"The Big Roads: The Untold Story of the Engineers, Visionaries, and Trailblazers Who Created the American Superhighways" by journalist Earl Swift examines the movement to build interstate highways well before Pres. Eisenhower's landmark legislation.
Swift's first study is bicycle racer-turned car racer Carl Graham Fisher who helped launch the 'good roads movement' by building America's first transcontinental road, the Lincoln Highway from NYC to San Francisco in 1913.
"Another of the author's visionaries is engineer Thomas MacDonald, the brilliant and methodical, but utterly humorless, head of the National Highway Commission" in 1919 that played a crucial role in shifting the nation's focus from rail to road.
"Over the next decades urban planners, including Robert Moses, and their critics, such as Lewis Mumford, would argue over how best to fight the blight of Stuckey's shops, "motor slums" and suburban sprawl" that inevitably followed the highways.
Thanks to Mark Boshnack
Read the full story: Interstate Highways as a Long-Haul Project
A much-needed revamp of the best way to approach design
Book review: “Designing the Complex City: A Systemic Approach to Spatial Design” translates complex theory into actionable tools for planners, architects and more.
Reigniting the city-building revolution
Review: In “The Unfinished Metropolis," Benjamin Schneider argues for us to look abroad for help in returning to a long-lost American art: city-building.
A masterful, human-centered defense of rent control
Book Review: "Fortunate People in a Fortunate Land" offers a human look at how rent control is more than just numbers and data in a spreadsheet.
Planetizen Federal Action Tracker
A weekly monitor of how Trump’s orders and actions are impacting planners and planning in America.
Amtrak, CN end decades-long dispute with eight-year agreement
The new operating agreement establishes an updated framework for the companies to work together, including processes to resolve disputes.
Northwest rail fans eager for Sept. 30 debut of Amtrak’s Airo fleet
Get ready for that new train smell and more seats. But they won’t go faster or run more frequently on the Cascades route in Washington and Oregon.
NYC to turn city-owned property into thousands of homes
The city has scheduled a public hearing regarding the development for October.
Buses travel at 5mph along this route in NYC. The Bronx's first-ever busway looks to change that
Prior to the busway, buses on the Bx36 route traveled as slowly as 5 miles per hour.
Pittsburg launches 'EZ permits,' aims for one-day turnaround for low-risk permits
The pilot ‘fast lane’ for permits is part of a bundle of modernization efforts for Pittsburg’s permitting process.
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.
City of Thousand Oaks
City of Wisconsin Rapids
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello