Exclusives
BLOG POST
How to Make a Resilient City (budget)
Building intensity can do just about everything: make a city budget more resilient, conserve land, and encourage infill. And possibly make your morning omelet.
FEATURE
Graduating Into the Workplace: Perspectives from Recent Planning Grads
As a new cohort of young planners prepares to enter the field, more than a dozen recent graduates share their insights on how to make the most of a planning education and navigate one of the most challenging job environments in recent memory.
BLOG POST
Smart growth and city budgets: what matters most?
Where you build is important. But when it comes to city budgets, how much you build matters more.
BLOG POST
How to Encourage Terrorism
Shutting down cities as a response to terrorism makes such violence more rewarding and thus more tempting.
BLOG POST
The One About the Parking-Pinched Merchant…
Small business owners who drive themselves nuts arguing against the reuse of on-street parking with other balanced transportation solutions is a shame because there is so much good data to prove it's actually very good for business.
BLOG POST
Urbanism and the Landscape Architect
Even as the landscape becomes increasingly important to cities, landscape architects remain underrated as contributors to the urban realm. When is everyone else going to see what we already know?
BLOG POST
Free NY/NJ Ferry Service For Bicyclists?
The epic, years-long battle for converting one Holland Tunnel tube to a bicycle/pedestrian-only facility may find compromise in this proposed free ticket voucher program for bicycle-toting ferry passengers.
BLOG POST
The Technology Enhanced City
Explore how people across the world are working to develop technology enhanced solutions to challenges facing their cities.
BLOG POST
Are Transportation Planning Reforms Coercive?
Changing demands justify policies and programs that encourage people too choose efficient travel options and smart growth locations. Are these coercive?
BLOG POST
"Bike Breaks" Leverage Dynamic Resources for Synergistic Efficiency Improvements (they really do!)
Using bicycle racks as partitions in lieu of fences, called "bike breaks", in heavily trafficked areas accomplishes two goals at once and fends off the design wonks.
BLOG POST
Mr. Schramm is Right; Mr. Schramm is Wrong
All economics and no philosophy can make a planner a dull boy. In that sense, Carl Schramm’s recent article in Forbes magazine is absolutely right—but only to a degree. I’ll do my best to explain why.
FEATURE
Taking the Guesswork out of Designing for Walkability
The lack of adequate pedestrian behavior models means that designing for walkability has largely remained a matter of intuition. However, agent-based simulation can provide insight into the keys for creating pedestrian-friendly places.
BLOG POST
Planning is Not Necessary
Municipal comprehensive plans are neither necessary nor sufficient for smart growth.
BLOG POST
Accounting for Latent Travel Demand
Planners must anticipate how people would respond to new options, such as better walking, cycling and public transit services. This requires imagination.
BLOG POST
The Planning Fallacy Part Deux (now with more fallacies!)
A final, closer look on how our optimism can be our best quality and our biggest weakness.
BLOG POST
Bike Sharing Prepares to Get its World Rocked
The evolution of today's infrastructure-intensive bike sharing systems has been a hard-fought learning process; alas, the current paradigm is about to get turned on its head, and it's happening – surprise - this week in Hoboken, New Jersey.
BLOG POST
The Promise of China's Eurocentricism
Can we transform China’s Eurocentric towns from architectural caricatures into urban catalysts, and from one-dimensional exports, into reflective antidotes to the unequivocal and rapacious sprawl that continues to ravage its urban landscape?
FEATURE
Development Done Well Is a Community Affair
Crowdsourcing is a great tool for locating potholes and taking surveys – but can it inspire an underdeveloped neighborhood to come together as a community? A developer in Salt Lake City is motivating residents to use DIY techniques in placemaking.
BLOG POST
Changing the Water in the Fish Tank
David Foster Wallace's commencement speech, now a viral video, misses an essential truth.
FEATURE
For Planners, Investment in Social Media Pays Dividends
With the right approach, social media can expedite the exchange of information between stakeholders, facilitate participatory planning, and build better places. Two case studies offer insight for using social media to connect with communities.
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
KFH Group Inc.
Greater Baltimore Committee
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
