Exclusives
FEATURE
The City Where Free Buses Changed Everything
New York’s new mayor Zohran Mamdani has said he’ll make every bus free to ride. This French city did just that — and is reaping the rewards.
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Mess Might Just be the Secret Weapon That Planners Forgot
In “Messy Cities: Why We Can’t Plan Everything” 43 writers from around the world sing the praises the gentle chaos that exemplifies a thriving metropolis.
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Reclaiming Transportation as a Place of Resistance
The systems that move us are not neutral — and we don’t have to pretend like they are.
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Transit Scheduling 101: Developing A Runtime
Runtime (n) - The time required for the transit vehicle to travel from one end of the line to the other. We'll take a deeper look at runtimes in this installment of Transit Scheduling 101!
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Paradise Lost, Paradise Found: Planning for People Rather Than Cars in Hawai'i
With better planning Honolulu can become an active travel paradise. Replace car sewers with pedestrian promenades, and build urban villages where it is easy to get around without driving.
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Republicans are Pushing to Make the American Community Survey Voluntary. History Shows That’s a Death Sentence for Data.
A voluntary survey will make demographic data “less accurate, less available, and less useful” — and for some rural communities, “a total blackout.”
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January Must-Reads: Top 10 Articles From Last Month
New York and New Jersey enact new tenant protections, Brightline West announces an opening date, and could a Nevada law have killed tens of thousands of trees?
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Jim Crow Robbed America of Public Pools. It’s Time to get Them Back.
Disparity amongst who can and can’t swim in America isn’t an accident — and it's deadly. Let’s reclaim the community pool as an essential public space.
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Tracing the Destruction of the Highway Baltimore Never Built
In “Road to Nowhere: How a Highway Map Wrecked Baltimore,” historian Emily Lieb demonstrates how the mere threat of a highway project, combined with systemic redlining and predatory real estate practices, can dismantle a community just as effectively as physical construction can.
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Transit Scheduling 101: Scheduling Math ➗✖️
Frequency, runtime, layover, cycle time, and how they all relate to determine how much transit service costs to operate — all in this installment of Transit Scheduling 101!
FEATURE
Publishing for Planners: A New Era for Island Press
As the legendary legacy publisher transitions into a new life phase, publisher Heather Boyer and senior editor Stacy Eisenstark reflect on the past and the future of creating books for planners.
FEATURE
Planning Trends for 2026: States and Cities Take Initiative, Passenger Rail Gains Steam, and the Costs of AI Revealed
With federal funding for everything from transportation projects to housing assistance under threat, city and state governments are poised to take a stronger role in building strong, resilient local economies and public services.
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The Superstar Metro Argument... And Why It Fails
One argument against solving the housing shortage in large, expensive cities is that growth in those cities will drain people and wealth from declining areas. Data does not agree.
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A Classic Revived, and More Important Than Ever
In “Livable Streets 2.0.” Donald Appleyard’s son, Bruce Appleyard, builds on his father’s seminal work and examines what it means today in an age of autonomous vehicles, modern policing technology, “20 is Plenty” and more.
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What do We Want, Speed or Affordability?
Conventional planning assumes that travellers want to save time, but evidence indicates that they usually prefer to save money. How can planning better reflect these preferences?
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Transit Scheduling 101 — What is Transit Scheduling?
When a 10 minute change in layover can cost your system 33% more to run the same route, the nuts and bolts of good scheduling start looking darn sexy.
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We are Perfectly Poised for Another Robert Moses
When “America is Building Again” while decentering equity, the ghost of Robert Moses haunts us.
FEATURE
Meet our new (Proudly Gen Z!) Transportation Columnist!
In a new monthly column, Kristina Curtiss will “nerd out” (her words, not ours) on transportation system safety, active transportation planning, sustainability — and how it all hangs together.
City of Rosemead
Rutgers University, Edward J. Bloustein School of Planning and Public Policy
One Hundred Miles
Hunter College, City University of New York (CUNY)
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
City of Cambridge
Montrose County
The Pocatello Development Authority
FREE Course: Walkable City 1: Why Walkability?
After describing his path towards focusing on walkability as the essence of good planning, Jeff Speck marches through his five principal reasons for making more walkable places.
Reinventing Malls: Planning Alchemy—Turning Gray Fields Into Gold
The course focuses on the opportunities and imperatives that shape reinvention of mall sites.
