Is a $50,000 annual income wealth or poverty in North America? By historical or international standards such an income should be considered wealthy and luxurious, but most people I know consider it poverty because of the high cost of living.
Opinion
Mar 10, 2009 By Todd Litman
In January 1992, The New York Times Sunday Magazine ran a piece by Columbia’s Nicholas Lemann, titled “The Myth of Community Development”. It was then - timed to provoke critical thinking about the Clinton Administration’s vanilla urban policy of Empowerment Communities (EZ/EC) - a poignant evaluation of community development, and it asked hard questions.
Questions about the capacity of local organizations, the wisdom of economic development efforts in the hands of anemic CDCs. Neither wholly right nor wrong, the piece put on the table a necessary skunk: was it sensible to try to revitalize Opinion
Mar 10, 2009 By Charles Buki
This month's Broadway "opening" proposal is as much a clarion to the new thinking of public street space in America as it is a gift to the people of New York City. Opinion
Mar 10, 2009 By Ian Sacs
As the economy continues to lumber through the most protracted period of recession since the early 1980s, the financial sector has received the brunt of the blame. It’s been easy for the planning profession to distance themselves from what seem at first to be macroeconomic trends. That view, however, is becoming increasingly difficult to uphold. Opinion
Mar 7, 2009 By Samuel Staley
Finding a first full-time “real” job in planning
seems a daunting task at present. However, cities are growing, infrastructure is being funded, and there
will be jobs for planners. The following tips can help one navigate the market.
Be prepared to go to Kansas. By this I
mean that there are certain places much loved by young planners—New York, Boston, San Francisco—and these
are not the best places to start looking for early planning jobs. Sure they
have them. For low pay. Opinion
Mar 7, 2009 By Ann Forsyth
Having become something of a junkie who overdoses on political and economic news, it is only natural that I try to help justify that time investment by scouring the news for tidbits that have professional relevance. Just this past week several things have come across my monitor that have made me reflect.
Opinion
Mar 6, 2009 By Steven Polzin
Once again, US Air (a.k.a. US-SCARE) has made my life difficult. I was hoping to fly back from Myrtle Beach, SC to Denver yesterday and they cancelled my flight (Myrtle Beach is where the GeoTools conference was and a meeting of the Ecosystem Based Management Tools Network). Opinion
Mar 6, 2009 By Ken Snyder
A new design competition thinks it can.
In a recent post, I discussed the value of open design competitions in strengthening a city's "culture of design". I explained how Vancouver, often described as a city by design but in past years perhaps lacking a competition skill-set, is seeking to strengthen that culture, albeit by small steps and grass-roots efforts thus far. Here's the link - you might want to read that post first.
Opinion
Mar 3, 2009 By Brent Toderian
Architecture is certainly headed for its own version of the Big Bang. A density of firms are simmering with scarce backlog, delinquent collections, looming layoffs, high overhead, low morale as weakened management relies on a foggy stimulus package to forestall an explosion of great magnitude. After the inevitable, our profession will reconstitute based on a new chemistry. Opinion
Mar 1, 2009 By Rick Abelson
Community Development Work Avoidance
Local government across the nation is knee deep in the work of figuring how to do with less. No community is immune from the challenges posed by reduced sales and property tax revenue and the constant if not increasing demand for services. Invariably, and appropriately, locating the proper balance between the two becomes a matter of setting priorities. And to do that, criteria are needed to rationalize why one municipal activity should be funded, but not another. It was ever thus, of course. Opinion
Feb 26, 2009 By Charles Buki
