Exclusives

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> Since tomorrow is Thanksgiving, I thought I would ask myself: what I am thankful for that is related to urbanism? </p>

November 26 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

The grieving period has ended, and now resilient New Orleaneans are taking it upon themselves to rebuild their beloved city. Though it's sure to be a slow process, this could very well be community organization at its best.

November 26 - Roberta Brandes Gratz

BLOG POST

<p> Locality: &quot;We have distressed neighborhoods&quot; </p> <p> Conventional Thinking: &quot;We have housing dollars&quot; </p> <p> Locality: &quot;But we have distressed neighborhoods&quot; </p> <p> Conventional Thinking: &quot;But we have housing dollars&quot; </p> <p> Locality: &quot;So?&quot; </p> <p> Conventional Thinking: &quot;You can run organizations with these dollars and keep at it forever&quot; </p> <p> Locality: &quot;So problems don&#39;t actually have to be solved?&quot; </p> <p> Conventional Thinking: &quot;Correct&quot; <br /> </p>

November 24 - Charles Buki

FEATURE

Planetizen is pleased to release its eighth annual list of the ten best books in the planning field. With titles covering some of the most timely issues in planning, the list gives readers an overview of the best ideas and writing in the field.

November 24 - Abhijeet Chavan

FEATURE

Robert E. Smith, AICP, explains the impact of recent court decisions on the ability of local governments to control the placement of wireless towers in their communities.

November 24 - Robert E. Smith, AICP

BLOG POST

<p> Getting people to understand the intricacies of planning can be a challenge. The modern-day emphasis on public participation is an effort to get people involved, but it&#39;s frankly not too appealing for most people to attend public hearings about zoning amendments and setback changes. But those zoning amendments and setback changes could be pretty important. Planners need to try harder to connect with the people their work affects to explain its importance. It&#39;s time to break from convention. One possible way is dancing.<br />

November 24 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> Occasionally, someone familiar with my scholarship asks me: why do you care about walkability and sprawl and cities? Why is this cause more important to you than twenty other worthy causes you might be involved in? </p> <p> The answer: Freedom. I grew up in a part of Atlanta that, for a carless teenager, was essentially a minimum-security prison. There were no buses or sidewalks, as in many of Atlanta’s suburbs and pseudo-suburbs.  But in my parents&#39; non-neighborhood, unlike in most American suburbs, there were also no lawns to walk on, so if you wanted to walk, you had to walk in the street - not a particularly safe experience in 40 mph traffic. </p>

November 20 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

<blockquote> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman">A paradigm shift is changing the way we think about transportation safety. In the past, traffic safety experts evaluated risk using distance-based units (traffic crashes and casualties per 100 million vehicle-miles or billion vehicle-kilometers), which ignores increases in vehicle traffic as a risk factor, and mobility management as a safety strategy. Yet, we now have overwhelming evidence that the amount people drive has a major impact on their chance of being injured or killed in a traffic accident. Here is a small portion of the evidence:</span> </p>

November 19 - Todd Litman

FEATURE

The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development has a plan to help the nation's hardest hit homeowners and neighborhoods. But by concentrating assistance in the most devastated areas, few places will be saved, writes Charles Buki.

November 19 - Charles Buki

BLOG POST

The election is behind us. A Democratic administration headed by President-elect Barack Obama and a heavily Democratic Congress will assume power next January. How will this influence the direction of federal surface transportation policy and programs? To gain some insight, we have solicited the views of a number of people, including some who are familiar with the thinking of President-elect Obama’s transition team. While the views expressed below are our own, they have been influenced by the observations and speculations expressed in these interviews. By common agreement, all conversations were held off the record and not for attribution in order to allow for the freest possible expression of views.<br /> <br />

November 17 - Kenneth Orski

FEATURE

Congressman Earl Blumenauer of Oregon thinks that an Obama administration, working with Congress, could effect change and create a new vision to Rebuild and Renew America.

November 17 - Congressman Earl Blumenauer (D-OR)

BLOG POST

<p> Hey, have you heard we’re all screwed? </p> <p> Last week Penn hosted the “Reimagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil” conference. If you were there, or if you read the <a href="http://americancity.org/afteroil/">liveblog</a> of the event, you saw speaker after speaker tell of the doom and gloom facing the planet. <em>Climate change</em>! <em>Carbon emissions</em>! <em>Decaying infrastructure</em>! <em>Nine billion people</em>! In the words of the classical philosopher Shawn Carter, we got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one. </p> <p> Frankly, it’s all a little depressing. </p>

November 14 - Jeffrey Barg

FEATURE

Mike Lydon of Duany Plater-Zyberk & Company reports on the recent Transport Summit in Charlotte, NC, where presentations ranged from discussions of 'context-sensitive' road design to crafting the 2009 federal transportation bill.

November 14 - Mike Lydon

FEATURE

Oil is running out and the climate is changing. How this impacts cities will largely be determined by how the urban design field reacts.

November 13 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> &#160; </p> <p> A few days ago, I was looking at a regional planning document and saw something startling: an assertion that transit ridership in my region has been going down. Since transit ridership has been going up nationwide, I smelled a rat. </p> <p> After digging around through a big pile of statistics, I realized that there are so many different ways of measuring transit ridership that one can easily prove either that ridership is going up or that ridership is going down. Some possible measurements include: </p>

November 11 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

<p> &nbsp; </p> <p> This weekend, I had the pleasure of taking a ride up the Pacific Coast Highway in a hot-off-the-assembly-line Tesla sportscar. While I normally fall in with the camp that thinks the focus on alternative fuel cars is distracting from the need to move people out of cars and into transit, walking and biking, I have to say, the Tesla Roadster is a beautiful piece of machinery. </p>

November 10 - Tim Halbur

FEATURE

If the Frederick Law Olmsted of 1857 offered to plan and manage your city’s central park, you probably wouldn’t hire him. The 35-year-old then was a farmer, journalist and former sailor with no formal training in architecture, engineering or any related field. Though he didn’t have much technical expertise, he had great leadership skills. Those gave him the opportunity to succeed, and helped him become successful, according to Leonardo Vazquez.

November 10 - Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 0pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: Times New Roman">Some things are so very bad that they are good, for the sake of amusement and as examples to avoid. Of course, everybody makes mistakes, but some massive disasters involve so many errors by so many people that onlookers can also wonder, “What were they thinking?!”</span> </p>

November 8 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

I&#39;m in philadelphia for a few days to attend the symposium &quot;<a href="http://www.upenn.edu/penniur/afteroil/" target="_blank" title="Penn Design After Oil Conference">Re-Imagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil</a>&quot;. Along with a crew of notable writers and bloggers, I&#39;ll be writing live blog posts about the conference, all of which will be posted on the <a href="http://americancity.org/afteroil/" target="_blank" title="Next American City Design After Oil Symposium Live Blog">website of Next American City magazine</a>. Tune in to their site to follow along.<br /> <br /> This symposium has drawn hundreds of participants from around the globe to discuss the changes facing cities and communities as climate changes and resources diminish. <br />

November 7 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> Last week, voters in San Francisco voted against a measure to compel the city to set aside $30 million for affordable housing. Opponents of the proposal argued that &quot;the city already has spent more than $200 million on affordable housing in the past several years, and is building more units - some affordable, some not - than anytime in recent history.&quot; (1) San Francisco is not alone; government at all levels seeks to provide housing assistance for the poor.  </p> <p> But at the same time, government zones and rezones property to protect &quot;property values&quot; (2) - in other words, to cause home prices to increase over time rather than decrease. So government makes housing expensive with one arm while trying to provide affordable housing with the other. </p>

November 6 - Michael Lewyn