History / Preservation
If you opened Google to do a search on Wednesday, you'd see an image (the "doodle") of a traffic light and six Model-T era cars spelling out the company's name. It was honoring the 101-year anniversary of the birth of the electric traffic light.
Time
Blog post
Attempts to limit new construction to preserve neighborhood character are an example of "beggar thy neighbor" politics.
A data visualization project illustrates the long and varied traditions of American single-family housing.
The Washington Post
Paterson, New Jersey's diverse immigrant population holds the potential to revive the city's declining economy. Writer Jeff Byles documents key resources the city has and how similar postindustrial cities have harnessed community-driven planning.
Doggerel
Motor vehicle crashes claim over 30,000 lives per year, with related costs in the hundreds of billions. While we sometimes view that frightening statistic as inevitable, there are reasons to reexamine speed limits and how we set them.
Five Thirty Eight
Local officials are considering a conservancy to preserve the Houston Astrodome, considered an antiquities landmark by the Texas Historical Commission.
Houston Chronicle
Hazel Borys chronicles an Arctic expedition adventure, rife with environmental insights. If you ever wondered what it felt like in the olden days to receive dispatches from explorers off in distant mysterious lands, maybe it felt something like this.
PlaceShakers
The late architecture critic Reyner Banham and social historian Mike Davis had opposing viewpoints regarding Los Angeles' ecology, but in many ways their disparate takes complemented each other, writes urban planner Jonathan P. Bell.
UrbDeZine
Blog post
A retrospective of a billboard art exhibition at the 2013 Biennial of the Americas on the occasion of the 2015 Biennial's kick-off implicates an excellent model of citizen engagement and possibly some lessons for civic leaders and urban planners.
A little history on the Inuit of the Circumpolar Region as the kickoff in a blog series by Hazel Borys
PlaceShakers
Writer Jeff Byles chronicles the Passaic River's relationship to Paterson, New Jersey and how its revival can prove beneficial for the city in this second installment of the Paterson series.
Doggerel
The San Antonio Missions—five frontier missions that include The Alamo—were named among a group of new World Heritage Sites.
UNESCO
Act 178, approved by Vermont in 2006, required that all ancient roads be catalogued by July 1, 2015 to be included in the state map. The exploration of old roads leading up to that deadline makes a compelling story.
The New Yorker
Though it's as picturesque as a place can be, the central Sicilian town of Gangi is a shell of its former self. To attract new residents, the town is offering homes for free on the condition that they be restored to their former glory.
New York Times
Memphis' Beale Street is famous as a home of the blues and one of the city's biggest tourist attractions. Even so, been it's mismanaged and is often empty. With some conflicts settled, the city hopes to realize the street's value as a civic asset.
New York Times
In the wake of recent tragedy, cities like Charleston, South Carolina and Savannah, Georgia still take pride in their architectural heritage. Debate abounds over whether modern architecture should be given freer rein.
Next City
The National Trust for Historic Preservation has announced the 2015 edition of its annual list of the most endangered historic locations in the United States.
Next City
An article in Boom: A Journal of California extends the timeline of "smart cities" and "big data" efforts by a considerable amount—all the way back to the late 1960s.
BOOM: A Journal of California
Developed using open data from local government sources, built: LA is a mapping tool that displays the age of every building in the county. Much of the area's built environment is surprisingly old.
CityLab
Edward Brennan waged an extended turn-of-the-century campaign to clean up Chicago's then-confusing address numbering system. Though few recognize his name, Brennan's legacy lives on in modern Chicago.
WBEZ
