About The Commons Media Lab
The Commons Media Lab (CML) is LabGov’s platform for debate on the complex challenges that communities around the world are facing today. The CML brings together policy-makers, researchers, citizens and experts to reflect on a variety of themes relating to commons-based practices, exploring case studies, innovative urban policies, partnerships aimed at producing positive impacts on the community.
Discover the U20
A Visit to South African Green Buildings
Abstract Renewable development has evolved into a typical understanding of the idealistic approach for human long-term development due to the acceleration of the depletion of global energy supplies and the worsening of the climate crisis. The construction industry's...
Energy Crisis in Africa: the case of Comoros
Abstract Energy has long been regarded as an important factor in a country’s social and economic growth. This is still evident today, and it is especially true for weak, non-interconnected areas, such as small island republics. Comoros’s energy status, just like...
Corporations as a Commons: A Solution to Short-Termism in Modern Capital Markets
Simon Deakin in his chapter for the Oxford Handbook of corporation focused on the evolution of the concept of corporate personality in English law. According to the author the mutation of this concept can be inscribed in a broader one: the origins and evolution of...
Sustainable development: the African journey towards sustainability
Abstract Sustainable development (SD) has increasingly played a key background role in government policy making across the world, especially for the least developed countries in Africa. This paper examines the SD of African countries in public life, education, and...
Cities: a Common Front Against Climate Change and in Post-pandemic Recovery
When former U.S. President Donald Trump announced his withdrawal from the Paris Agreement in 2019, 61 U.S. mayors joined in opposition to the government and signed a declaration of commitment to the Agreement's goals. This act set a powerful example for cities around...
Sustainable public procurement in a nutshell
Generally speaking, public procurement is the process through which public bodies buy works, goods, or services from a third supplier. Public bodies are schools, hospitals, local governments, prisons, etc. and what they buy can be for instance the food for meals at...
UN-Habitat is supporting cities to develop evidence-based public space policies and strategies through a community-led initiative.
Introduction Quality public spaces are a vital business and marketing tool as cities increasingly compete to attract investment, new residents, businesses, and visitors. As urban population grow, the effective management and sustainability of this growth including the...
Can we nudge in the European Green Deal?
ABSTRACT The article wants to highlight how green nudges, together with other forms of regulation, can help and support the achievement of sustainable goals set by the European Commission, in particular the ones indicated in the European Green Deal plan. The main...
Next Up in the Printer Queue: Social Housing
Affordable housing is a key challenge in many cities and one of the concerns addressed in Sustainable Development Goal 11. Especially in low-income environments, it is often hard to find housing that is both stable and affordable. However, there might be a solution:...
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Urban Journalism Institute
The Urban Journalism Institute
The Urban Journalism Institute is a platform incubated by LabGov.City to promote urban journalism as a tool to put forms of sustainable and inclusive development at the center of the current conversation on cities and their governance. The Institute aggregates journalists, communicators, experts and policymakers to share knowledge about, and debate on urban topics, as well as assist regional, national and local governments, NGOs, and foundations in the communication of urban strategies and projects on the field.
The Urban Journalism Institute is co-directed by Simone d’Antonio and Alessandra Pirera in partnership with UN-Habitat and other LabGov.City partners such as Luiss University and Georgetown University.
What we do?
• Trainings for journalists, communicators s and press officers
• High-level dialogues with editors
• Management of urban communications
• Media monitoring and networking
• Urban reportages and portfolios
• Media tours
#UrbanJournalism
Urbanjournalisminstitute@gmail.com
Changing the conversation about cities
Cities are the places where most of the challenges of our time are converging. Innovative solutions and experiences of urban governance and economy shared and discussed in a multilevel dimension can be influential in changing the approach to cities in national and local contexts worldwide.
Media have a decisive role in promoting urban debates at all levels. While they cover urgent contemporary trends, sharing news about economic crisis, refugees and migrants’ emergencies, women struggles, or natural disasters, they are talking about how cities are planned, managed and lived.
Exploring new communications tools to develop meaningful urban storytelling will contribute to spread new narratives about cities able to foster active participation of citizens and to push innovative social, economic and environmental urban policies. In this sense, cities are becoming the testing ground also to stimulate a more civic and substantive engagement of media in sustainable development processes at local and global level.