Features

A dust-up between architects and the Prince of Wales over a speech and a £1b development is bringing the age-old battle between traditional and modern architecture to a head. Managing editor Tim Halbur summarizes the news.

Bulldoze? Densify? Walk away? There are many ways cities can react to shrinking populations and abandoned neighborhoods. Planetizen readers decide which ways are the best.

Managing Editor Tim Halbur reviews The High Line, the much-lauded new linear park in Manhattan.

As the recession digs in, cities across the country are left with large swaths of abandoned or vacant places. Can these cities shrink gracefully? Do they even need to? Vote on ideas submitted by the Planetizen community, or suggest your own.

As America's metropolitan areas meld into "megaregions", officials and policymakers will need to figure out how to deal with their shared and growing infrastructure problems. Consider the ball rolling.

As the population rises, underused and empty spaces are going to fill in. How well the transition works depends on shifts in demographics and infrastructure, as well as architecture. A studio of UCLA architecture students were asked to plot that transition. But before they could be architects, they had to be planners.

The results are in! We asked for you ideas for reusing the empty car dealerships cropping up around the country. Urban gardens? Flying car launch pads? These ideas may seem far out, but the number one answer may surprise you.

With the auto industry struggling and car dealerships closing shop, what future do you see for empty car lots? Vote on ideas submitted by the Planetizen community, or suggest your own.

City government is made up of many individual parts. Though they need to work together, they aren't typically very good at it -- especially in big cities. Recently, an interdepartmental group of city officials in Los Angeles came together to try to improve the way they work together and the way they better their city.

Detroit may be struggling economically, but community groups and citizen activists are keeping the city vibrant with a wide variety of urban farming projects throughout the shrinking city.

Mike Lanza, an entrepreneur in Palo Alto, CA, is using his front yard as a place for his friends and neighbors to gather and play. Julia Galef from the Project for Public Spaces brings us this story.

Amtrak's list of projects that will get stimulus funding is just about finalized, but this financial boost is just the beginning. Three rail experts weigh in on how the initial $1.3 billion in grants will get spent, and how else the agency can use the money to achieve self-reliance.

Managing Editor Tim Halbur selects his favorite books for designing and planning public spaces.

Cities are filled with spaces intended for the public -- but many of them are clearly owned and operated by the private sector. Though cities bend rules to get these spaces built, the public benefit is often outweighed by the cost. The challenge now is to make them better.

The recession is bad news for retail developers, and a recent gathering of them was rife with concern about the field and its future. But amid the uncertainty is an air of hope -- and an understanding that to survive, the face of retail development must adapt.

The Internet is a trove of great ideas about improving cities. Filling blogs and personal websites, the vast majority of ideas out there are little more than that: ideas. New York City's Streetsblog -- now a growing nationwide force -- is transforming the conversation into action.

Green alley projects are popping up in cities all over the U.S. and Canada in an effort to make the concrete jungle a little better at absorbing rainwater. A new alley program in Los Angeles goes beyond the runoff to actively integrate these unique spaces into the urban fold.

Transit oriented development experts John Renne, PhD, and Jeff Wood recently fielded questions from Planetizen readers about TOD, its current applications and its future.

A new study shows that kids living in subsidized housing in New York do significantly worse on standardized tests than those outside the system. Is it possible to understand the true cause of the problem, and if we do, how do we fix it? Judy Chang reports.