Exclusives

BLOG POST

<p> A couple of weeks ago, the South Dakota Supreme Court in <em>Anderson</em><em> v. Town of Badger</em> held that a town had the power to grant a waiver of a distance requirement set by Kingsbury County for a CAFO. <a href="http://www.sdjudicial.com/opinions/downloads/y2009/25045.pdf">Click here </a>for the decision. </p> <p> Wait a minute. Why wouldn’t you want to live near a CAFO? What’s a CAFO? It’s not Community Association Facility Operations. It’s not Centralized Area of Fun Outside …no, it’s Concentrated Animal Feeding Operations, something akin to dinner time at my fraternity house in the mid-1960s… </p>

August 11 - Dwight Merriam

BLOG POST

<span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman"> </span> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman">Some commentators think that Internet technology will liberate us from the constraints of place; for example, one amazon.com book review of Joel Kotkin’s <em>The New Geography</em> states “Because today&#39;s connected workers can live anywhere they want, they will live anywhere they want.”<span>  </span>Kotkin himself is a little more circumspect, but writes: “Telecommunication allows people who want privacy, low-density neighborhoods and good schools to live in small towns in a way never before possible.”(1)<span>  </span>There is a tiny amount of truth to this claim: the Internet does make it

August 10 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

August 10 - Amber Hawkes

BLOG POST

<p> Hundreds of activists, students, politicians, lawyers, developers, architects and planners swarmed Miami&#39;s City Hall on Thursday for the City Commission&#39;s first reading of <a href="/www.miami21.org">Miami 21</a>. By some estimates, nearly 80% of the the 100-plus testimonials were spoken in favor of  Miami 21, with Miami Mayor Manny Diaz kicking off the event with an 11-minute pro-Miami 21 paean. It was certainly one of the most eloquent, if not most passionate speech I have heard him deliver during his tenure. Strangely, Commissioner Angel Gonzalez was missing from the dais for what might have been the most important vote of the year. Apparently, the two week notice was delivered in time for him to reschedule surgery.

August 8 - Mike Lydon

BLOG POST

<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal">As a lifelong urbanite, I’ve always felt comfortable learning cities “by Braille.” I put on my walking shoes and wander, making mental maps as I go. I experience serendipity, yet can generally intuit where things are likely to be – the CBD, the government center, nightlife.</p><p class="MsoNormal">This summer our family spent time in Berlin, Venice, Florence, and Paris. Of the four, Paris was the only one I’d been to before. By the time we got there, it was like greeting an old friend.</p>

August 8 - Lisa Feldstein

FEATURE

Planetizen is creating a list of the most important people who have shaped urban places, and we want to know what you think. Vote on people nominated by the Planetizen community, or suggest your own. The polls close September 7.

August 6 - Planetizen

BLOG POST

<p> Urban planning is one of those things people don&#39;t realize they can relate to. Everybody understands cities, so why can&#39;t they understand how they are planned? Well, there&#39;s really no reason. Urban planners -- steeped in the inner workings of the urban world -- probably aren&#39;t the best to try to communicate this idea. So bring in the artists.<br /> <br />

August 5 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> Summer seems to be the season to demolish old schools. There’s nothing that makes people madder than when a neighborhood school is reduced to rubble. One Portland blogger <a href="http://chatterbox.typepad.com/portlandarchitecture/2009/07/an-architectural-tragedy-riverdale-has-been-destroyed.html" target="_blank">compared the wreckage of a 1920s school to Dresden</a>. People in Beaumont, Texas, took the local school district to court to save their 87-year-old high school, and those “Greenies” are fired up on <a href="http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=92556003497&amp;ref=search" target="_blank">Facebook</a>.

August 3 - Margaret Foster

FEATURE

Builder Fernando Pagés Ruiz discovered by accident that the multicultural groups in his community had special needs that weren't being met.

August 3 - Fernando Pagés Ruiz

BLOG POST

<p> After more than four years of public meetings, new drafts, extensive revisions, debate, and controversy, <a href="http://www.miami21.org/">Miami 21</a> is finally scheduled for its first City Commission reading on August 6th. For all who have, or continue to work patiently and dilligently on the groundbreaking zoning code, this is exciting and relieving news.   </p>

August 2 - Mike Lydon

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Times New Roman','serif'">The new report, <span><a href="http://www.movingcooler.info/">Moving Cooler: Transportation Strategies to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions</a></span></span><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri">, written by Cambridge Systematics and sponsored by a variety of organizations, identifies several dozen transportation climate change emission reduction strategies, including improvements to efficient modes (walking, cycling and public transit), pricing reforms and smart growth land use policies.

July 30 - Todd Litman

FEATURE

Planning technology expert Charles A. Donley reviews a new piece of software that combines the worlds of Computer-Aided Design and Geographic Information Systems to help site planners visualize and analyze their plans.

July 30 - Charles A. Donley, AICP

BLOG POST

An account of planning for the Red Line Project in Baltimore.

July 29 - Tamika Camille Gauvin

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Arial">A quick post to note that on Tuesday of last week, Vancouver City Council unanimously approved bylaws to put into place Vancouver&#39;s new &quot;suites within suites&quot; housing option, across the City. Also referred to as &quot;lock-off suites&quot;, these secondary suites within apartments are meant to represent an opportunity for housing flexibility, with such suites usable as a rental mortgage helper (a “mortgage helper in the sky”, as one article puts it), a separated but related unit for an elderly parent or aging teenager, a unit for a care-giver, or any other relationship an apartment owner might need.

July 29 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

<p style="text-align: left"> The concept of ripeness in several realms is elusive. I have never figured out how to properly thump a melon at a grocery store, although I have made a thorough study of it. You might want to<a href="http://aces.nmsu.edu/CES/yard/1998/070698.html"> click here</a>, or <a href="http://www.boston.com/ae/food/articles/2006/08/09/is_a_melon_ripe_for_the_eating_heres_how_to_tell/">here</a>, or <a href="http://www.foodsubs.com/Fruitmel.html">here </a> for some guidance, none of which seems to work when it’s just me in a stare down with a cold, stone faced and silent honeydew. </p> <p style="text-align: left"> Just yesterday one of my younger children from what we call the “second litter” asked me at dinner how I could tell if a coconut was ripe. I paused, realized that I had no answer, and did what every good parent should do and asked instead why they weren’t eating their salad. Yes, attack and divert. </p> <p style="text-align: left"> You think melons and coconuts are tough — try ripeness in land use litigation.

July 28 - Dwight Merriam

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri">The current U.S. healthcare reform proposal is often described as costing a trillion dollars. That will make it difficult to pass. However, the same program could legitimately be described as costing residents just cents per day (or, “less than a cup of coffee”), which would enhance its chance of success (a trillion dollars over ten years is $100 billion annually, about $320 annually per capita, or less than $1 per day, which can legitimately be called “cents per day”). </span> </p>

July 27 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

<p> You probably already know that the largest mass transit system in North America is in New York City.  Perhaps you didn’t know that this system is supplemented by a very heavily used sister-system between New York City and New Jersey called the Port Authority Trans-Hudson, or PATH for short.  PATH runs two lines through Jersey City, Newark, and Hoboken, carrying tens of thousands of passengers daily.  My hometown, Hoboken, is considered one of the most densely populated cities in the country, and a large number of those residents commute via PATH on a daily basis.  As the popularity of living in the city has increased, so have the swarms of passengers crowding onto PATH each morning and afternoon in their daily commute between New Jersey and Manhattan.  The cars are very old and make for a rickety, sometimes enthralling ride.  So it is not with anything but a huge warm welcome that we began to receive <a href="http://www.panynj.gov/path/new-path-cars.html">new rail cars</a> over the past month.

July 27 - Ian Sacs

FEATURE

July 27 - Andrea Broaddus

BLOG POST

<p> Move over XBox; step aside Playstation.  The height of game-playing action is free and it&#39;s online.  The <a href="http://www.its.umn.edu/trafficcontrolgame/game/">new game in town</a> is University of Minnesota, Intelligent Transportation Systems Institute&#39;s &quot;<em>Gridlock Buster</em>&quot;.  Test your mettle on the increasing levels of difficulty in processing vehicular traffic through a network of intersections.

July 24 - Ian Sacs

FEATURE

Streets aren't just for driving, and cities are starting to realize it. Amber Hawkes and Georgia Sheridan explain why street design matters and where we are today in terms of designing the "street space."

July 23 - Amber Hawkes