Cities

Mission Possible?

6 May 2008 - 10:50am
National Public Radio

Despite naysayers, Masdar City is moving forward. The goal: to be the world's first modern-day carbon-free city.

Does LEED Have a Big City Bias?

26 April 2008 - 9:00am
CoStar Group

The vast majority of LEED-certified green buildings in the U.S. are located in major cities, leading some to wonder whether there might be an inherent bias in LEED's standards.

Solving Civic Problems in a Post-Fact Society

25 April 2008 - 10:00am
Next American City

How does a rapidly changing news media affect big city planning? Badly, according to this post from Next American City.

American Mayors and Bottom-Up Environmental Planning

18 April 2008 - 6:00am
Metropolis Magazine

The environmental leadership of mayors in the U.S. offers much hope for the future of the country, according to this article from Metropolis.

State Farm on the Humiliation of Biking to Work

6 April 2008 - 9:00am
Streetsblog

A new 30-second television commercial from State Farm insurance suggests that commuting to work by bike is humiliating. But is the ad sending a more subversive message?

Cities Are Forgotten In Presidential Race

4 April 2008 - 12:00pm
Philadelphia Inquirer

Urban issues and metropolitan policy are noticeably absent from the platforms of the three main presidential candidates.

The Densest Cities in America

31 March 2008 - 5:00am
Environmental Graffiti

The blog post features a list of the top five densest cities in America, and looks at the conditions that have made them that way.

How Will Changing Cities React?

11 March 2008 - 9:00am
Guardian

Cities are undergoing major changes in terms of demographics and development patterns. How cities will react to these changes remains up in the air.

Universities Reconnect with Cities

11 March 2008 - 5:00am
The Columbian

Universities across the country are reviving their connections to their host cities, participating in urban renewal projects and investing in their cities' futures.

Cities Don't Need Special Treatment

4 March 2008 - 3:00pm
The Boston Globe

This opinion piece from The Boston Globe calls for an end to the special treatment and unfair taxes levied on city residents.

Undressing the naked city

11 January 2008 - 11:12am

Often times I’m struck by the advances we’ve made in mapping, modeling and depicting our cities.  What was once the purview of mapmakers, surveyors or architects is now a democratized, engaging process that brings unexpected results.  And the more advanced the technology, the more transparent our cities seem to become. 

A Planning Contrarian's Reading List

15 November 2007 - 3:05pm

Transcontinental flights are a great time to catch up on reading, and a recent flight from San Jose to Chicago inspired this blog post. As I was reading book #1 (below), I realized that a number books have been published recently that have important things to say about cities although they might be dismissed too easily as reactionary, ideological, or simply not relevant to urban planning.

It's Summer, Inspire Me...

23 July 2007 - 8:34am

Most people use the Summer months to re-connect with pastimes forgotten during winter months. It is this time of the year that sales soar both at the box office and in bookstores. Most normal people I know take trashy novels with them to the beach or submerge themselves in an entire season of 24 (which thanks to Netflix can be accomplished in a few intense evenings). I tend to lean toward the other extreme (although I have indulged in bad TV from time to time). My wife calls me a design geek because my bedside table is always full of design magazines, books and theory.

Ontario’s leaders look for “Places to Grow”

22 May 2007 - 1:36pm

Think big.

That’s what the people of Ontario and the Toronto region set out to do more than 5 years ago when they began a visionary planning process for the area known as the Greater Golden Horseshoe in southern Ontario, Canada. (The Greater Golden Horseshoe is the area around Lake Ontario that stretches from roughly Peterborough to the east, west through metropolitan Toronto, and around the west tip of the lake to the southern side and Niagara Falls — hence the horseshoe shape.)

If You Lived In This Inner-Ring Suburb, You'd Be Home By Now

24 April 2007 - 9:00am

This week, a few stories circulated around our office that generated some discussion. One was a piece in The New Yorker by Nick Paumgarten on commuting in America entitled "There and Back Again". The tease at the beginning sums up the entire piece: "People may endure miserable commutes out of an inability to weigh their general well-being against quantifiable material gains."

In this story, the writer accompanies commuters in Manhattan and Atlanta while attempting to understand the life of an "extreme commuter."