Exclusives
BLOG POST
Physical Effects Of The Declining Housing Market
This week, the <em>Economist</em>’s cover story, "The trouble with the housing market," details the downward-spiraling "subprime" mortgage market and its potential effects on the U.S. economy.<span> </span>The collapsing market certainly poses problems to Wall Street traders and taxpayers in general, but what about the physical toll it's taking on our cities?<span> </span>Abandoned, foreclosed homes now increasingly dot the nation's inner ring suburbs, helping spread neighborhood decline out from inner cities, while developers build more homes farther into the urban periphery.
BLOG POST
What's In A Name?
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">How important are the names we use?<span> </span>As Shakespeare said, </font></font><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">"</font></font><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">What's in a <span>name</span>? That which we call a <span>rose</span> by <span>any</span> <span>other</span> name <span>would</span> <span>smell </span>as <span>sweet</span>."<span> </span>I’ve been struck by this thought recently as I’ve been considering the myriad of organizations and stakeholders trying to have their particular term for stormwater management techniques be more widely adopted in the nomenclature.<span> </span></font></font></p>
BLOG POST
'Historic', Not 'Hysterical': Preservation Goes Mainstream
<p><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'">Historic preservation still suffers from an image problem, even in the face of all available evidence.<span> </span>Some critics still have the misimpression that preservationists are fussy (even fusty) antiquarians.<span> </span>When I hear complaints about the requirements of historic review commissions, I’m amazed that the griping is often accompanied by a crack about the local “hysterical society.” <span> </span>Even the Wikipedia entry on “historic preservation” contains the passage, “‘historic preservation’ is sometimes referred to as ‘hysterical preservation’.”<span> </span>(And, of course, Wikipedia is ever-infallible).</span><span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'"> </spa
BLOG POST
Candor on Canadian Planning Departments and Planning Schools
<font face="Trebuchet MS"><p class="MsoNormal"><font size="3">Since this is my first blog, let me introduce myself. My name is Brent Toderian. In 2006 I was appointed the City of Vancouver, British Columbia’s Director of Planning. Before that I was the Manager of Centre City Planning and Design for the City of Calgary, Alberta. I am a founding member of the <em>Council for Canadian Urbanism (CanU)</em> which is discussed below. I look forward to your comments on this and future posts.</font></p>
BLOG POST
An Outbreak Of Beauty and Happiness?
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">In spite of my sense that we are heading pell mell into the gloom of global warming, catastrophic conflict and hopeless mediocrity, I’ve noticed a hopeful trend. Beauty and happiness have been rehabilitated from irrelevant to necessary.<span> </span>It may not be an avalanche, but proponents are showing up in unusual places: a book by an environmental conservationist, another by an historian philosopher, and a <em>Mother Jones</em> article about the economy.<span> </span>Can this portend a trend? </font></p>
BLOG POST
The Unified New Orleans Recovery Plan Nears Completion
<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt; text-align: justify" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">As I said in my last posting, the main, if not the only, topic of discussion in planning circles in New Orleans these days is recovery planning from Hurricane Katrina.<span> </span>A year and a half after the storm, we are getting close to having a recovery plan.<span> </span>In late January the Citywide Strategic Recovery and Rebuilding Plan, otherwise known as the “Unified New Orleans Plan” (UNOP), was presented to the New Orleans City Planning Commission (CPC), of which I am the Chair. The CPC has held several public hearings on the plan and we have at least one more scheduled.</font></p>
BLOG POST
Can Everything Be Green?
<p class="MsoNormal">As the current fascination with all things green grows with leaps and bounds, the question arises – are there any limits to what can be green? </p>
BLOG POST
Planimation
What better way to envision the future of a city than with a cartoon? <div> <br /> <br /> </div> <div> None, I say! </div> <div> <br />
BLOG POST
Blade Runner Watch: A New Sign on the Bay Bridge
<p><img src="/files/u10403/IMG_0039.jpg" alt="" width="266" height="262" align="left" />I drive the Bay Bridge just about every work day. I'm not proud of this fact. I never expected to be one of those dreaded suburban commuters, living off urban sprawl, the sole occupant of a compact car inching through rush hour traffic twice a day.</p><p>So sue me. Or better yet, give me enough money to afford a house in San Francisco. Until then, Berkeley it is.</p><p>But on my morning drive last week I saw a new feature amid the landscape of cargo containers that borders the southern side of the Bay Bridge toll plaza—that's on the East Bay side. It was a new billboard, depicted above. I have no idea how it works. But damn, is it bright. It's an active surface—it changes, presumably according to programming, cycling through a bunch of different ads. So what? Well, for one thing, it's the biggest, brightest one of these kind of signs I've ever seen, high resolution and bright enough to be seen in stark California sunlight. And second, it's just another step in the Blade Runnerfication of our cities.</p><p>Not that there's anything wrong with that. More after the jump.</p>
FEATURE
Removing Urban Freeways
As part of our effort to slow global warming, we should be correcting one of the great errors in the history of American city planning: the post-war binge of urban freeway building.
BLOG POST
If Paul Davidoff has Email Should I Write?
<p class="MsoNormal"><strong>Information Strategies for Answering Fundamental Planning Questions</strong></p> <p class="MsoNormal">In universities in the northern hemisphere, April and May are months for completing work and moving closer to graduation. Assignments are due. Exams are looming. Students are too tired to write well and professors are too tired to notice. In the crunch for time, enterprising students look to the power of new information and communication technologies to reach out beyond their harried contexts to experts who can help them answer important questions. If Paul Davidoff (now dead) had email, they reason, he would have been happy to respond.</p>
BLOG POST
Tunnel Vision: Has Tysons Missed the Train?
<div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"> </div><div class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: Helvetica" class="Apple-style-span">First, let me begin by introducing myself. I am Parris Glendening, and I serve as the president of the Smart Growth Leadership Institute in Washington, D.C., which is part of Smart Growth America. From 1995-2003, I was Governor of Maryland, and for more than 20 years before that I served at various levels of local and county government. I am excited about being part of the network of contributors here at Planetizen and participating in the discussion.<br />---<br /><br />In 1956 Pres. Dwight Eisenhower shepherded the Interstate Highway into existence, fulfilling a decades-long aspiration to link the nation with highways that could move both people and materiel as efficiently as those he had seen in Germany. Later, he would warn us against the military-industrial complex, but with a bit more foresight he might have warned against the asphalt-industrial complex, as well.
BLOG POST
Starchitecture is not the enemy...
<p>I'm glad this blog to date has provided fertile ground both to challenge planning as a profession as well as to compliment planning when it happens to do something worthy. In this spirit, I'd like to irritate many of my colleagues out there and definitively say that starchitects are not the problem. </p><p>I wish I could play the role of <a href="http://newstandardnews.net/content/fourthcolumn/?itemid=4244">Stephen Colbert</a> and ridiculously declare the end to this debate, but alas, I do not have the television airtime (or wit) to make this point as effectively as I would like. This forum will have to do.</p>
BLOG POST
Spanish-style Waterfront Home On a Private Island: $28
<p><img src="/files/u4/sl-spanish-sm.jpg" alt="Spanish-style home at Darrow Estates (small)" title="Spanish-style home at Darrow Estates (small)" hspace="5" vspace="5" width="200" height="128" align="left" />I'm making a <strong>prediction</strong>: While the real estate market in RL (real life) is cooling off, the<strong> real estate market in Second Life</strong> (SL) is heating up.<br /><br />I was recently contacted via IM (instant message) by Elliot Eldrich. I interviewed Elliot several months ago for a feature-length article about urban planning in Second Life. (The article appeared in the January, 2007 issue of the American Planning Association's <em>Planning</em> magazine, but is now also <a href="http://www.urbaninsight.com/virtual/2ndlife0307.html">available online</a>.)</p>
BLOG POST
Planning And The Scourge Of The Collective Action Problem
<p class="MsoNormal">In its most forward attempt to ensnare the fabled “discretionary rider,” my local transit agency recently set out handsome billboards touting the pleasures of the bus and the miseries of driving alone. They employed pithy admonishments and graphics such as a hand cuffed to a gas pump and a merry executive knitting and purling his way to the office. <br />
BLOG POST
A Big City Mayor Makes a Splash!
Big city mayors (and even some smaller city leaders) are making a big splash! LA’s Antonio Villaraigosa is dealing with crime; Chicago’s Richard Daley is turning that dusty city green; Philadelphia’s John Street has agreed to an important re-thinking of seven miles of highly developable waterfront; Miami’s Manny Diaz is working closely with Donna Shalala, President, University of Miami, to harness anchor-institution strength to downtown development. And Michael Bloomberg became a winner when he took on New York City’s school system. But of equal note is his soon-to-be announced PlaNYC, a strategic vision for 2030.<br />
BLOG POST
The Moses Shows
<p><img src="/files/u10403/images.jpg" alt="" hspace="10" width="150" height="113" align="left" />Anyone seen any of the <a href="http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/466.html">three</a> <a href="http://www.mcny.org/exhibitions/current/466.html">museum</a> <a href="http://www.learn.columbia.edu/moses/">shows</a> in New York on Robert Moses, the colossus of urban planning? I myself have not, seeing as how I live 3,000 miles away from them. To recap: highly controversial figure, built many public works from the 1920s through the 1960s, in the end wanted to destroy neighborhoods to build freeways, ultimately brought low by grassroots organizing and the sainted Jane Jacobs via her book <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Death-Life-Great-American-Cities/dp/0375508732/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/105-3662130-2734002?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1173894137&sr=8-1"><em>The Death and Life of Great American Cities</em></a>.</p><p>The exhibits have gotten a lot of ink in the New York press and the planning press. An excerpt from Ada Louise Huxtable's review in the <em>Wall Street Journal</em> today, and other rantings, after the jump.</p>
BLOG POST
What We Talk About When We Talk About 11th-Hour Preservation
My friend Wes was talking about a burger joint. Wes is from Texas, so sometimes that gives him the right. <div> <br /> <div> <br /> <div> The Beef Burger Barrel, a barrel-shaped hunk of roadside architecture in Amarillo, <a href="http://www.preservationnation.org/magazine/2007/todays-news-2007/60-year-old-texas-eatery.html">closed last month</a> after 60-odd years of hamburger heaven. </div> <div> <br /> </div> <div> <br /> </div> <div> "It wasn't beloved until everyone heard it was closing," Wes told me. The Barrel started out selling A&W root beer on Route 66 in the 1930s and was rolled later to a less-traveled part of town. Now locals are trying to find a way to reopen Amarillo's quirkiest building. </div> <div> <br /> </div> <div>
BLOG POST
The New Muni Line in San Fran
<p><img src="/files/u10403/T3logo.gif" alt="" width="369" height="72" align="top" /></p><p>The family and I took a recreational ride on the newest light rail line in San Francisco today, the Muni train known as the T. It runs along the city's east-west spine, Market St., and then cuts south along the water of the bay, then inland and way, way south down Third Street—from the city's hottest under-construction neighborhood through the worst ghetto.</p><p>As such, it's an interesting new ride in San Francisco. Some photos and observations after the jump.</p>
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions
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