Exclusives

BLOG POST

Solyndra, Moneyball, and Lessons for Planning

The Los Angeles Times recently had a <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/nation/la-fi-solyndra-20110925,0,1536191.story" target="_blank" title="Solyndra's collapse is a tale of too much dazzle">story</a> about the collapse of Solyndra – the once heralded poster-child of the Obama administration’s green jobs plan. A big part of Solyndra’s demise was due to the rapidly falling price of their competitors’ solar panels. In 2008, the cost of solar panels was a bit over $4 for each watt generated. Solyndr

October 1 - Marlon Boarnet

BLOG POST

A foray by HUD into telling small towns how best to use their land

In April 2009, HUD Secretary Shaun Donovan spoke to the ULI Spring Council Forum in Atlanta; he stated that his administration’s goal was “to put the UD back in HUD,” and explained that HUD’s over-reliance on housing solutions wasn’t helping cities address their complex revitalization needs. Just over two years later, this small new funding program caught my eye on a list of new HUD announcements: *** HUD HOPE VI – $0.5 million Application Due: August 22, 2011 Eligible Entities: Local governments

October 1 - Jess Zimbabwe

BLOG POST

Streets of a multicultural city

This past weekend I attended a memorial service for a local activist. Eric Quezada was important in many planning-related issues here in San Francisco – how we create space that reflects the cultural traditions of our large immigrant communities, the importance of preventing displacement of low-income people, the development of affordable housing and institutions that meet the needs of all of our citizenry. I had known Eric for many years, but had the privilege of working most closely with him when I served on our city’s Planning Commission and he was a lead organizer in the Mission District, an historically Latino neighborhood threatened by dot-com fueled gentrification. In his short 45 years on earth, Eric touched the lives of thousands here and around the world.

September 28 - Lisa Feldstein

BLOG POST

Public Education, Privatization and Planning

<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml> One of the greatest challenges for US cities is the perceived failure of public schools. Both as a means for attracting and retaining the middle class and for providing upward mobility public schools are crucial. Consequently, any effort to build livable cities must include successful public schools so as to provide a ladder for the poor and to attract and retain the middle class. Although education typically falls out of the purview of planning, planners can ill afford to ignore such a key component of what makes a place livable in the minds of many.

September 26 - Lance Freeman

FEATURE

Carpooling: What the Census Doesn't Show

Recent census data analysis shows that the number of carpoolers has been declining over the last thirty years. But further study of carpooling's history, as well as social, demographic and economic trends, shows that there is more to carpooling numbers than a downward slope, writes Cynthia Armour.

September 26 - Cynthia Armour

BLOG POST

Digging (in) Detroit

Detroit is the darling of the media.

September 21 - Barbara Knecht

FEATURE

Save the Partnership for Sustainable Communities

September 19 - Geoffrey Anderson

BLOG POST

5 Things That Inspire Me

During these harsh economic times I’ve read about some of the most creative and inspiring planning and design projects in my career. Whether they are the product of the underemployed looking for a creative outlet or a resetting of our values and goals, something magical is happening in the world of planning. Below are 5 things that have inspired my inner planner.

September 15 - Melissa Hege

FEATURE

Seeking the Top 100 Public Spaces in the U.S. and Canada

September 15 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

The false hope of comprehensive planning

It is conventional wisdom in some circles that “comprehensive planning” and sprawl are polar opposites- that planning is the enemy of sprawl. But in fact, a comprehensive plan is almost as likely as a zoning code to be pro-sprawl. Many of the land use policies that make suburbs automobile-dependent (such as wide roads, long blocks, low density, single-use zoning, etc.) can just as easily be found in a comprehensive plan.

September 15 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Manhattan Urbanism, 9/11, and the "Security-Silo"

September 13 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

Making the Most of an Internship

Recently I’ve had a number of undergraduate students ask how to make the most of internships—over the semester and in the breaks. The following represents some advice for current students.

September 11 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

Risk Versus Dread: Implications for Planners; or Let's Not Let The Terrorists Win

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 This being the decade anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks, it seems a good time to consider how our society responds to such threats, and what planners can do to maximize safety.

September 11 - Todd Litman

FEATURE

Board Games for Urban Planners

Mark Ferrall is on a mission to get planners away from their computer screens and collaborating again - over a good board game. Here, he presents three he thinks you and your colleagues will enjoy.

September 8 - Mark Ferrall

BLOG POST

Lapped on Urban Sustainability - can the US ever catch up?

Summer travel took me out of the US and back to Sweden for the first time in five years. While my initial reaction was that things seemed much the same, I quickly realized that the Swedes had quietly pushed forward a number of projects that, if located in the US, would be on the vanguard of sustainability. But over there it's just called urban planning.

September 7 - Walker Wells

BLOG POST

Reconsidering the City Since 9/11

We all remember that day: How we first heard, whom we were with, how we felt as we watched an iconic American cityscape transformed into a burning, toxic wreckage, knowing that thousands were surely dead, many never to be found. We can all too easily recall how our disbelief quickly turned to horror, sadness and then fear – a fear that the world was now a fundamentally different place, and what that would mean for ourselves and our children.

September 7 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

Evaluating Smart Growth Benefits and Costs

This is the third in a series of columns that respond to recent claims by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) that smart growth policies are ineffective and harmful. The first was, An Inaccurate Attack On Smart Growth [...]

September 5 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

Are TODs Really PODs?

For a while now, I've wondered if we have been mislabeling the development around well functioning transit stops as transit-oriented developments (TODs). This may seem odd, because numerous studies have shown that property values can increase by 20% to 40% percent around transit stops, particularly rail stations (although the increases are uneven).

September 4 - Samuel Staley

FEATURE

Skyscrapers and the World of Tomorrow

Are skyscrapers the way to achieve great density, or a form of retro-urbanism that should be retired? With a debate simmering in the planning world over the energy efficiency and urban necessity of tall towers, Planetizen's staff decided to determine the answer once and for all.

September 1 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

The Coming Urban Data Revolution

Historically, data sources for urban planning have remained relatively stable. Planners relied on a collection of well-known government-produced datasets to do their work, including statistics and geographic layers from federal, state and local sources. Produced by regulatory processes or occasional surveys, the strengths and limitations of these sources are well known to planners and many citizens. However all this is beginning to change. Not only has the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey introduced a bewildering variety of data products, all with margins of error, three interrelated categories of new data are growing rapidly: crowdsourced, private, and "big" data.

September 1 - Robert Goodspeed