Exclusives

BLOG POST

Reflecting on Planning and the Planet: Summer Readings that Help You Think

Lastmonth’s blog outlined how to find books recommended by many planners—important,classic, or accessible. However,summer is also a time to push your viewpoint a bit further. For those wantingreadings that might push you tothink differently about planning, the following lists are useful startingpoints. (And a note to planners—we need more of these lists reflecting different placesand people and issues!)

June 29 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

A Journalistic View of Cities

I was reading the New York Times Magazine special architecture issue a few weeks ago when something jumped out at me. On the intro page to the issue of the “Mega-Megalopolis” one of the by-line says “How does an architect plan for a city with no history? Or a city that just keeps growing?” Interesting questions particularly given the fact that to charge architects with the task of planning our cities is affording too much power to a profession that simply doesn’t have it.

June 26 - Scott Page

BLOG POST

Suburbia During the Crash

Maybe it's the rain in New York today, but I'm gloomy. So while<a href="http://www.iftf.org/node/2068"> China collapses</a>, it looks like the mobility-land use solution embodied in many of America's newer suburbs seems to be unravelling due to high oil prices. The IHT reports:

June 26 - Anthony Townsend

BLOG POST

Why Transit is an 'Inferior Good'

In my last post, I suggested that transit’s “resurgence” is, ultimately, much ado about nothing. Transit’s increased ridership, while important for transit managers, will do little to change fundamental travel patterns of US urban areas.

June 25 - Samuel Staley

BLOG POST

The Quest for Energy: The Input/Output Problem

In August of 2006, an unknown Irish company called Steorn took out a full-page ad in The Economist to announce that they had created a magnetic technology that produced more energy than it used- essentially, a perpetual motion machine, the Holy Grail of energy.

June 24 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

Learning from exam schools

Yesterday’s Washington Post contained <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/06/23/AR2008062300297.html?hpid=news-col-blog">a list of elite public schools</a>- schools where the average student SAT is over 1300. Since suburban schools generally have better reputations than urban schools, one might expect that all the schools on the list would be in prestigious suburban school districts. But in fact, this is not the case. Three New York City schools (Stuyvestant, Hunter College, Bronx High) and one school near downtown Richmond (Maggie Walker) are on the high-SAT list- despite the fact that the New York City and Richmond school districts, like nearly all urban school districts, have mediocre reputations.

June 24 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

Scooting in a City Built for Cars

Rising gas prices and thickening traffic congestion make small, fuel-efficient scooters seem like a great way to get around. But on roads built mainly for speeding cars, scooting can be scary. Occasional scooter-rider Pam Diaz argues it shouldn't be.

June 23 - Pam Diaz

BLOG POST

Act, React, Repeat

Adaptation is a way of life. But we humans have been building our habitats and cities in pursuit of permanence. This is an unreachable goal. Making our cities and communities and lifestyles adapt to outside influences is typically an afterthought. We do tend to react, and we often react very effectively. But solving problems before they happen has never been a strong suit when it comes to urban development. This is especially true with regard to our impacts on the environment. A recent and bizarre example illustrates this point.

June 19 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

EcoDensity Approved in Vancouver

After two years of intensive dialogue and debate, education (in all directions) and idea-development, Vancouver's concept of EcoDensity has been translated into Council-approved policy and actions. In past posts I've outlined aspects and steps of this challenging process, which has been tackling head-on what many consider the most controversial but critical aspect of urban sustainability, "density done well".

June 16 - Brent Toderian

FEATURE

Mixed-Use Isn't Enough: 'Omni-Use' Cores Enliven the Metropolis

June 16 - Keith Ray

BLOG POST

Learning from my suburb

For nearly all of my adult life, I have lived in small towns or urban neighborhoods. But for the past two years, I have lived in sprawl. When I moved to Jacksonville two years ago, I moved to Mandarin, a basically suburban neighborhood about nine miles from downtown. As I looked for apartments in 2006, I noticed that in many ways, Mandarin is typical sprawl: our major commercial street (San Jose Boulevard) is as many as eight lanes in some places, and even most apartments are separated from San Jose’s commerce. [See http://atlantaphotos.fotopic.net/c872477.html for my photos of Mandarin and other Jacksonville neighborhoods.] I thought Mandarin would be a typical suburb: homogenously white and upper-middle class.

June 11 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Are transit ridership numbers more pomp than substance?

The <a href="http://www.apta.com/">American Public Transit Association</a> reports that <a href="http://www.apta.com/media/releases/080602_ridership_report.cfm">transit ridership climbed to 10.3 billion trips during the first quarter of 2008</a>, the “highest number of trips taken in fifty years.” That represents a 3.3 percent increase overall over the previous year while vehicle miles traveled, a measure of demand for car travel, fell by 2.3 percent, they observe.

June 11 - Samuel Staley

FEATURE

Planetizen Turns 8: A Look Back

June 9 - The Planetizen Team

BLOG POST

On Bicyclists

There are three types of bicyclists: Advanced Bicyclists, Intermediate Bicyclists and Beginner Bicyclists. We need to plan and build facilities to accommodate all of them. Those cities that do are experiencing ridership numbers far above the national average. <img src="/files/u405/Advanced_Bicyclist_2.jpg" width="350" height="233" />

June 8 - Mike Lydon

BLOG POST

Getting the Transportation Infrastructure We Need

Bank, Commission, Capital Budget or Business as Usual? There's a growing consensus the U.S. needs to invest more in our infrastructure, especially our transportation infrastructure. Too many roads and bridges are in poor repair, and congestion is slowing the economy of many cities. High gas prices has only added to intense interest nationwide for new and enhanced public transportation. With the expiration of the SAFETEA-LU legislation, next year Congress has the opportunity to revise the policies guiding investment in this critical infrastructure. Unfortunately, after the interstate highway system, the federal role in transportation infrastructure is mostly known for its excessive pork barrel spending (bridges to nowhere) and limited funds and Byzantine policies restricting mass transit investment. How should we evaluate the various proposals to reform federal policy? The Urban Land Institute (where I am working this summer) proposed an 8-point "action agenda" for infrastructure in their second-annual <a href="http://www.uli.org/AM/Template.cfm?Section=Home&CONTENTID=125957&TEMPLATE=/CM/ContentDisplay. cfm">infrastructure report</a>. The agenda is a statement of principles that should guide investments. It includes: build a vision for the community, invest strategically in coordination with land use, fix and maintain first, reduce driving, couple land use decisions with water availability, break down government "silos," cut pork barrel spending and support smart growth, keep score and keep governments accountable. Taking those principles as advice, let's take a look at what has been proposed.

June 6 - Robert Goodspeed

BLOG POST

Watch for Desire Paths

My graduate school education left me with a lot of general ideas and a handful of specific ones. One that stuck with me is a concept from landscape architecture: the desire path. Technically, the term means a path where there isn't supposed to be one, a trail of wear and tear that wasn't planned.

June 2 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

Where's the planning in metropolitan transportation planning?

Randal O’Toole’s recent policy study from the Cato Institute, “<a href="http://www.cato.org/pub_display.php?pub_id=9420">Roadmap to Gridlock</a>” is s worthy read for all professional planners, no matter what their ideological or professional stripe. Undoubtedly, most planners probably consider someone who maintains a blog called the “<a href="http://www.ti.org/antiplanner/">Antiplanner</a>” more of a bomb thrower than a serious policy analyst. But this dismissive attitude throws an awful lot of good work by the road side, and a good example of that is O’Toole’s “Roadmap to Gridlock.”

May 30 - Samuel Staley

BLOG POST

Gas Prices Up a Nickel, It Must be Friday

America is facing more than just gasoline price inflation. The contemporary media is overwhelmed with stories on the impacts of higher fuel prices. The fingers are pointing in every direction. Planners are proposing everything from 50 year transit plans to build a handful of rail lines to forecasting a radical transformation of urban form and travel behavior. After exhaustive research to understand consumer responses to higher energy prices the analysis is complete and the results are in.

May 30 - Steven Polzin

BLOG POST

How to teach about sprawl

Today, I turned in my grades for my seminar on "Sprawl and the Law." It occurred to me that some readers of this blog might be academics, and might be interested on how one can teach a course on sprawl. I began by defining the issue. As I pointed out in an earlier post (at <a href="/node/31063)">http://www.planetizen.com/node/31063)</a> the term "sprawl" has two common meanings: where we grow (city or suburb) and how we grow (pedestrian-friendly or automobile-dependent). Policies that affect the first type of "sprawl" need not affect the second (and vice versa).

May 28 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Is Vancouver a 'World Class City?' (And Is It Making Us Too Expensive?)

In his annual tour-de-force presentation on the state of Vancouver's housing market recently, marketing guru Bob Rennie (referred to often as Canada's "condo king", and thus often accused of having a vested interest in a continued strong market for condos here in Vancouver) had some new, controversial points that are still being debated locally. Perhaps the most provocative was his call to action for the development industry to get back into building housing that is more affordable to ordinary Vancouverites (as opposed to being geared to the international market - his comment was that we know how to serve that world market, now we need to show that we can serve the local market better, or words to that effect). Given that he included details like "capping developer profit at 10%", I found his comments pretty brave in front of an audience of 700+ developers and clients.

May 28 - Brent Toderian