Exclusives

BLOG POST

<p> My sense is that most new urbanists and smart growth advocates were happy to see Barack Obama elected President two years ago.  While John McCain opposed Amtrak and had not been overly supportive of local public transit, Obama created an Administration full of advocates for transit and urbanism, and high-speed rail is one of his Administration&#39;s signature programs.  So the Obama Administration will slow sprawl, and will make our cities more transit-oriented, prosperous and walkable.   Right?  </p>

February 13 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

Athens, Greece has all the elements of good urbanism - density, diversity, destinations, distance (to transit) and design. So is Athens a poster child for good urbanism? Fanis Grammenos takes an in-depth look.

February 10 - Fanis Grammenos

BLOG POST

<span style="border-collapse: separate; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-size: medium; font-family: Times; color: #000000" class="Apple-style-span"> <div style="font-family: Verdana,Arial,Helvetica,sans-serif; font-size: 10px; background-color: #ffffff"> <p> To hear my mother tell it, I gave Joe Biden the idea for high-speed rail. Charitable and glowing, yes, but isn’t that what mothers are for?  </p> <p> All the same, I can’t help but glow a bit anyway when I think about how far we’ve come as a country in embracing high-speed rail.  </p>

February 9 - Jeffrey Barg

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Having read articles lately on Planetizen and elsewhere on how the &quot;fresh new concept” of Intelligent Cities is replacing the stale old term &quot;smart growth&quot;, I was moved to <a href="/node/47982" target="_blank">write a comment regarding the latest such article</a> </span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'">which compared smart growth to urban renewal in terms of its stale-dated coolness, and suggested that smart growth may be passé because of its successful take-over of main-stream thought and practice.

February 8 - Brent Toderian

FEATURE

February 7 - Emily Laetz

BLOG POST

<p> In this lavishly produced, beautifully illustrated but somewhat self-edifying book, His Royal Highness the Prince of Wales argues that most of our global crises -- from climate change to poverty to our soulless built environments -- are owed to our disconnection from Nature (which he capitalizes).

February 3 - Michael Dudley

FEATURE

The Tea Party has it all wrong, writes Joel Mills. Urban planning is not a radical, elitist agenda, but the best example of local democracy available today.

January 31 - Joel Mills

FEATURE

Was Jane Jacobs a NIMBY? Did she despise density? These sort of reevaluations of Jacobs' legacy are hot at the moment. Roberta Brandes Gratz explains why the naysayers are off base.

January 24 - Roberta Brandes Gratz

FEATURE

In an excerpt from his new book, Bill Fulton suggests that it's time for America's cities to focus on prosperity, not population.

January 20 - Bill Fulton

BLOG POST

<p style="margin-top: 6pt" class="MsoNormal">I spent last week at the <a href="http://www.adb.org/">Asian Development Bank</a> (ADB) headquarters in Manila, in the Philippines, where we are starting on an exciting but humbling project: developing a more comprehensive framework for transport project evaluation. Among other factors, this project will develop better methods for incorporating <a href="http://www.vtpi.org/equity.pdf">social equity</a> impacts into transport planning. This is important in any community, and particularly in developing countries where many people are extremely poor. What transport policies and planning practices respond to their needs?</p>

January 17 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

<p><span><span style="font-size: small"><span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'">The internet has great potential as a means of professional marketing for many soon-to-be and recent graduates. Not everyone in planning, however, uses it well. The following tips aim to help you realize its potential and avoid its pitfalls.</span></span></span><span><span style="font-size: small; font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> </span></span> </p>

January 17 - Ann Forsyth

FEATURE

January 17 - George Haugh

FEATURE

January 13 - Tim Halbur

FEATURE

The state of Detroit is alarming, particularly in its continued dependence on cars, but there is hope that the city could reinvent itself as an ecological metropolis, says Jeffrey Kenworthy of the Curtin University of Technology.

January 10 - Jeff Kenworthy

BLOG POST

<p> I spent the last two weeks of December in Atlanta, living (mostly) with my parents.  My life in Atlanta is much more car-dependent than my life in Jacksonville; in the latter city, I live a block from a bus stop, while in Atlanta, I live at least a mile from the nearest bus stop (and more importantly, near no sidewalks to take me to said bus stop).  So naturally, I drove everywhere in Atlanta. </p> <p> And while driving, I noticed a couple of unusual things.  First, I noticed that unlike in my Jacksonville neighborhood, bicyclists actually tried to ride on the street rather than on sidewalks.*  Second, I noticed that I was beginning to get annoyed with bicyclists- to a much greater extent than I have ever been annoyed with pedestrians while driving. </p>

January 5 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: 'Times New Roman'">In coming weeks doctoral applications in planning are due. Why apply? </span> </p> <p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: 'Times New Roman'">For professional planners, a PhD sometimes sounds interesting compared with doing a regular job in a municipality. Some designers remember studio professors who seemed to float into class, unprepared, for a few hours per week. Compared with the ups and downs of private design practice, this can seem quite appealing. Of course, some people genuinely like studying and research, want to make a contribution in that area, and have a flair for teaching. </span> </p>

January 5 - Ann Forsyth

FEATURE

January 3 - Luis Rodriguez

BLOG POST

<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"> Be a better person; be a better planner. Musings from a planner who wants to improve our profession for 2011. Here’s how:</p>

January 2 - Melissa Hege

FEATURE

In this highly readable volume, Witold Rybczynski makes a fresh argument for rethinking the field of planning. Lynn Vande Stouwe has this review of one of our selections for the Top 10 Urban Planning Books for 2011.

December 27 - Lynn Vande Stouwe

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small">Healthy children grow bigger, but once people reach maturity at about age 20 continued physical growth is harmful - it makes us fat. It is certainly possible to develop our skills, strength and knowledge, but most adults should not pursue growth as an end in itself. This also applies to communities.</span> </p>

December 23 - Todd Litman