Blogger Andrew Lynch’s collection of unrealized city plans is a catalog of could-have-beens.
Lynch, who switched from industrial design to urban planning in college, runs the Tumblr Hyperreal Cartography & The Unrealized City. His personal collection of hundreds of maps includes many postwar designs for American cities. “Of course, while a car for every home and a highway through every neighborhood seemed charming at the time, such an idea would make a modern urban planner shudder,” Joe Hanson writes. “One era’s Utopia is another’s hell.”
Lynch’s favorite images, collected on Wired’s "MapLab" blog, include a 1948 San Francisco highway plan, a 1945 design for the expansion of Boston’s subway, and a 1941 plan for the development of the area around the Capitol in Washington, D.C.
FULL STORY: Maps of Unrealized City Plans Reveal What Might Have Been
Maps: How Much of Your City is Parking?
The percentage of land dedicated to parking in the central districts of major U.S. cities ranges from 4 percent to as much as 42 percent.
Mapping Climate Impact at the Neighborhood Level
A consumption-based analysis illustrates the differences in average household emissions across census tracts.
Top Websites for Urban Planning - 2022
Every year, Planetizen collects the websites breaking new digital ground in the world of planning and related fields.
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.
US Senate Reverses California EV Mandate
The state planned to phase out the sale of gas-powered cars by 2035, a goal some carmakers deemed impossible to meet.
Trump Cuts Decimate Mapping Agency
The National Geodetic Survey maintains and updates critical spatial reference systems used extensively in both the public and private sectors.
Washington Passes First US ‘Shared Streets’ Law
Cities will be allowed to lower speed limits to 10 miles per hour and prioritize pedestrians on certain streets.
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
City of Camden Redevelopment Agency
City of Astoria
Transportation Research & Education Center (TREC) at Portland State University
Regional Transportation Commission of Southern Nevada
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions