Exclusives

BLOG POST

Beaterbikonomics: Owning (And Occasional Theft Of) A Bike Is Way Cheaper Than Transit

Pains of an imminent NYC transit fare hike and a recent article in the New York Times on <a href="http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/03/31/the-bicycle-thieves-among-us/">bike theft/vandalism defeatism</a> inspired me to validate the overwhelming perceived economic benefits of commuting by bike versus transit, despite the occasional theft. If frugal is the next big thing and green is the new black, then hop on a crappy old bike if you want to be hip.

April 6 - Ian Sacs

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Transportation Concurrency and Sprawl

Transportation concurrency is the subject of a bill that has passed one house of the Florida legislature. "Concurrency" is the Florida term for "adequate public facilities controls," indicating that facilities need not necessarily be in place at the time of project approval but that they must be scheduled to become available "concurrently" with demand from proposed development.

April 6 - Eric Damian Kelly

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The Hornery Institute and Inner-Urban Suburbs

On a recent business trip to Australia, I had the opportunity to visit with an interesting group of social planners called <a href="http://www.horneryinstitute.com/hornery/home/Default.aspx">The Hornery Institute</a>. Specifically, their charter is “to assist communities in becoming better places to live, learn, work and play.” The Hornery Institute was established in November 2000, in recognition of Lend Lease’s Chairman, Stuart Hornery and his commitment to community and people. To mark his retirement, the shareholders and employees of this great company <a href="http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/money/story/0,26860,24379922-5015795,00.htm">formed a not-for-profit organization</a> that allowed Hornery and his dedicated, hand-picked staff to continue working on independent projects to make communities more fulfilling.

April 5 - Rick Abelson

BLOG POST

Deciding if You Want to be a Planner

Not sure if you want to be a planner? Recently my colleagues and I have received a spate of emails from prospective students around the world wanting to know whether planning is a field they should pursue. Their extensive lists of questions show that this is a pressing issue for them. This entry answers some of the more common questions and aims to help prospective students come to programs with a shorter and more focused set of topics to explore.

April 5 - Ann Forsyth

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Smart Growth and Housing Affordability – Round Three

I would like to expand an ongoing debate between Reason Foundation policy expert Samuel Staley and me concerning land use policy impacts on affordability and economic stability to include two additional issues: household economic resilience and wealth accumulation.

April 4 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

The Future of Research Parks and Technology-led Economic Development

The American economy has long relied upon technological innovation to drive its economy. Today,basic investment in science and technology is once again taking center stage,as a cure for both our economic and environmental ills.

April 3 - Anthony Townsend

BLOG POST

Electric Bus, Where Art Thou?

Amid the stimulus-backed hullabaloo over high speed rail, perhaps efforts by municipalities to supplant old-school diesel with new era electric bus fleets have been overshadowed. Maybe it is still too soon, but there has been little media coverage on cities making the switch from diesel to hybrid or electric buses; however, with the money that is being pumped in, and the major shift in national perspective on the importance of sustainability, energy efficiency, and pollution reduction, now is the time to bypass the delays of a hybrid “stepping stone” and leap straight for all-electric transit systems.

April 2 - Ian Sacs

BLOG POST

Low Impact Development

A grad student in our program at Ball State told me several months ago that he wanted to do his creative project (a thesis alternative) on “low impact development.” His particular interest was in what we called “natural drainage systems” when I worked with the planners and landscape architects at Rahenkamp, Sachs Wells in Philadelphia 30 years ago. I told him that it was a great topic and suggested some contemporary and older resources, including an excellent 1975 publication by the Urban Land Institute entitled Residential Storm Water Management. I also told the student that the big issue with such systems is maintenance.

April 2 - Eric Damian Kelly

BLOG POST

Doing the Conference Circuit

The semester has kicked into high gear and I am drowning in a sea of reading, written assignments,map-making, and special projects. Once in a while, I manage to emerge and dock (I know, enough of the nautical metaphors) at a lecture – or as in the last couple of weeks – at aconference. It is great to stepout of academia once in a while and hear what is going on in the realworld. I had the opportunity to attend two conferences over the past month. One of them – <a href="http://cityfrombelow.org/main">The City from Below</a> Conference – I attended this weekend when I returned home to Baltimore for spring break.

April 1 - Tamika Camille Gauvin

BLOG POST

Is High-Speed Rail Worth It?

Is it a wise use of taxpayers dollars to spend $13 billion in the next five years ($8 billion in the recovery package and $5 billion in the next five annual appropriations) in a down payment on constructing a high-speed rail network? Or are there better ways to spend this money on transportation? That was the subject of a recent weekly debate on the National Journal's Transportation Blog. The debate revealed a spectrum of opinion among the contributors, with proponents of high-speed rail outnumbering the doubters by a wide margin.

March 31 - Kenneth Orski

BLOG POST

The Slumdog's City in a City

Watching <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slumdog_Millionaire">Slumdog Millionaire</a>, the Oscar winning film of 2008 that is being released <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Slumdog-Millionaire-Dev-Patel/dp/B001P9KR8U/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=dvd&qid=1238435270&sr=1-1">on DVD today</a>, can be a bracing experience for those accustomed to the conveniences of Western living. The destitute living is accurately and graphically depicted and is all too real for those that have seen it. Yet, the real danger is letting the poverty obscure a larger, perhaps more important lesson about urban places: Many of these urban slums are functioning, productive cities in their own right, and represent an intergenerational path toward economic improvement.

March 31 - Samuel Staley

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Cul-de-sacs verboten?: Tim Kaine and Roman Polanski on dead-end streets

As you may have heard in yesterday's <a href="/podcast">Planetizen Podcast</a>, Virginia Governor Tim Kaine <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/21/AR2009032102248.html">doesn't like cul-de-sacs</a>. Most news reports on the story have claimed that the state is "forbidding," "banning," or even "outlawing" the cul-de-sac. In fact, Virginia municipalities can still design, build, and approve any road patterns they wish, but the State will no longer agree to foot the bill for the ongoing maintenance of cul-de-sacs. The news item came up in a staff meeting yesterday and one colleague told us that a friend he was having dinner with declared the move "Un-American!"

March 31 - Jess Zimbabwe

BLOG POST

Citifying a Suburban Shopping Centre

In a past post, I wrote on the plan to urbanize Vancouver's Oakridge Centre, our first car-oriented "suburban" shopping centre <a href="/node/35542" target="_blank">(see past post here for information, report-links and images)</a>. Some have asked how the downturn has affected the plans to proceed - as we were only anticipating going through the next steps of planning and design (rezoning) in the next year or so, with some time before the owners were planning on initiating the physical transformation of the mall, I believe they remain in "wait-and-see" mode regarding possible timing of first phases, relative to the market.

March 30 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

Will Planning Happen in the Dark?

Since the passage of <a href="http://www.fcc.gov/telecom.html">The Telecommunications Act of 1996</a>, media activists have been warning that a combination of consolidated corporate ownership of media outlets and a correspondingly intense profit orientation is resulting in diminished diversity of opinion, an avoidance of controversies and loss of choice for media consumers. In particular, they are concerned that remotely-owned newspapers, television and radio stations are incapable of adequately meeting local information needs, reporting on local issues and expressing local concerns.

March 30 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

Whither the Regional Planning?

Over a year ago <a href="/node/28197" target="_blank">I blogged about</a> a conference of urban historians where the group debated a talk, titled "Whither the Region?," where historian Greg Hise observed the group was talking about regional history less. In my response, I suggested several causes: limited decision-making at the regional level in America, center city biases among historical sources like newspapers, and metropolitan areas growing to encompass entire regions due to urban sprawl. I also observed that although it may go unstudied by the group, a good number of regional planning organizations and agencies do exist.

March 29 - Robert Goodspeed

BLOG POST

Traveling beyond LOS (By foot? On a bike?)

Let me start with a disclaimer: I am not a transportation planner. At the points where transportation planning shares borders with engineering, I tend to zone out and start doodling in the margins. I do, however, have a lifelong interest in transportation, which is why I share the excitement of some of my more transportation-focused colleagues about potential changes in how California measures transportation impacts of projects.

March 28 - Lisa Feldstein

BLOG POST

And Let Tata Be A Lesson To You!

Worldwide media coverage earlier this week of Tata Motors unveiling their Nano car-for-the-masses brings the argument over individual car ownership to the forefront yet again. Thanks to one hundred or so years of clever marketing, our society glorifies the bling of a shiny new car, demands auto ownership as a basic right, and proclaims its necessity to be (almost) as critical as water, food, and shelter.

March 25 - Ian Sacs

BLOG POST

A Pig In A Parlor

The state of Virginia’s decision to limit the use of cul-de-sacs in residential subdivisions(1) will no doubt create a torrent of commentary, both pro and con. In the residential context, cul-de-sacs do have certain advantages: they limit traffic near homes, thus allegedly creating quieter environments for homeowners. So perhaps there is a case for the residential cul-de-sac. But in a commercial setting, the cul-de-sac may be the "right thing in the wrong place--such as a pig in a parlor instead of a barnyard.”(2) In such settings, the cul-de-sac has the same disadvantages as the residential cul-de-sac, with few of the advantages.

March 23 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Smart Growth And Housing Affordability

In a recent <a href="/node/37775">blog</a> I emphasized the value of using smart growth policies to increase household affordability and support regional economic development. In his blog, “<a href="/node/37738">Planning Foreclosures</a>,” Samuel Staley reaches a very different conclusion.

March 23 - Todd Litman

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