James Brasuell, AICP is the former editorial director of Planetizen and is now a senior public affairs specialist at the Southern California Association of Governments. James managed all editorial content and direction for Planetizen from 2014 to 2023, and was promoted from manging editor to editorial director in 2021. After a first career as a class five white water river guide in Trinity County in Northern California, James started his career in Los Angeles as a volunteer at a risk reduction center in Skid Row. Prior to joining Planetizen, James worked at the Cal Poly Pomona College of Environmental Design, as an editor at Curbed LA, as editor of The Planning Report, and as a freelance contributor for The Architect’s Newspaper, the Urban Land Institute – Los Angeles Chapter, FORM, KCET, and the California Planning & Development Report.
Racial Disparities in Life Expectancy Are a Place-Based Problem
New research from the Brookings Institution illuminates the racial disparities of public health outcomes both during and before the pandemic.
In D.C., Employers Will Refund Workers Who Leave the Car at Home
D.C. has passed a "parking cash-out" law that goes further than a few preexisting examples to reward commuters who leave their cars at home.
Toronto Searching for a Future for its Public Golf Courses
Amid calls to convert the city's golf courses to other uses, Toronto, Ontario city staff are trying to figure out a middle ground between competing interests.
Measuring and Mapping Change Around the Atlanta BeltLine
A new way of keeping track of the changes caused by one of the nation's "most ambitious urban redevelopment projects."
Nowhere to Build but Up
An old way of doing municipal business—generating development fees by opening farmland to development—is no longer paying dividends. Mississauga, Ontario serves as a cautionary tale for the bottom line of sprawl.