Exclusives

BLOG POST

'Don't Tell My Landlord'

That's what some guy said to me late last night as I waited for my tacos at a typically busy taco truck. He was talking about our Los Angeles neighborhood, Echo Park, which was recently named by the American Planning Association as one of the "<a href="http://www.planning.org/greatplaces/index.htm" target="_blank" title="APA's Great Neighborhoods List">10 Great Neighborhoods of 2008</a>". It's a nice honor for the 'hood -- and I think they're right -- but I'm with that random taco dude: don't tell my landlord.

October 9 - Nate Berg

FEATURE

Breaking Down the Big Box

October 9 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

Planning for True Security

Most people have a highly distorted view of the risks they face, which skews their decisions and ultimately reduces their happiness. We live in one of the safest times and places in history, yet, many people live in constant fear, and respond in ways that actually reduce overall security. This is a major obstacle to efficient transportation, healthy living, and livable community.

October 7 - Todd Litman

FEATURE

'Broken Windows' Rebuffed: The Social Life of Skid Row

On L.A.'s Skid Row, revitalization efforts fail to consider the human aspects of life on the streets, according to Rocco Pendola.

October 6 - Rocco Pendola

BLOG POST

A Planner's Prayer

A PLANNER’S PRAYER Next week, Jews around the world (including myself) will spend the day in synagogue for Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement. On that day, we will pray for forgiveness for our sins. One Yom Kippur prayer, the Al Chet (Hebrew for “for the sin”) lists a variety of sins, requesting Divine forgiveness for each. (One English translation can be found at www.chabad.org/holidays/JewishNewYear/template_cdo/aid/6577/jewish/Text-of-Al-Chet.htm )

October 3 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

Removing Cars to Create Public Space

Cars dominate cities, especially in America. But as many cities in other countries have found, removing cars can turn busy streets into lively public places. Now the U.S. is starting to catch on.

October 2 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

Communication: Online Advice about Writing for Planners

What do planners do? Last month I highlighted the findingsof several surveys of planners aiming to identify core skills for theworkplace. They highlight the importance of skills in communication,information analysis and synthesis, political savvy, and basic workplacecompetencies and attitudes. In all these surveys, however, the ability to writewell is at or near the top.

October 1 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

Money for Nothing? Not Anymore. (Chicks, Though? Still Free.)

Almost a month into planning school, I can see the profession’s all about improvisation. How do you think on your feet when a client doesn’t like your design? What other cities can you turn to when a sudden mandate comes down to look for policy innovation? Or let’s say you’re a planning professor. The financial markets have started a tailspin, eating themselves alive and swallowing MBAs whole. How’s your lesson plan gonna change?

October 1 - Jeffrey Barg

BLOG POST

New Orleans on My Mind

Last Thursday night marked the end of an intense two-week team project in my Gateway: Planning (a kind of Introduction to Planning) course. In this project, my classmates and I assumed the role of consultants to a fictitious working group of the real-life New Orleans Redevelopment Authority (NORA) and prepared and delivered oral briefings on key challenges to post-Katrina housing recovery.

September 29 - Tamika Camille Gauvin

FEATURE

Dharavi: India's Model Slum

September 29 - Prakash M. Apte

BLOG POST

Should the Internet Replace Newspapers for Public Notices?

In thousands of planning and zoning laws across the nation, official announcements are required to be published in the local newspaper of "general circulation." In an era of newspaper decline and expanding diversity of media, are these laws becoming obsolete? Furthermore, should we be concerned with newspapers at all if a newer, more universally accessible medium is available: the Internet? A variety of announcements are legally required to be published in a local periodical of "general circulation," sometimes in addition to being published in an official government gazette. The practice entered the planning world through the U.S. Department of Commerce's highly influential <a href="http://www.planning.org/growingsmart/enablingacts.htm">standard zoning and planning enabling acts</a>.

September 28 - Robert Goodspeed

BLOG POST

Searching for Subversion in Boston

<div> </div> <div> I've always wanted, but never quite had the cred, to go to Burning Man. Instead, I went to this year's rendition of <a href="http://www.parkingday.org/" target="_blank">National Park(ing) Day</a> in the hopes that it would provide a reasonable, if diminuative, substitute in temporary parks across the country. Creative minds can do a lot with 180 square feet, especially when there are straight-laced passers-by to shock and paradigms to subvert. </div>

September 28 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

Some Lessons from the Credit Crisis

The on-going foreclosure and subsequent credit crisis should offer important lessons for housing policy and public policy more broadly. Chief among these lessons might be the falsity of the notion that government regulation is always bad. But some conservative commentators cling to the dogma that government intervention is the root of all evil. An explanation being offered by some is that government intervention in the form of Community Reinvestment Act encouraged irresponsible lending and led to the subsequent housing bust.

September 23 - Lance Freeman

BLOG POST

The Meltdown on Wall Street and America's Cities

With the subprime mortgage and housing bubble crises now metastasizing into the full-blown implosion of the U.S. economy, global markets have been gasping to keep up with the turmoil. Later this week Congress will be pressured to approve a <a href="http://www.commondreams.org/headline/2008/09/23">mind-boggling $700 billion "bailout" package</a> which would effectively transform Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson Jr. into an <a href="http://www.csmonitor.com/2008/0923/p01s06-usec.html">"overseer" of the entire economy</a>, with complete and unassailable power to purchase so-called "toxic" debts from any bank he chooses.

September 23 - Michael Dudley

FEATURE

Park(ing) Day in L.A., 2008

Some 'parkers' faced police harassment, but on the whole Park(ing) Day 2008 was sunny and positive, as Los Angelenos put their own stamp on the celebration. In this video slideshow, we take a tour of some of L.A.'s parking spot parks.

September 22 - Nate Berg

FEATURE

Out Of The Enclave: Latinos Adapt, And Adapt To, The American City

September 22 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

Sprawl Hell and Sprawl Heck

Last Friday, I was in two different suburban environments in Atlanta. Both are sprawl by any normal definition of the term - car-oriented environments where residential streets are separated from commerce, sidewalks are rare, and densities are low. But the two places are as different as sprawl and new urbanism.

September 21 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

My Pre-Professional Paradigm Shift

More than anything, I remember laughing at them. While I, as a bright-eyed undergrad, woke up at 11 to enjoy my very liberal arts classes in everything from gerontology to the physics of music, the business students would trudge out the door in suits and ties. For class. In late-summer Philly humidity. Eighteen years old and already soulless pre-professional slaves. Poor bastards, I thought. Now that I’m in graduate school, two things keep the schadenfreude at bay as Wall Street drowns in its own excesses. One, karma’s a bitch. And two, as a soon-to-be planner, I’m quickly realizing I’ve become one of them.

September 17 - Jeffrey Barg

BLOG POST

Testing Vancouver's Urbanism by Pedal and Foot

I occasionally get accused locally of being too much of a "booster" for Vancouver's success and reputation in city-building and urban design. Although I usually tend to mix in a healthy dose of "constructive candour" on how we need to improve, if there's truth to this accusation, I'd say I come by it honestly. First off, I've been an admirer and careful student of the Vancouver approach to urbanism, as imperfect as it might still be, long before I arrived in the City as Director.

September 16 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

post-Starbucks planning

Starbucks stores have seen a lot of protests. Due to its international brand recognition, the chain became an easy mark for activists looking to draw media attention to concerns from <a href="http://www.dailyprincetonian.com/archives/2002/09/30/news/5504.shtml">genetic engineering</a> to <a href="http://www.iww.org/en/node/4267">union busting</a>, from <a href="http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16692792/">store placements in historically sensitive locations</a> to <a href="http://laughingsquid.com/reverend-billy-arrested-at-astor-place-starbucks/">the company’s opposition to Ethiopia’s application to trademark three types of coffee</a>.

September 16 - Jess Zimbabwe