Guangzhou skyline at dusk.
Guangzhou at dusk. Photo: chensiyuan. Licence: CC BY-SA 4.0.

Ur.ban.ite (noun):

A person who lives in a town or city.

Unite (verb):

1. Come or bring together for a common purpose or action.

2. Come or bring together to form a whole.

Once in a while, we hear people talking about how awesome it is to live in the twenty-first century. Well before Charles Darwin bestowed his Theory of Evolution upon us, humans had known something quite strange fuelled the world. Ingrained in our minds, there has always been the notion of the “inexorable march of progress”. Every single day, we are supposed to experience the dawn of new era: our life expectancy rates increase, scientists have breakthroughs, civil engineers produce taller skyscrapers, technicians devise unprecedented gadgets, and suddenly we are expected to spend our money on products that are “a must” (even though we have managed to live years without them).

This author acknowledges the benefits of modern times, and equals modernity to urbanisation. It seems that, the more we evolve, the bigger our city spaces become. But our urban way of life comes with many hidden costs. Frequently, we end up being exposed to overwhelming amounts of information – on the streets, on our smartphones’ screens, sometimes even on TV. As human beings have limited attention spans, our inability to process all the things we watch and read should come as no surprise. It takes a great deal of effort to keep abreast of world affairs and major issues – during times like these, we might wish for a tool to guide us through the complex maze of data we are constantly facing. Urbaniting intends to fill this void.

This blog draws its name from the words unite and urbanite. It aims to provide a reliable source of information for those who wish to keep up to date with today’s world. Welcome to a mixture of understandable articles, short stories and insightful essays. Welcome to Urbaniting.

Inspirations

Although Urbaniting strives to be an innovative project, it has been heavily influenced by several other initiatives. Its first inspiration was the BBC World News series One Day In, which “charts the working life, from dawn to dusk, of 12 of the greatest cities around the world”. Similar websites, books, and TV programmes that have inspired Urbaniting include:

Original disclaimers

Urbaniting is a project (owned) by Atualizado™, represented by Thiago Bittencourt.

All content provided on this blog is for informational purposes only. The owner of this blog makes no representations as to the accuracy or completeness of any information on this site or found by following any link on this site. The owner of Urbaniting will not be liable for any errors or omissions in this information nor for the availability of this information. The owner will not be liable for any losses, injuries, or damages from the display or use of this information. The owner of this blog does not share personal information with third-parties nor does it store information collected about your visit for use other than to analyse content performance through the use of cookies, which you can turn off at any time by modifying your Internet browser’s settings. The owner is not responsible for the republishing of the content found on this blog on other Web sites or media without permission.

All written content provided on this site, unless specified, is property of Atualizado™. Visual tools used by Urbaniting are often embedded (with permission) from Web services (for instance, Getty Images, YouTube and Twitter), or acquired from the Internet, following strict Creative Commons licenses. Unless specified, the copying of Urbaniting’s content is strictly prohibited. The usage of this blog’s content is contingent on the owner’s explicit permission, granted on a case-by-case basis. The owner of this blog can be contacted through the email [email protected].

Originally published on Urbaniting.