Land Use

The State of New Hampshire has created an interactive online tool for its municipalities to examine the impacts of different land use scenarios, in the hopes of promoting smart growth. Geneva Faulkner describes how it works.

September 6, 2012 - Engaging Cities

As anyone who's raised an eyebrow upon hearing that Los Angeles is technically more dense than New York can attest, making city-to-city comparisons can be a confounding endeavor. Nate Berg goes in search of a uniform way to define the city.

September 6, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

Over the past couple of decades, Manhattan's ruthless redevelopment has transformed neighborhoods up and down the island. In the East Village, local leaders are trying to defend the area's popular dive bars from rising rents and changing clientele.

September 6, 2012 - The Wall Street Journal

As the real estate market comes back to life, walkable urbanism is poised to become the dominant mode of development across America. Emily Badger explains why Washington D.C.'s land use evolution portends the future of cities everywhere.

September 5, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

It's not just the Sun Cities of America that are planning for how to meet the needs of the country's coming bulge in its over-65 population. Ryan Holeywell highlights how some cities are adapting their built environments for an aging population.

September 5, 2012 - Governing

The Project for Public Spaces (PPS), who have been working with UN-HABITAT on sustainable urbanization, describe why establishing public spaces can be even more important to improving the world's slums than providing power or clean water.

September 5, 2012 - Project For Public Spaces

Creative placemaking, or investing in arts and culture as a way to improve quality of place and stimulate vibrancy, is getting a new boost as ArtPlace announces another round of funding.

September 4, 2012 - ArtPlace

Richey Piiparinen discusses the "Frankenstein effects" of place-making, in which, he argues, the diversity of people and place that attracts the creative class is eventually forced out by those in search of the "highest and best use."

September 4, 2012 - New Geography

A new study documents exactly how deprived of access to open space the 13 million residents of Mumbai are. The numbers are grim, especially when compared to other cities around the world, and even in India, reports Neha Thirani.

September 4, 2012 - The New York Times

Herb Caudill explains why the need to plan for a range of transportation modes and uses of space in urban environs is common sense - not part of a concerted assault on cars.

September 4, 2012 - Greater Greater Washington

Urban gardening is sprouting to life across America, but urban locales in the developing world "have incorporated horticulture into their urban planning" for decades. In Africa, urbanization is threatening these essential parts of the food system.

September 4, 2012 - NPR

To preserve the spread of urban gardening, activists are beginning to map and document the many haphazard community gardens to gain recognition from landlords and city officials in hopes of warding off bulldozers.

September 3, 2012 - Grist

While it might seem like the Agenda 21 conspiracy theorists have arisen quite quickly out of the murky backwaters of the Republican party, Llewellyn Hinkes-Jones traces the lengthy enti-environmentalist roots of the movement.

September 2, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

An expanding number of cities across the U.S. are looking to attract urban casinos, with the hope that further development and money (tax revenues to fill drained city coffers) will follow.

September 2, 2012 - Next American City

Lew Sichelman reports on the lofty goals being pursued by a new $6.2 billion live/play/work development known as Barangaroo - planned for a 54-acre site in East Darling Harbor - which aims to redefine Sydney.

August 31, 2012 - Urban Land

Howard Blackson explains the five elements ("five Cs") necessary for planning resilient and lively neighborhoods - complete, compact, connected, complex, and convivial.

August 31, 2012 - Better! Cities & Towns

A 52-acre development planned for Washington, D.C.'s isolated Southwest Quadrant hopes to create a 21st century waterfront by embracing the elements that have contributed to creating lively urban waterfronts for centuries, reports Kriston Capps.

August 31, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

Three years in the making, approval nears for Plan Cincinnati - the city's first comprehensive plan to be completed in the last 32 years. Randy A. Simes shares the details of the plan, which focuses growth around 40 walkable neighborhood centers.

August 30, 2012 - UrbanCincy

By better integrating the natural and built environments, while enforcing standards of livability, Copenhagen seeks to transform its Saint Kjeld’s neighborhood into "a showcase area for climate adaptation technology," reports Damian Holmes.

August 30, 2012 - World Landscape Architecture

Bob Ransford argues that the policies that have shaped Vancouver's streets and skyline over the last decades into a global icon of planning and design are an accomplishment of style over substance that fail to look at how people inhabit buildings.

August 30, 2012 - The Vancouver Sun