This piece from The New York Times looks at the role of private gardens and public-facing landscaping in the city of Baghdad.
Public space and private solace are hard to come by in Baghdad, where locals take much pride in their gardens and landscaping.
"Gardens remain one of the few flourishes of public ornament on Baghdad's otherwise brown streets, defiant displays of foliage amid concrete blast walls and security checkpoints. And in its middle-class neighborhoods, Baghdad is a city of surprising topiary sculptures: leafy ficus trees are carved in geometric spirals, balls, arches and squares, as if to impose order on a chaotic sprawl. The trees provide a startling counterpoint of color and contour to the uniformly tan and rectilinear houses and walls surrounding them."
FULL STORY: Fanciful Gardens Emerge in a City of Tan and Gray

Rethinking Redlining
For decades we have blamed 100-year-old maps for the patterns of spatial racial inequity that persist in American cities today. An esteemed researcher says: we’ve got it all wrong.

Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.

California High-Speed Rail's Plan to Right Itself
The railroad's new CEO thinks he can get the project back on track. The stars will need to align this summer.

Savannah Reduces Speed Limits on Almost 100 City Streets
The historic Georgia city is lowering speed limits in an effort to reduce road fatalities.

A Park Reborn: Resilience and Renewal in Fire-Stricken Altadena
Rebuilt in just two months after the devastating Eaton Fire, Loma Alta Park now stands as a symbol of community resilience and renewal, even as some residents hope recovery efforts will continue to support housing stability and long-term equity.

Spain Moves to Ban 66,000 Airbnbs
The national government is requiring the short-term rental operator to remove thousands of illegal listings from its site as part of an effort to stem a growing housing crisis.
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