In cities like Prague and London, tourists can take tours guided by homeless guides.
Craille Maguire Gillies, a journalist writing for The Guardian, took part in a growing industry of tours led by homeless people. While visiting Prague she took a tour from a man named Robert Pochop, "Over the next 24 hours, he will take me on endless trams and trains, to his favourite haunts and even to city limits, to show me what life as a homeless person – or at least his life – is like," she writes.
"The tours come at a time when some cities are attempting to effectively outlaw homelessness," Maguire Gillies writes. There is a tension in these types of tours between what is an earnest investigation of life as many people live it in cities around the world and something more exploitative, a gaping at hardship. One tour group described itself this way: "Pragulic is a social enterprise that challenges the stereotypes associated with homelessness by enabling people to experience the world from a homeless perspective."
FULL STORY: 'Don't worry, I won't kill you': the strange boom in homeless tourism
Oregon Passes Exemption to Urban Growth Boundary
Cities have a one-time chance to acquire new land for development in a bid to increase housing supply and affordability.
Where Urban Design Is Headed in 2024
A forecast of likely trends in urban design and architecture.
Savannah: A City of Planning Contrasts
From a human-scales, plaza-anchored grid to suburban sprawl, the oldest planned city in the United States has seen wildly different development patterns.
New York Transit Agency Launches Performance Dashboard
The tool increases transparency about the agency’s performance on a variety of metrics.
Washington Tribes Receive Resilience Funding
The 28 grants support projects including relocation efforts as coastal communities face the growing impacts of climate change.
Adaptive Reuse Bills Introduced in California Assembly
The legislation would expand eligibility for economic incentives and let cities loosen regulations to allow for more building conversions.
City of Rochester
Boston Harbor Now
City of Bellevue
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
Mpact Transit + Community
HUD's Office of Policy Development and Research
City of Birmingham, Alabama
City of Laramie, Wyoming
Colorado Department of Local Affairs
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.