Exclusives

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> Some time ago I noted a number of terrific<a href="/node/34290" target="_blank"> image resources</a> for urban planners. This blog highlights some additional sources. </p>

February 1 - Ann Forsyth

FEATURE

Planetizen talks with Anne Lutz Fernandez, author of the new book <em>Carjacked: The Culture of the Automobile and Its Effect on Our Lives,</em> about how Americans feel about their cars, the Starbucks Effect, and the built environment.

February 1 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small">Let me wade into an ongoing debate among fellow Planetizen bloggers </span><a href="/node/42367"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small">Samuel Staley</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small"> and </span><a href="/node/42323"><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small">Michael Lewyn</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri; font-size: small"> concerning the meanings of <em>accessibility</em> and <em>mobility,</em> and their implications for transportation and land use policy. </span> </p>

February 1 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

<p> As a young kid, skirting aimlessly throughout my suburban municipality from one car-optimized shopping center to the next on my bicycle in search of stimulation (and perhaps trouble), I vividly recall - though I likely didn&#39;t describe it as - the internal conflict between interesting commercial destinations on the inside, and the banal, cruel approach to these places on the outside.  Although the primitive human desires of my psyche subconsciously longed for a central place to congregate with other lost children of the suburbs, I never had a downtown; I never had a community center.  In this vacuum, I compensated with all that was available. </p>

January 31 - Ian Sacs

FEATURE

The foreclosure crisis spreading across America has burdened cities and neighborhoods with value-draining vacancies and abandoned properties. To counteract the economic havoc they've caused, planners and policymakers must focus on restoring confidence in the market, according to neighborhood planning consultants Charles Buki and Elizabeth Humphrey Schilling.

January 28 - Charles Buki

BLOG POST

<span>It is well-known in planning circles that Smart Growth has come under attack by (mostly libertarian) think tanks and pundits hostile to any form of urban planning that doesn’t leave land use decisions up to the “magic” of the free market. While their reports may get a lot of press, a close reading of most of their rhetoric reveals that it is largely based on a selective use of data, fallacious argumentation and hyperbole.

January 27 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small">In an earlier post, </span><a href="/node/42367"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #800080; font-size: small">I discussed the difference between mobility, accessibility, and transportation technology</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small">. In today’s post, I want to discuss what I think is the next step in this taxonomy in terms of the implications for the built environment and urban planning. More specifically, we need to move beyond the idea that certain transportation technologies—whether it is a car, a bus, a train, or our feet—are substitutes.

January 27 - Samuel Staley

FEATURE

Human-scaled, creative development isn't getting built because most of the money in real estate comes from institutional investors that prefer predictable, large scale projects like subdivisions and strip malls, says Neil Takemoto of CoolTown Beta Communities.

January 25 - Neil Takemoto

FEATURE

The world's tallest building is now open in Dubai. Christopher Corbett takes you up to the 124th floor.

January 21 - Christopher Corbett

BLOG POST

<!--StartFragment--><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana">More than two years years ago I chronicled my <a href="/node/26876">daily bicycle commute in Miami</a>. The 8-mile trip was as representative of Miami&#39;s built and socio-cultural landscape as it was harrowing. </span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana">While that city has surely made progress in the pas two years, I&#39;d be lying if I didn&#39;t disclose that I partially moved to New York City because of the progress being made in designing livable streets infrastructure. Quite simply, it feels good to be in a city that &quot;gets it.&quot; </span></p>

January 18 - Mike Lydon

FEATURE

Recent earthquake response efforts in Haiti showed how comparing satellite imagery could help to identify physical changes in the damaged country and assist rescue workers. That same sort of imagery could play a similar role for urban planners.

January 18 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<span style="font-size: 10pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Arial','sans-serif'"> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri">Last week I attended the </span><a href="http://www.trb.org/AnnualMeeting2010/Public/AnnualMeeting2010.aspx"><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri">Transportation Research Boards (TRB)</span></a><span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri"> 89th annual meeting, which attracted approximately 10,000 transportation professionals from around the globe to Washington DC. More than 2,000 papers were presented at more than 700 sessions, plus several hundred committee meetings took place. Let me share some highlights.</span> </p>

January 18 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> Every so often, one sees an article arguing that one mode of transportation is cheaper, more efficient, or less dangerous than another because it uses less energy/kills more people/costs more per passenger-mile. (1) </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> It seems to me, however, that per passenger-mile comparisions are flawed in one key respect: they assume that trips on any mode of transportation will involve the same mileage, so that if the average driver lives 20 miles from work, the average bus rider will also live 20 miles from work.<span> </span> </p>

January 15 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

Updated for Fall 2010, Planetizen's picks for the best news and observations about urban planning, design and development available on Twitter. Check out the new section of high-speed rail links, and visit our sister site www.hsrnews.com.

January 13 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small">I’m going to riff off a recent Interchange Blog post by Michael Lewyn on the </span><a href="/node/42323"><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; color: #800080; font-size: small">relationship between mobility and accessibility</span></a><span style="font-family: Times New Roman; font-size: small">. Given the positive comments from the planning community to Michael’s post, a little engagement may be necessary for both clarity as well as fully understanding the implications of reading too much into the accessibility versus mobility debate. </span> </p>

January 13 - Samuel Staley

FEATURE

The editors' choice of the most significant stories in the realm of urban planning, design and development of the "aughts" (2000-2009). The decade began with one crash and ended with another, but in between we've learned a lot about making cities.

January 11 - Nate Berg

FEATURE

January 6 - Jack Finn

BLOG POST

<p> As if all this inclement weather hasn&#39;t been hassle enough for those of us who cherish our cars, I practically careened into another tragic loss for the rightfully auto-minded recently in Hoboken, New Jersey.  It seems the needs of lofty pedestrians <em>et.al.</em> have once again been imprudently prioritized over us drivers in a result that is sure to make your muffler ratlle: a one-block segment of an historic belgian block street has been closed off to the ideal form of personal mobility (read: car) so that silly people with nothing better to do than run around frivolously in streets have another place off the sidewalk to inconvenience the driving majority of our great nation.

January 5 - Ian Sacs

BLOG POST

“Not that I condone fascism, or any -ism for that matter: -isms in my opinion are not good. A person should not believe in an -ism; he should believe in himself. I quote John Lennon: ‘I don’t believe in Beatles, I just believe in me.’ A good point there. After all, he was the walrus. I could be the walrus. I&#39;d still have to bum rides off of people.”<br /> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote> <blockquote> <div align="left"> —Ferris Bueller

January 5 - Jeffrey Barg

BLOG POST

<p> Downloading my newest addition to my Kindle library—the digital book service provided by Amazon.com—I remembered the gentle criticism of a planner on a list serve not too long ago. The thread was on sustainability and global warming. I had made the point that market economies were innovative economies, and too much of the planning discussion on sustainability focused on reduced consumption without seriously discussing the ways technology fundamentally changed our choice sets. The planner chastised me for my faith in markets, saying, in a nutshell, we need to focus on what we know we can influence and not hedge are bets on the past. The implication was that markets were too ephemeral and undependable to include in long-term planning. </p>

January 4 - Samuel Staley