In GeekWire, Chuck Wolfe explains how, as the Amazon (and other) “Great Returns” to the office unfold, it's essential to dig deeper.
Wolfe urges a deep dive beyond quick fixes to assure sustained urban vitality:
The trick will be to assess the ideals that the quick fixes are meant to guarantee and restore, which are, essentially, the first principles of cities. These principles include time-immemorial concepts: safety, the basic connectors between people and where they work, the importance of hubs of culture and human interaction, and the co-creation necessary to keep these Great Returns alive.
The article provides five ideas that focus on long-term regeneration, including safe places and spaces; contextually appropriate tools; looking beyond two dimensions; recognizing cities as evolving, interdisciplinary systems; and proceeding with “place healing” based on inclusionary principles.
FULL STORY: Analysis: Amazon’s ‘Great Return’ to the office is just one aspect of a downtown Seattle comeback
Seattle Downtown Plan Expands Permitted Uses
The Downtown Activation Plan shifts from Euclidean to form-based zoning to encourage more commercial development.
Seattle Downtown Plan Focuses on Public Safety, Programming
The mayor issued a 12-point plan for improving safety, developing services for people struggling with addiction, and revitalizing downtown spaces.
'Place-Healing': From Adaptation to Manifesto
Amid pandemic and protest, the need for urban mending has become abundantly clear, with responses that invoke the more ethereal elements of a physical place I like to call it "place-healing," a term that seems right for the times.
The state-sanctioned urbicide of Austin
People don’t kill cities. Freeways do.
US to reduce Colorado River water deliveries to Mexico
A new Colorado Treaty amendment reduces Mexico’s Colorado River water allocation by 250,000 acre feet.
New Jersey’s second-largest city bans standalone data centers
Jersey City will continue to allow co-location facilities, such as those meant for research institutions that store their own data.
Amtrak not solely to blame for New Jersey commuter rail's unreliability, report finds
A new study from the Garden State Initiative found that NJ Transit’s budget grew 20% across a 4 year period, but reliability declined significantly over the same period.
EPA erases limits on planet-warming pollution from power plants
Under Monday’s plan, power plants would still have some limits on how much mercury, arsenic and other contaminants they can emit.
Phoenix announces new on-demand transit service, more frequent RAPID buses
Both new services will launch in October, and are part of Phoenix's Project Effective Access Solutions for Easing Congestion.
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.
Eagle County Government
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Nashville Planning Department
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
Journal of the American Planning Association