Social / Demographics

How Well Does Mass Transit Serve America's Jobs?

For those seeking to diversify metropolitan mode shares, good news can be found in a report just published by the Brookings Institution: most urban jobs are near transit. Unfortunately, employees, for the most part, are not, reports Conor Dougherty.

July 11, 2012 - The Wall Street Journal

Homebuilders Consider What Will Get Gen Y to Buy

Teresa Burney reports on PulteGroup's new marketing services geared towards understanding the Gen Y demographic as new potential homeowners.

July 11, 2012 - Builder

Brooklyn’s Great Gentrification Divide

Joseph Berger examines how gentrification in certain Brooklyn neighborhoods has revealed a conflict of values among residents.

July 11, 2012 - The New York Times

Social Media Apps Put Ride Sharing on the Map

Ride share websites and mobile apps take the guesswork out of finding a ride and move social networking offline and onto the open road, fueling a revival of car-pooling, reports Mickey Meece.

July 10, 2012 - The New York Times

Smart Growth Funding Under Attack

A new bill proposing major cuts to the EPA could rob cities across the country of a specialized set of programs created to boost economic well-being.

July 10, 2012 - Next American City

America's Most Creative Cities

Revisiting the metric he developed a decade ago in his groundbreaking book "The Rise of the Creative Class", Richard Florida ranks the American metros with the largest concentrations of creativity.

July 9, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

Can Suburbia Serve the Poor?

An editorial in The New York Times looks at the dramatic growth of poverty in America's suburbs over the last decade, and asks if the government safety net is up to the challenge.

July 9, 2012 - The New York Times

Incentivizing Healthier Placemaking

A June panel, ‘Experiencing Healthier Places’, at the AIA Design Conference in LA looked at the roles that professional planners and architects can have in fostering a healthier society through the built environment.

July 6, 2012 - The Planning Report

Disaster Planning Requires Social Safety Net

Nate Berg says that planners have a crucial role in making sure cities are prepared for natural disasters.

July 5, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

Apartment Boom Hits Urban Core Of Columbus, OH

Apartments are scooped minutes after being placed on Craigslist, waiting lines form at open houses, rents are rising. San Francisco? Not quite, but with developers rising to the occasion with 5,000 units in construction, growth may be sustainable.

July 5, 2012 - The Columbus Dispatch

Are Cities Really Growing Faster Than Suburbs?

Last week's census figures were widely used to point to a swelling of urban populations. Chris Briem says that the jury's still out.

July 3, 2012 - Nullspace

D.C. Area Hits Uptick as Recession Peters Out

Carol Morello and Patricia Sullivan explore the recent population spike in Washington, D.C., part of a nationwide trend toward "an urban renaissance."

June 30, 2012 - Washington Post

Census: Cities Growing Faster Than Suburbs

Historically the one-year data may be an aberration as suburbs have outgrown cities for every decade since the 1920s. It may be as much a consequence of the recession and housing bust as a preference for urban living, but builders are responding.

June 29, 2012 - The Wall Street Journal

The Rise of the Creative Class, 2012 Edition

Workers making up the 'creative class,' a term first coined by author Richard Florida, continue to grow and prosper, generating trillions in wages. What cities in the U.S. have the largest creative economies?

June 29, 2012 - The Daily Beast

Oklahoma Tribal Nations Help Fund U.S. Roads

Often downplayed of their role in both planning efforts and in the economy, tribal governments are working collaboratively with other local governments in Oklahoma to help build and maintain roads.

June 29, 2012 - Tulsa World

Census: The Top Bike Commuting Cities In U.S.

The League of American Bicyclists updated their webpage with a link to the American Community Survey's data on bike and pedestrian commuting for the 70 largest cities and 375 more cities where data was available. Portland, OR and Davis, CA are tops.

June 26, 2012 - League of American Bicyclists

Understanding How City Rules Affect Urban Areas

In this excerpt from the new book, "City Rules: How Regulations Affect Urban Form," author Emily Talen outlines the ways in which zoning ordinances, building codes and other bureaucratic restrictions negatively affect urban areas.

June 26, 2012 - City Limits

The "Perfect Storm" that Caused the U.S. Public Housing Fiasco

Architect Ray Gindroz says that a perfect storm of factors - economic change, crushing policy decisions, and over-reaching ambition - brought about the disaster of public housing in the U.S. like Pruitt-Igoe.

June 25, 2012 - Better! Cities & Towns

Bridging the Gap Between the Virtual World and Reality

A young artist in New Orleans launches a social experiment on the built environment, turning the walls of the city's buildings into a public forum.

June 24, 2012 - Next American City

Cities in Decline: Finding Something To Celebrate

News always comes in twos; there's the good news, and then there's the bad news. In the city of Windsor, Canada, the bad news has consistently been their ailing economy. Residents look for something to celebrate.

June 23, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

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.

Top Books

An annual review of books related to planning.

Top Schools

The definitive ranking of graduate planning programs.

100 Most Influential Urbanists

The who's who of urbanism, according to Planetizen readers.

Urban Planning Creators You Should Know

A short list of voices on social, video, and podcasting platforms.