Exclusives

BLOG POST

A Guide to Taser-Free Public Meetings

We all saw it on the Internet—the fellow at a public meeting being hauled away from the microphone before getting wrestled to the floor and tasered during a Q&A with John Kerry. Fortunately, silencing argumentative speakers with a taser is not a common occurrence at most public meetings. While I might confess that there have been meetings where, in retrospect, one might have secretly wished one was armed with a stun gun, facilitators generally try to avoid confrontation. Yet there’s no denying that sometimes people show up at public meetings looking for a fight, begging for outrage, and hoping to irritate and inflame.

September 27 - Barbara Faga

BLOG POST

Our collective identity crisis

Since making the switch from architecture to planning / urban design, I’ve been fascinated by the continuing dialogue that surrounds what we do to explain… what we do. There is less emphasis on this dialogue in architecture of course as the tacit assumption is that architects build. (I would say not all great architects need to build but this is a debate for a different setting.) What did often emerge in architecture was the common concern that “design” is not valued to the degree that it should. And why not? Architects spend anywhere from 5-6 years in school the majority of which is spent in studio learning how to design. Who wants to then enter the profession feeling like their education mis-led them?

September 25 - Scott Page

BLOG POST

How Much Can You Pay? A New Criterion for Stormwater Management

What if the utility company asked you how much you made when you called to start service in a new home? What if they wanted this information to tie your bill to your salary and not to how much gas, electricity or water you used? Would that seem fair? That’s how some communities are treating developers when determining how much stormwater they should be required to manage. But regulations that link stormwater standards to the developer’s ability to pay are neither fair nor efficient. Environmental regulations and their costs should be directly linked to the impact on the environment, not to profit margins.

September 25 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

So You Want to Change the World, Part 2: Finding the Right Planning Program

Many students choose planning over business school because they want to serve the public and change the world. However, saving the world is a complicated task. What kind of school will prepare you? As in many parts of life there isn’t a simple answer but a few key points can help frame your search. And remember, you don’t need to answer all these questions before you apply—get a good enough list and then investigate them some more once you have real offers.

September 24 - Ann Forsyth

FEATURE

Modernism In Fragments

Nathan Glazer's From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City reveals how this influential social movement's good intentions shaped the look of the 20th century.

September 24 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

Too bountiful a crop of farmers' markets?

The number of farmers’ markets has grown dramatically in the US over the past few years. The number increased by seven percent from 2005-2006 on top of the incredible 79 percent increase from 1994 to 2002. People love the festive atmosphere, the ability to meet the people who grow their food and the connection to the earth this experience provides, and the quality and freshness of the produce. Many patrons value local farmers’ markets as a means of lessening their impact on the earth by allowing them to eat more locally. Yet in some places, farmers are abandoning the markets. They cite a number of reasons, including:

September 23 - Lisa Feldstein

BLOG POST

After revisiting Moses, New York turns again to Jane Jacobs

Now it’s Jane’s turn.

September 22 - Anthony Flint

BLOG POST

A Live Post From The 2007 Ohio Planning Conference

I'm posting this blog entry live in front of a panel session of approximately 200 participants at the <a href="http://www.ohioplanning.org/conference/">2007 Ohio Planning Conference</a> at the Columbus Conference Center to demonstrate, live, how one posts to a blog. <img src="/files/u4/columbus-conf-ctr.jpg" alt="Columbus Conference Center in walkable downtown Columbus" title="Columbus Conference Center in walkable downtown Columbus" hspace="4" vspace="4" width="400" height="266" align="right" />I'm presenting on "Web 2.0 Tools to Communicate Planning Ideas". Here's the pitch:

September 21 - Chris Steins

FEATURE

Rolling Out A New Park, Literally!

National Park(ing) Day aims to show people how space traditionally reserved for cars could be turned into useable public space.

September 20 - Christian Peralta

BLOG POST

New York Gets Cell Phone Service in the Subways... Sort of... Someday Soon...

It's the talk of the town today. The Metropolitan Transit Authority, after years of dithering has finally signed a contract to build out a shared cell phone infrastructure inside the underground portions of the subway system. Sort of. According to the <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/09/20/nyregion/20cellphone.html">New York Times</a>, "[t]he cellphone network will start in six downtown Manhattan stations in two years. Once it is shown to be working properly, Transit Wireless will have four more years to outfit the rest of the underground stations." Thats six years to completion, folks. Awesome.

September 20 - Anthony Townsend

BLOG POST

Risky Business

With cities developing today at a rate that is outpacing architects’ and planners’ efforts to shape them, there is no longer sufficient time to plan. As a result, architecture’s role in the city has fundamentally changed from that of designing buildings which both engage and are a product of their context, to that of creating commodified experiences--like everything else, tied first and foremost to speculation in future identity, and real estate values.

September 18 - Roger Sherman

BLOG POST

A Good Wall Is Hard to Find

It's like something out of a Flannery O'Connor story. The setting is the small town of Natchez, Miss., which was built on an unstable, water-soluble bluff. An entire street, Clifton Avenue, collapsed about 20 years ago. Swallowed up. A few years back—in 1995, to be exact, Sen. Trent Lott urged Congress to shore up the bluff to save not just people—two women died in a 1980 street collapse—but "to protect these historically significant properties and to prevent potential loss of lives," as he put it.

September 18 - Margaret Foster

FEATURE

When A McMansion Isn't Large Enough

With Americans living in ever larger homes, the growth of the self storage industry demonstrates the irony of an American solution to an American problem -- overabundance.

September 17 - Sriram Khe

BLOG POST

Las Vegas' Hidden Monorail

<img src="/files/u4/lvmonorail2.jpg" border="0" alt="Los Vegas Monorail" title="Los Vegas Monorail" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="362" height="362" align="right" />I was visiting Las Vegas for a wedding and, rather than blow my salary on the blackjack table, I was eager to try the new <a href="http://www.lvmonorail.com/">Las Vegas Monorail</a>. As the world's only city-scale example of a technology that was once envisioned as the future of mass transit, the Las Vegas Monorail has seven stops along a route that roughly parallels Las Vegas Strip, with stations connected to major hotels.

September 16 - Chris Steins

BLOG POST

The Politics of NIMBY

The following came through on a planning list serve, and I thought it raised several very provocative points that speak to the core of how we plan in the U.S. <blockquote>“I heard, though I cannot remember the source, of a municipality that countered predictable neighborhood opposition to a higher density TOD proposal by broadening the review process to the whole community. I believe that the actual adjacent property owners were deemed to have a conflict of interest: i.e. their backyard versus overall better transit and housing opportunities for the entire town.

September 14 - Samuel Staley

BLOG POST

Won't You Conserve? Pretty Please?

During my commute this morning, one of the segments on the piped-in TV news that repeats endlessly on the bus mentioned that the City of Long Beach, California, had decided put new water restrictions in effect due to an impending water shortage. The city is advising residents to refrain from watering their lawns and taking long showers – while urging restaurants to only serve water to diners who request it. According to the <a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-water14sep14,0,3097443.story?coll=la-home-center">Los Angeles Times story</a> on the new restrictions, residents and businesses who don’t heed the call to conserve will receive a warning from officials, while repeat offenders may face a fine.

September 14 - Christian Madera

FEATURE

Building Connections

One citizen planner's journey across the United States provides a glimpse at how stronger connections between people and places can create better communities.

September 10 - Wayne Senville

BLOG POST

Cycling The Contours of Miami

<font face="georgia, bookman old style, palatino linotype, book antiqua, palatino, trebuchet ms, helvetica, garamond, sans-serif, arial, verdana, avante garde, century gothic, comic sans ms, times, times new roman, serif"> It is by riding a bicycle that you learn the contours of a country best, since you have to sweat up the hills and coast down them. Thus you remember them as they actually are, while in a motor car only a high hill impresses you, and you have no such accurate remembrance of country you have driven through as you gain by riding a bicycle. ~Ernest Hemingway

September 9 - Mike Lydon

BLOG POST

Terrorism, Gay Marriage, and...Land Use(!)

This week <a href="http://salon.com" target="_blank">Salon.com</a> published a <a href="http://www.salon.com/news/feature/2007/09/03/richardson_qa/index.html?source=rss&aim=yahoo-salon" target="_blank">remarkable interview</a> with a contender for the White House. The candidate didn't offer the solution to stabilizing Iraq, strengthening the economy, or bringing down the price of a six-pack (at least not directly), but for the first time in the history of American campaigning that I'm aware of, he referred to the issue of "land use."

September 6 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

Hybrid Nation?

My Toyota Prius just turned 100,000. That’s quite a milestone for a car and it may be a harbinger of things to come. Many planners are betting so-called “peak oil” will undermine our car culture because we won’t have the fuel to feed them. The history of my Prius suggests otherwise.

September 5 - Samuel Staley