a wide range of questions which you can see all of in the published results here.

We interviewed Benjamin to unpack some of the findings of the survey.

Peru's reclusive Mashco Piro ethnic group recently used bows and arrows to attack loggers suspected of encroaching on their territory in the Amazon, according to a regional Indigenous organization.

FENAMAD, representing 39 Indigenous communities in the Cusco and Madre de Dios regions, said Monday that it believes illegal logging was taking place on Mashco Piro territory and that one logger was injured in the July 27 attack.

Cooling represents 20% of global electricity demand in buildings, a share that’s expected to rise as the planet warms and more of the world turns to cooling technology. During peak demand hours, air conditioners can account for over half the total demand on the grid in some parts of the world today.

New cooling technologies that incorporate energy storage could help by charging themselves when renewable electricity is available and demand is low, and still providing cooling services when the grid is stressed.