Urban Form

Greenwich Village, Manhattan

The Sweet Smell of Density? Subconscious Influences on Perceptions of Urban Form

Michael Hooper of Harvard University writes about a recent article in the Journal of Planning Education and Research

December 13, 2018 - JPER

Boeing Urban Form

Friday Eye Candy: Comparing a Square Mile of the World's Famous Cities

Street networks and city blocks, reduced to their fundamental attributes, reveal the vast differences between cities.

January 27, 2017 - Geoff Boeing

photo of abandoned buildings in Broves, France

What Is a Place Without the People?

In an illustrated essay, Chuck Wolfe contrasts the ideal form of the New England town with an abandoned French village, calling out the human infrastructure essential to successful urban places.

October 8, 2013 - myurbanist

How Does Your City Stack Up...Sideways?

A project by French artist Armelle Caron looks at what happens when you take the patterns of blocks that make up a city's form and organize and stack them sideways. Robert Krulwich investigates what such an exercise reveals about a city.

September 15, 2012 - NPR

The Intellectuals That've Had the Biggest Impact on Cities

Zócalo Public Square has gathered together four accomplished planning and development professionals to give their opinions on which scholar or intellectual of the last 50 years has had the greatest impact on the cities we live in today.

June 19, 2012 - Zocalo Public Square

In Defense of the Grid

Paul Knight delivers an impassioned defense of the gridded urban form against its many criticisms -- that its boring, its unnatural, its only use is to maximize profits for developers, etc.

January 23, 2012 - TheGreatAmericanGrid.com

Urban Development Shifts Reduce Driving

The patterns of urban development over the past few decades have pushed more and more people into cars by necessity. But as design priorities change, so are people's walking and driving habits.

June 17, 2011 - Sierra

A Comparative Analysis of Land Use Controls

Various rules and regulations control the form of today's cities. This info graphic and article from re:place looks at how those systems control the urban environment and how they compare.

August 20, 2010 - re:place

The Dynamism, and Dysfunction, of Los Angeles

That's where authors Nathan Cherry and Kurt Nagle found their inspiration for their new book about urban form. Grid/Street/Place.

January 31, 2010 - The Huffington Post

The History of San Francisco's Urban Form

Some call it a city of neighborhoods. This piece from the San Francisco Chronicle looks at the history of the urban form of San Francisco and why it looks the way it does today.

September 27, 2009 - San Francisco Chronicle

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Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools

This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.

Planning for Universal Design

Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.