Urban agriculture is a hot topic in sustainability, food, and planning circles. From roof and deck gardens to community gardens to urban farms, urban agriculture has captured the imaginations of activists of many stripes as well as gardeners and eaters. When I mention that my academic work focuses on food access in urban areas, the most common response I get is “oh, you mean like urban ag?” As this interest in urban agriculture grows, some are asking whether food sovereignty – the ability for a population to produce enough food to feed itself – is a feasible goal for American cities.
Opinion
Oct 11, 2012 By Lisa Feldstein
Study after study highlights
writing as a major skill that planning employers are looking for in new hires.
Two specific kinds of writing seem most challenging to beginning planners. Opinion
Oct 8, 2012 By Ann Forsyth
A few months back, Toronto's Deputy Mayor started a political flap, stating on the floor of City Council that downtown was no place to raise kids! “Where’s little Ginny? Well, she’s downstairs playing in the traffic on her way to the park,” he exclaimed.
Flap, indeed. Urbanists and parents alike were quick to denounce the comment, including me. Opinion
Sep 24, 2012 By Brent Toderian
Conventional planning tends to consider traffic congestion a
significant cost and roadway expansion the preferred solution. It evaluates
transport system performance based on indicators such as roadway Level of Service (LOS)
and peak-period traffic speeds, and dedicates most transportation resources
(road space and money) to roads and parking facilities. This results in predict
and provide planning in which roadways are expanded to accommodate
anticipated traffic, which creates a self-fulfilling prophecy by inducing
additional vehicle use. Opinion
Sep 13, 2012 By Todd Litman
Aug 28, 2012 By Jonathan Nettler
Decades ago, ecologist Garrett Hardin wrote about the "tragedy of the commons"- when an action that is rational for one person becomes irrational when widely practiced.
For example, suppose that there are a few dozen cattle
ranchers near a pasture open to all. It
makes sense for each rancher to let as many cattle graze as possible on the
pasture, so that the ranchers can feed their cattle without buying additional
land. But if every rancher lets as many
cattle as possible graze, sooner or later the land will be overgrazed and the
cattle may starve.
Opinion
Aug 27, 2012 By Michael Lewyn
For those following the intense debate over intercity
passenger rail in the US, the following recent news items might have a few
planners scratching their heads:
Opinion
Aug 27, 2012 By Samuel Staley
Last week the Carnegie Endowment
for International Peace published a report, In
Search of the Global Middle Class: A New Index, by researcher Uri Dadush,
which uses car ownership rates as an indication of the size of a country's middle class, defined as a household that can purchase non-essential goods.
The results are summarized in the figure below, which were reported in an Atlantic Monthly column, It's
Official: Western Europeans Have More Cars Per Person Than Americans by Max
Fisher, and Opinion
Aug 23, 2012 By Todd Litman
This morning over at Atlantic Cities, Richard Florida aptly refuted an opinion piece by Kevin Meagher that appeared in the Guardian last week advocating for doing away with the position of Mayor in London. Florida lays out several strong arguments in favor of a strong elected mayor who can act as an advocate for his or her city.
Opinion
Aug 22, 2012 By Jess Zimbabwe
Many
students are understandably worried about getting a job once they graduate. The
slow economy has made this more difficult and also changed some of the
parameters in terms of approach and timing. For example, many employers are
hesitant to make early commitments, delaying some phases of the job search. In
this blog I outline a strategy for using the academic year to find a job or a
summer internship using the North American academic calendar as a base.
Opinion
Aug 21, 2012 By Ann Forsyth
