Exclusives

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Building Green in Los Angeles

Last Tuesday was a big day for me and an even bigger Earth Day for the City of Los Angeles. After 18 months of meetings, focus groups, workshops, conference calls, briefings, and a lot of collective putting together of heads the City Council unanimously passed a landmark green building ordinance. Three hours later it was signed into law by the Mayor.

April 29 - Walker Wells

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The Case for Density in Sustainable Cities

One of the many signs that green development and design is reaching a tipping point toward becoming business-as-usual, is the quantity of articles and writings on the subject in what might be considered "mainstream" land development publications. Case-in-point is the current Issue of Urban Land, the Green issue. This attention is a good thing, despite the growing need to ensure that developments that play the green card, truly do walk the talk.

April 28 - Brent Toderian

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Live From Vegas: Millennial Planners, Activist Planners, & The CE Soap Opera

<img src="/files/u4/20080428-apa-0667.jpg" alt="Las Vegas Strip" title="Las Vegas Strip" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="320" height="240" align="right" /> I'm at the Paris Hotel on the Vegas strip for the 100th annual American Planning Association (APA) <a href="http://www.planning.org/nationalconference/">conference</a>, which started Saturday, and runs through Thursday, May 1. The conference offers 300 sessions and 60 mobile workshops to the approximately 5,000 participants. And it's going to be a crowded week, if the 30-minute line for coffee this morning in the Paris boulangerie is any indication. Infrastructure matters; Planners should be politically active.

April 28 - Chris Steins

FEATURE

A Reminder to the City: Neighborhoods Are Building Blocks of Civic Life

Neighborhoods -- their habits, their participants, and their values -- are what create and define value in a city and in a home. Cities need to embrace this fact if they want to preserve values and retain residents.

April 28 - Charles Buki

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Bandwidth-Oriented Development

<img src="/files/u4/20080425-cable-map.png" alt="Submarine Cable Map, courtesty of Telegeography (http://www.telegeograph.com)" title="Submarine Cable Map, courtesty of Telegeography (http://www.telegeograph.com)" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="243" height="179" align="right" />So how do you permit and build a 4,000-mile undersea communication cable system? And why do we care?

April 26 - Chris Steins

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Insuring Good Cities, One Mile At A Time

<div> I once was consigned to a table full of business school students at a land-use conference at UCLA. Trying to be a good sport, I offered the only idea that I'd ever had about business: car insurance charged according to miles driven. I posited that since risk and mileage were more or less correlated, it only made sense that people who drove more and incurred more risk should pay more. <img src="/files/u1299/Karl_Marx.jpg" width="120" height="130" align="right" /> My tablemates stared back at me as if I had just issued a rousing recitation of Das Kapital.

April 23 - Josh Stephens

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The Real Meaning Of The "American Dream"

Both supporters and opponents of the sprawl status quo often refer to suburbia as “The American Dream.” One sprawl-defending organization even calls itself “The American Dream Coalition.”

April 23 - Michael Lewyn

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The Link between Density and Affordability

Since its launch, one of the three primary goals of Vancouver's <a href="http://www.vancouver-ecodensity.ca/">EcoDensity Initiative</a> has been to use density, design and land use to strategically assist with the City's growing challenges around affordability. Over the course of the long public dialogue, we've heard many comments and questions on the relationships between density, supply, type of housing and affordability, and it’s been a very hot topic.

April 22 - Brent Toderian

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Is Baghdad Going Feral?

One of the most influential pieces of contemporary urban theory I've ever read was a short monograph by Richard Norton entitled "Feral Cities", which <a href="http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0JIW/is_4_56/ai_110458726">appeared in the Naval War College Review</a> in 2003. Norton described feral cities thusly: "Imagine a great metropolis covering hundreds of square miles. Once a vital component in a national economy, this sprawling urban environment is now a vast collection of blighted buildings, an immense petri dish of both ancient and new diseases, a territory where the rule of law has long been replaced by near anarchy in which the only security available is that which is attained through brute power."

April 22 - Anthony Townsend

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Planning Juno

Many viewers may not fully appreciate movies as a visual story-telling medium, but that fact came home to me dramatically the other night while watching “<a href="http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0467406/">Juno</a>,” the off beat, smart and funny film that just snagged a best screenplay Oscar. The deliberate use of architecture and public spaces, in particular, was quite effective although you probably won’t find these references in plot summaries or synopses.

April 21 - Samuel Staley

FEATURE

Will the American Institute of Certified Planners Live By the Principles it Promotes?

The continuing education program of the American Planning Association's American Institute of Certified Planners has stirred much controversy amongst members, educators and officials. Many agree the system's flaws need to be addressed. But where is the public discussion?

April 21 - Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

BLOG POST

Best Ideas of the Week

From public transit to public parks to public space, this past week brought a lot of interesting and innovative ideas in the world of urban planning.

April 18 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

On Pride

Cities are sized-up, measured and analyzed in countless ways. The Economist uses statistics to indicate how New York’s financial sector is faring against its London counterpart. Richard Florida measures the extant of the creative class. Allan Jacobs carefully records intersection densities and Jan Gehl simply counts pedestrians. Some, like Peter Calthorpe, go beyond the city line and take stock of the whole region.

April 17 - Mike Lydon

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Media Density Discussions are Needed for Cities

Can any North American city have a meaningful public discussion about sustainability, about its "green-ness" or ecological footprint, without having the challenging but necessary public discussion about the city's density? Many are still trying to. Many freely trumpet smart growth and sustainability without the tension and trouble that comes with discussing the "d-word" openly, and thus avoid the necessary heavy-lifting. Few politicians, and embarrassingly not enough city planners, are willing to tackle the density issue publicly, as it is still what Sustainable Urbanism author Douglas Farr calls the "3rd rail" of sustainable city building.

April 16 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

Time for Change? Skip the Change, I’ll Take Dollars!

I’ve been torn lately between two contradictory perspectives on the state of the country as it relates to providing transportation infrastructure and service.

April 16 - Steven Polzin

FEATURE

The United States of Gordon Gekkos?

The current housing crisis in America is a product of greed -- not just the greed of homebuilders and mortgage lenders, but also the greed of consumers. Could planners have done more to prevent this greed from crashing the market?

April 14 - Sriram Khé, PhD

FEATURE

Black-Tie Optional: 'Stepsister' Cities Flourish in the Shadows

Say you're a big city. But right next door is an even bigger big city. What do you do to stand out? Josh Stephens explores the unique plight of America's so-called stepsister cities.

April 14 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

A Next Level of Urban Achievement in Vancouver?

Long before I arrived here, I've been a fan and student of Vancouver city-building.

April 9 - Brent Toderian

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Why Liability Concerns Should Not Prevent Pedestrian-Friendly Streets

American commercial streets are often designed almost exclusively for cars; streets are often as many as eight or ten lanes wide, lengthening pedestrian trips and encouraging motorists to drive at speeds unsafe for pedestrians.

April 8 - Michael Lewyn

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