Exclusives

BLOG POST

The End of Exurbia? Not Yet

<p> After the Census Bureau released population estimates showing that core counties were (at least in some metro areas) growing faster than exurban counties, the media was full of headlines about this alleged trend.  An extreme example came from the Washington Post: &quot;An end to America&#39;s exurbia?&quot; (1) </p>

April 16 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Sanitary City vs. Sustainable City - Who Wins, Who Loses?

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April 15 - Walker Wells

BLOG POST

City Planning LOLCATS

<p> APA’s <a href="http://www.planning.org/conference/program/search/activity.htm?ActivityID=157536" target="_blank">Fast, Funny, and Passionate</a> sessions at the national American Planning Association conferences are designed to entertain and educate. I’m serving as the moderator and a speaker at the Sunday morning session. My talk is called “Pin, Post, and Push to Promote Planning.” The purpose is to share lessons about how planners can use social media to promote planning. <br />

April 13 - Jennifer Evans-Cowley

FEATURE

Opening Access to Scenario Planning Tools

April 13 - Anthony Flint

BLOG POST

Youth and the Greatest Love of All….What I Learned From Whitney Houston

As a childhood Whitney Houston fan and former owner of her Greatest Hits cassette tape, her death revived memories of a 13 year old summer camper standing atop a twin bed belting out The Greatest Love of All into a hairbrush microphone. I never really paid much attention to the lyrics until news reports of her death relentlessly played the song--“I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way.” The 13-year old in me always liked that Whitney was singing about my generation, but beyond that, I didn’t quite understand the message. And it wasn’t until last month when I listened to the lyrics and I get it now.  It is our responsibility to prepare our children for their roles in building and shaping our world, our cities, our neighborhoods.

April 11 - Melissa Hege


BLOG POST

In Greenwich Village: a Case for a Planning Landmark, or, Simply, a Dash of Nostalgia

<p> There is a certain irony in community stalwarts in testy Greenwich Village wanting to have the stale housing slabs hovering over the bland park composing Washington Square Village declared an architectural landmark that will somehow thwart New York University from overdeveloping further the singular super block. <br /> <br /> “Fugataboutit,” would be a relative polite New Yorker’s observation by anyone who has ever been to this dance before, as I have. The plea is really just a feint to get the retro-redevelopment realists involved into a backroom of one of the proposal’s big buck backers to splice and dice the project so it can be swallowed by all without choking to a political death.   </p>

April 11 - Sam Hall Kaplan

BLOG POST

Unwillingness to Embrace Demand

<p> At a recent meeting in Washington, DC I was astonished at the demonstrated lack of grasp of how neighborhood markets work. This, after all, was a meeting called by supposed experts in revitalization to discuss revitalization with other experts in revitalization. </p> <p> Notably missing during six hours of painful back and forth rehashing of Great Society pabulum v 5.0 was any sense of what &quot;demand&quot; means.  It&#39;s not just that there was a lack of understanding of demand, for three quarters of a day it was as if the very word - demand - was off limits.   </p>

April 11 - Charles Buki


BLOG POST

Avoiding Undesirable Self-Fulfilling Prophecies

Planners strive to anticipate future needs, which sometimes creates self-fulfilling prophecies: by preparing for a situation we help cause it. This is particularly true of automobile dependency. Planning decisions intended to accommodate automobile.

April 8 - Todd Litman

Education

BLOG POST

Getting into Planning School: How Much do Transcripts Matter?

I’ve had a lot of questions lately from students about how important transcripts are in the graduate admissions process. Your application is one of the few times anyone will actually read your transcript so it has some importance.

April 6 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

More logical fallacies in planning policy

A couple of weeks ago, Todd Litman made a blog entry on logical fallacies in planning.*<span>   </span>After looking at the list of possible fallacies at the end of his post, I thought I would show some (hopefully not too common) examples of these fallacies: <p class="MsoNormal"> <strong>Ad hominem</strong> (arguing against the person rather than the argument) – “Smart growth is in the U.N&#39;s Agenda 21 so we have to fight it to stop the U.N&#39;s plan to socialize the world.”<span>  </span>“Concern about urban containment is just another example of Tea Party extremism.” </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <strong>Anageon</strong> (relying on inevitability)- “Sprawl is inevitable, so there’s nothing we can do about it.” </p>

April 5 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Revitalize our Cities? Yes We Cannes!

<p> Last week my family and I took in the <a href="http://www.canneslions.com/">2011 Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity</a> (more commonly referred to as the Cannes Commercials), the annual celebration of the best in filmed advertising. The winning ads were, as usual, an entertaining mix of the hilarious, risqué and the moving, and afforded the viewer the chance to be exposed to diverse film styles (and unfamiliar products) from around the world. </p>

April 4 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

For Planners: The Best of Times, The Worst of Times

<p> <em>Planetizen is honored to welcome Sam Hall Kaplan to Interchange, our daily blog featuring opinions and commentary from esteemed professionals such as himself. Many of you will need no introduction to Sam or his work. For those of you that do, a quick summary.</em> <br />

April 4 - Sam Hall Kaplan

BLOG POST

Net Positive Urban Retrofit - Is It Possible?

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March 31 - Walker Wells

BLOG POST

Avoiding Logical Fallacies in Planning

<p class="MsoNormal"> Our profession relies on logical analysis of accurate data. There are an amazing number of ways to go wrong. </p>

March 21 - Todd Litman

Students at a graduation ceremony

BLOG POST

Finding an Undergraduate Planning Program

Undergraduates face special challenges and one of them is in finding a planning-related program. The following tips may make the search easier.

March 19 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

Urbanism is for Everyone

<!--StartFragment--> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: Arial">Is it mid-March already?</span> </p> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: Arial">I’m far overdue for announcing my departure from Planetizen, which happened at the tail end of 2011. It was a wonderful 3 ½ years at the helm, and I thank Chris Steins and Abhijeet Chavan for giving me the opportunity back in 2008 to steer this incomparable resource.</span> </p>

March 14 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

Does density raise prices?

<p class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: 'Century Schoolbook'">In <em>For A New Liberty</em>, libertarian intellectual Murray Rothbard writes that leftist intellectuals had raised a variety of complaints against capitalism, and that &quot;each of those complaints has been contradictory to one or more of their predecessors.”  In the 1930s, leftists argued that capitalism was prone to ‘eternal stagnation”, while in the 1960s, they argued that capitalist economies had “grown too much” causing “excessive affluence” and exhaustion of the world’s resources.  And so on. </span> </p>

March 7 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

Leveraging the Wisdom of Crowds through Participatory Platforms

New technologies are providing participatory platforms that allow individuals to share their ideas, interact with other's ideas, and work towards collaborative solutions to resolve problems or take advantage of opportunities. Kevin C. Desouza, PhD offers five guidelines to ensure that the use of such emerging technologies are maximized by practitioners.

March 5 - Kevin C. Desouza

Senior Manager Operations, Urban Planning

New York City School Construction Authority

Building Inspector

Village of Glen Ellyn

Manager of Model Development

Central Transportation Planning Staff/Boston Region MPO

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