Community / Economic Development
NIMBY's Warm to WalMart
According to a new survey conducted by The Saint Consulting Group, opposition to WalMart developments has fallen while malls, casinos and landfills have increased.
Getting Kids Off the Street- And Up In The Air
Want to get kids off the street? Build playgrounds on top of skyscrapers, like in this retro-future design from 1957's Mechanix Illustrated.
A New Community Center in Brooklyn, With New Ideas
Architect George Ranalli's new Saratoga Avenue Community Center attempts to redefine the form by focusing on permanence and design.
Can Brutalism Clash with Religious Exercise?
A Washington, D.C. church contends that its current facility, a historic Brutalist buildling, interferes with its theology and should be able to replace it with something more "welcoming" and fitting with "the scale of the community."
Electric Car Race Heats Up
It's clear that both domestic and international auto companies are gearing up to manufacture all-electric (battery-powered) vehicles, though whether the market goes for them is another story with gas prices at historic lows.
A Study in Texas New Urbanism
Terrain.org takes a look at Plum Creek, a New Urbanist development outside Austin, TX that added 1,400 households to a town that had only 4,000 people in the mid-1990s.
A Plea For a Pub in Salt Lake City
Salt Lake City Mayor Ralph Becker is talking about reforming the city's longstanding restrictions on alcohol. Writer Luke Garrett puts in his pitch for relaxed zoning to allow an old-fashioned pub in his neighborhood.
City/Suburb Relationship Doesn't Have to Be Zero-Sum
The suburbs are stereotyped as homogeneous, boring, cookie-cutter communities. But suburbs are evolving, according to this column from Tom Condon. Their relationship with cities is also changing -- and it can be good for both.
'Green' Governor Fast-Tracks Highway Construction
Environmentalists reject CA Gov. Schwarzenegger's attempt to waive new highway construction projects from environmental review to qualify for Obama's stimulus package, offering 'fix-it-first' construction and public transit projects as alternatives.
City Mandates Pet Tracking
San Marcos, Texas, joins a handful of other cities around the country in requiring pet owners to monitor their pets electronically.
Pittsburgh Looks to Transit For Rebirth
Officials in Pittsburgh are hoping that expanding transit-oriented development will spur growth in struggling and decaying neighborhoods -- and they have the voter-approved legislation to help.
Preserving Cuba's Urban Quality
As U.S.-Cuba relations evolve with a new presidential administration, author Richard Louv argues that officials should be careful about relying on commerce to save the country's decaying urban areas without preserving them.
Grow Your Own
In this excerpt from their new book, The Urban Homestead, authors Kelly Coyne and Erik Knutzen point out all the ways city dwellers can move away from industrial agriculture.
California's High Speed Rail Struggles Through Recession
The economic recession is hurting the California High Speed Rail Authority, the lead agency developing the high speed rail network for which the state's voters approved $10 billion in bonds in 2008. With no buyers, the bond money is unavailable.
Portrait of a Commuter Town
A NY Times profile of Suffern, NY focuses on real estate, but in the process creates a miniature of the struggles of all small towns- keeping the historic downtown vibrant, offering varied housing options, and competing with neighboring cities.
Post-Industrial Pittsburgh On the Rise
After decades of restructuring, Pittsburgh is doing significantly better than other cities attempting to recover from the loss of industry. Here's how they did it.
Stimulus Should Fund New, 'Transformative' Ideas
In this column, former New York Governor Eliot Spitzer calls on the Obama Administration to direct its stimulus package towards innovative technologies and "transformative" projects, not just the status quo roads and bridges of the past.
Friday Funny: The Citywide Crossword Puzzle
A giant crossword puzzle has been painted on the side of a 100-foot tall building in Lvov, Ukraine. Clues to the puzzle are planted throughout the city, and the puzzle's answers are revealed at nighttime with the use of special lights.
Location, Location, Location: Brought To You By GIS
A new GIS-based service promises to improve on real estate agents by using GIS data to locate promising sites to locate for business.
Do Film Incentive Programs Work?
States around the country have delivered big tax breaks to film companies to shoot in their area, but do they pay off? A recent study in New Mexico says no.
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.
New York City School Construction Authority
Village of Glen Ellyn
Central Transportation Planning Staff/Boston Region MPO
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions
