How to open new terminal in current directory?

There is a very informative thread over in the i3-faq forum that has various scripts/programs that tackle this very issue.

https://faq.i3wm.org/question/150/how-to-launch-a-terminal-from-here/

I went for the c program xcwd which really does a great job. It also works from within GUI programs.

when you launch a terminal from within a existing terminal, the original terminal's environment will be preserved including current working directory and any other environment variables that you have set. This is why urxvt & works