Go ahead, define sustainability. Everyone knows countless, tangled and unconvincing definitions for this word which is quickly losing steam. The problem is that we’re not sure about how sustainability relates to us except in planetary ways. We’re bombarded with many concepts that if we reduce this by 20% then we’ll get that in 30 years which helps the earth survive. All’s well, except we’re almost numb because we won’t feel the aggregate effects for quite some time. Obviously, we’re an impatient lot.
Community Development
Preserving Transit-Oriented Affordable Housing
As developers across the country increasingly recognize the market advantages of redevelopment oriented around transit, and property values rise in response, hundreds of thousands of units of affordable housing are at risk.
Shelterforce
Diagnosing Sprawl...in 1959
A prophetic film from 1959 offers a diagnosis of the causes and emerging challenges associated with what came to be known as urban sprawl.
ULI via You Tube
Starbucks Initiative Could Brew Up Urban Vitality
Tue, 10/18/2011 - 12:00
I am writing this missive from the living room of a Starbucks. Not that you'd care where I'm writing from. Except this time it's relevant.
Here on Montana Avenue, in Santa Monica, I'm joined by other folks who are also on their laptops, recovering from yoga, or just biding their time. The guy sitting at my table just sold a pilot to Fox. That's nice for him. A few weeks ago I sat next to Hillary Swank here. She's not hurting either.
But others aren't so lucky. To its credit, Starbucks seems to want to do something about it.
The Controversy Over Sports Stadiums Continues
It appears that everyone is talking about the impact that sports stadiums have on urban economic development. As soon as one person says they're a terrible idea, another article will retort the benefits brought to a given city.
Initiative for a Competitive Inner City
The Makings of a "Just City"
At the Ford foundations 75th anniversary, Citiwire’s Neal Peirce reports how “ground urban strategies in inclusion and equity” is the secret to a “Just City.”
Citiwire
Community Gathers Around Guerrilla Coffee Table
Los Angeles Designer Julie Kim thinks the city is missing out on an opportunity at public transit hubs to create an environment that promotes interaction. So, Kim spruces up a bus stop with a coffee table and flowers and video records the results.
GOOD Magazine
Food Trends
Fri, 05/20/2011 - 14:59
A comment I hear frequently from planners is that the focus on food and planning is “trendy”. I must admit that this puzzles me quite a bit. Professional planners in rural areas have concentrated on planning for agriculture – food planning – for decades. Before we had professional planners, human populations planned their communities around food, whether they were planning how best to follow herds for hunting, structuring early agricultural societies, or developing the first cities where food proximity and trade were central considerations.
Developer Appointed As Planning Director
In a controversial move, new Florida Governor Rick Scott has appointed Billy Buzzett, vice-president at a development company, to lead the state's Department of Community Affairs.
The St. Petersburg Times
Move Over Suburbia... For "Prefurbia"?
Twin Cities developer and software guru Rick Harrison believes that, through innovative urban design configurations such as 'coving,' suburban areas can be transformed from "disdainable to sustainable."
Star Tribune
Should Retrofitting Our Suburbs Take Center Stage?
In this opinion piece from The Huffington Post, Alex Becker argues that retrofitting suburban landscapes with denser development trumps all other sustainability agendas as the single most important path to a more sustainable future.
The Huffington Post
Why People Love Their Communities
Appreciation of diversity, social offerings, and aesthetics trump jobs, economy, and safety according to a new survey by Gallup/Knight.
John S. and James L. Knight Foundation
Community-Supported Businesses on the Rise
Stacy Mitchell reports on the growing trend of micro-financing, where small business people turn to the local community to get the funding they need to open restaurants or small shops.
Yes! Magazine
Residents Get More Say in Redevelopment
A scandal over bonuses and the recession leads to change in project to redevelop Southeast San Diego, but some critics want to see more construction, not just kumbaya.
San Diego Union Tribune
Extending the Legacy: Planning America's Capital for the 21st Century
The National Capital Planning Commission (NCPC), the federal government’s planning agency in the District of Columbia and surrounding counties in Maryland and Virginia, prepared Extending the Legacy. The plan redefines the District of Columbia’s Monumental Core, which extends from the steps of the Capitol to the Lincoln Memorial and Arlington Cemetery, and from the White House to the Potomac and Anacostia rivers. The plan solves the problems of the Monumental Core with bold proposals for transportation, community revitalization, public building and open space, including miles of connected public waterfront on both sides of the Potomac and Anacostia rivers.
Envision Utah
Extensive citizen involvement was essential in the development of this comprehensive statewide framework. The elements addressed include air quality, mobility, critical lands, water, housing, infrastructure, and community. The framework offers a menu of strategies to locally achieve state goals to achieve growth while maintaining quality of life.
Newport Beach General Plan
The Newport Beach General Plan had to be approved by voters. The new general plan reduced potential office and industrial capacities by more than four million square feet, instead designating land for 3,000 more housing units than were permitted by the old plan. The plan is an effort to meet the community vision and preserve the unique and beautiful coastal community. City officials won voter approval for the new plan through newsletters, public meetings and study sessions.
visionPDX: Portland's Community Visioning Project
visionPDX was the result, a city-supported, community-led initiative to create a vision for Portland's development for the next 20 years and beyond. The goal of Portland Future Focus (PFF) was to engage citizens in creating a vision of Portland in the year 2000. This vision, born from the values and expressed needs of Portlanders, would shape a strategic plan outlining clear and definable goals and strategies to guide Portland’s growth and to ensure that the city’s future was a self-determined one, rather than a mere adaptation of its circumstance and surroundings. Portland Future Focus was an ambitious initiative, and boasted broad-scale involvement for a city of its size.
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Lower Italian Market Revitalization Project
The Lower Italian Market Revitalization project focuses on a crucial commercial corridor center of South Philadelphia that have been dominated by vacant storefronts. In an effort to reverse the proliferation of vacant storefronts, crime, trash and blight in the Lower Italian Market area, a group of architects, designers, planners, and policy makers formed the Planning & Design Committee of the Passyunk Square Civic Association (PSCA). The Plan addresses green elements, public art, and contemporary concepts that specifically apply to this dense urban area. Interest among residents about PSCA's revitalization plan was so high that the community formed a new committee to implement its recommendations.
