Exclusives

BLOG POST

<p> <span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: 'Courier New'">Over various blog posts through the last few years, I&#39;ve shared some of the key steps and stages leading to the eventual unanimous Council approval of <a href="/node/33517" target="_blank">Vancouver&#39;s EcoDensity Initiative</a>. Since then the EcoDensity Charter and new policies have been changing the way we think about density, green building and site design, and our ecological footprint in and outside of city hall. We&#39;ve also been moving forward on various EcoDensity actions approved in principle by Council back in 2008.

July 14 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

<span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman'">All forms of public decision-making are subject to controversy and competing expectations. Many of these relate to the perceived utility gained -- or disutility incurred -- through public expenditures.

July 14 - Michael Dudley

FEATURE

Opinions are flying in the debate over whether or not ailing cities like Detroit should bulldoze their empty neighborhoods. John Kromer of the Fels Institute of Government adds a rational note with this op-ed, explaining what The Flint Model for shrinking cities actually entails.

July 13 - John Kromer

FEATURE

Bulldoze? Densify? Walk away? There are many ways cities can react to shrinking populations and abandoned neighborhoods. Planetizen readers decide which ways are the best.

July 9 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> Everybody knows that most, if not all, of downtown businesses&#39; customers arrive by car.  So it&#39;s intuitive to try to come up with a way to encourage drivers - who normally wouldn&#39;t venture downtown - to hop into their rides and cruise on down to Main Street to shop for wares.  If we could do this, just think of all the new business we&#39;d be stimulating!  In continuing with this logic, it&#39;s also a given that it&#39;s impossible for would-be customers to actually get to downtown without the essential <em>attaché</em> to driving, gasoline.  So, isn&#39;t it therefore intuitive to suggest that if cities were to give away a little bit of gas to each customer – you know, to kind-of thank them for their generosity - then customers would find an overwhelming incentiv

July 8 - Ian Sacs

BLOG POST

<p> A few weeks ago, I read an online comment suggesting that unnamed &quot;planners&quot; displayed no interest in suburbia, single-family housing or family life, and instead are only interested in improving downtown neighborhoods for single people. If by &quot;planners&quot; the author of this comment meant new urbanists or critics of the sprawl status quo, this claim is simply incorrect. </p> <p> Over the past month, I have visited half a dozen new urbanist developments in Dallas and Denver (1). All of these developments have a few things in common: all include both retail and residential uses, and all strive for walkability by providing sidewalks and narrow, gridded streets. But the developments differ in two other respects: geography and housing type. </p>

July 7 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

I knew it was going to be a madhouse in downtown L.A. for Michael Jacksons memorial service, but I had to go see what it was like for the urban novelty of a huge swath of downtown closed off for thousands of fans and mourners.

July 7 - Nate Berg

FEATURE

Our nation's roads must be greener, says David Wenzel of HNTB. A green road is one that is designed, built and maintained in a manner that protects and enhances the environment, lessens the impact on its surroundings, and encourages mass transit.

July 6 - David Wenzel

FEATURE

Managing Editor Tim Halbur reviews The High Line, the much-lauded new linear park in Manhattan.

July 2 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

<p> The Olympics can be awesome for cities. Or they can be devastating. Rarely they&#39;re both, and most often they are an economic drain caused by over-investment in facilities with limited long-term usability. So when London&#39;s plans for a 2012 Summer Olympics stadium that would reduce from 80,000 seats during the games to a more realistically usable 25,000 seats after, Olympics experts, city officials and taxpayers rejoiced. But <a href="http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard-olympics/article-23711886-details/Olympic+legacy+chief:+Keep+80,000-seat+stadium+for+World+Cup+bid/article.do" target="_blank" title="Olympic legacy chief: Keep 80,000-seat stadium for World Cup bid - London Evening Standard">recent news</a> has turned that rejoice to disgust.<br />

June 30 - Nate Berg

FEATURE

As the recession digs in, cities across the country are left with large swaths of abandoned or vacant places. Can these cities shrink gracefully? Do they even need to? Vote on ideas submitted by the Planetizen community, or suggest your own.

June 29 - Planetizen

BLOG POST

<p> America&#39;s so-called “love affair” with the automobile, although cliché, provides a vivid description of how attached we really are to driving.  Public policy, and the historically overwhelming effect of auto industry lobbying, is only partly to blame for the endemic traffic jams and smog of the twentieth century.  Bruce Schaller, a transportation consultant hired by New York City advocacy group Transportation Alternatives, <a href="http://www.transalt.org/files/newsroom/reports/schaller_Feb2006.pdf">recently demonstrated</a> that urbanites with multiple transportation options still choose to commute by car for rational reasons of privacy, convenience, and speed.  A chart of his, shown below, demonstrates how perplexing this choice is.  Overcoming these reasons is a ser

June 29 - Ian Sacs

BLOG POST

In recent months many planning students have graduated and are moving on to the next phase of life—jobs, internships, fellowships, and such. For many this will involve a move to a new place. Even those staying in the same metropolitan area will seldom make it back to their planning program, and besides their fellow students will have scattered. Graduate school provides a peer group of those with similar interests and training. How do recent graduates create such a network when they are no longer in residence at a university?

June 29 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

<p> The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that in 2007, over 9.8 million American households had no auto available at home. Although those car free households make up only 8.7% of the U.S., the split by housing ownership is striking: only 3.3% of owner occupied homes do without at least one vehicle, where fully 19.9% of renters have no cars parked in the proverbial driveway. </p> <p> For some, not owning a vehicle is not a matter of choice -- just the reality of limited resources. For others, it&#39;s a matter of preference, and many residents of cities with fairly good public transportation choosing to go without cars. Although car ownership is a useful indicator of neighborhoods that provide good options for public transit, the reality is the most important variable isn&#39;t whether you own one, but how much you <em>drive</em>. </p> <p> That&#39;s the idea behind the annual Car-Free Challenge sponsored by the San Francisco Bay Area nonprofit <a href="http://www.transformca.org/">TransForm</a> (formerly TALC - Transportation and Land Use Coalition). The Challenge&#39;s over 160 participants pledged to drive less than 125 miles in June, much less than the Bay Area average of 540, or the U.S. average of over 1,000. Many participants contributed blog posts about their experiences on the <a href="http://www.transformca.org/car-free/challenge-posts">Challenge website</a>. More than just a group of footloose young professionals living in The Mission, challenge participants were remarkably diverse group living mostly in the Bay Area but also Sacramento, Los Angeles, and cities outside of California. </p>

June 25 - Robert Goodspeed

FEATURE

As America's metropolitan areas meld into "megaregions", officials and policymakers will need to figure out how to deal with their shared and growing infrastructure problems. Consider the ball rolling.

June 25 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri">Planning issues are often considered to be conflicts between the interests of different groups, such as neighborhood residents versus developers, or motorist versus transit users. But planning concerns the future, so it often consists of a conflict between the interests of our current and future selves. </span> </p>

June 25 - Todd Litman

FEATURE

In his new book<em> Welcome to the Urban Revolution: How Cities are Changing the World</em>, Jeb Brugmann proposes a new way of thinking about citybuilding. Planetizen Correspondent Michael Dudley has this review.

June 24 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

<p> I am a bicycle commuter in Los Angeles, which on the face of it is a pretty tricky proposition. The major boulevards here are designed like freeways, and people use them as such. Pico, Highland, Sepulveda, Olympic- these streets were built for speed and make commuting not a little tricky for your serious bicycle commuter. </p>

June 23 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 10pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-size: small; font-family: Calibri">As attention to energy efficiency and climate change continue to pervade the thinking and planning of the future transportation system, we are increasingly challenged to make very real decisions about the prudence of various investments. The current context for decision-making offers perhaps the greatest uncertainty regarding the future witnessed in the lifetimes of people in the planning profession today.

June 23 - Steven Polzin

BLOG POST

<p> I can’t deny that one of my strongest personality traits is that of being a hard-core cheapskate.  So much so, that I feel obliged to caveat this post by saying that my initial reasons for getting into rooftop gardening were more to save money on buying fresh vegetables and fruit from our rather pricey local markets than any particular affection for gardening.  While it turns out that my wife and I probably do save money (surprisingly, I never ran the numbers), the joy of gardening, and the kick I get out of showing our rooftop garden off to friends, has far outweighed the economic benefits.  As counter-intuitive as it sounds, urban gardening is much easier than you might imagine.  The hardest part is overcoming the psychological hurdle of thinking that it is difficult, confusing, time-consuming, or takes up lots of space.  In fact, it is none of these things; you don’t need expensive, special equipment, or any particular skill.  You only need a window box, a fire escape, or a small patch of patio if that’s all you have.  If this geeky transportation engineer can grow tomatoes, so can you!

June 22 - Ian Sacs