Cities
The City, the College and the Hospital
This article from Governing looks at the role of higher education and medical facilities in keeping urban areas alive.
Mission Possible?
Despite naysayers, Masdar City is moving forward. The goal: to be the world's first modern-day carbon-free city.
Does LEED Have a Big City Bias?
The vast majority of LEED-certified green buildings in the U.S. are located in major cities, leading some to wonder whether there might be an inherent bias in LEED's standards.
Solving Civic Problems in a Post-Fact Society
How does a rapidly changing news media affect big city planning? Badly, according to this post from Next American City.
American Mayors and Bottom-Up Environmental Planning
The environmental leadership of mayors in the U.S. offers much hope for the future of the country, according to this article from Metropolis.
State Farm on the Humiliation of Biking to Work
A new 30-second television commercial from State Farm insurance suggests that commuting to work by bike is humiliating. But is the ad sending a more subversive message?
Cities Are Forgotten In Presidential Race
Urban issues and metropolitan policy are noticeably absent from the platforms of the three main presidential candidates.
The Densest Cities in America
The blog post features a list of the top five densest cities in America, and looks at the conditions that have made them that way.
How Will Changing Cities React?
Cities are undergoing major changes in terms of demographics and development patterns. How cities will react to these changes remains up in the air.
Universities Reconnect with Cities
Universities across the country are reviving their connections to their host cities, participating in urban renewal projects and investing in their cities' futures.
Cities Don't Need Special Treatment
This opinion piece from The Boston Globe calls for an end to the special treatment and unfair taxes levied on city residents.
Undressing the naked city
Often times I’m struck by the advances we’ve made in mapping, modeling and depicting our cities. What was once the purview of mapmakers, surveyors or architects is now a democratized, engaging process that brings unexpected results. And the more advanced the technology, the more transparent our cities seem to become.
A Planning Contrarian's Reading List
Transcontinental flights are a great time to catch up on reading, and a recent flight from San Jose to Chicago inspired this blog post. As I was reading book #1 (below), I realized that a number books have been published recently that have important things to say about cities although they might be dismissed too easily as reactionary, ideological, or simply not relevant to urban planning.
It's Summer, Inspire Me...
Most people use the Summer months to re-connect with pastimes forgotten during winter months. It is this time of the year that sales soar both at the box office and in bookstores. Most normal people I know take trashy novels with them to the beach or submerge themselves in an entire season of 24 (which thanks to Netflix can be accomplished in a few intense evenings). I tend to lean toward the other extreme (although I have indulged in bad TV from time to time). My wife calls me a design geek because my bedside table is always full of design magazines, books and theory.
Ontario’s leaders look for “Places to Grow”
Think big.That’s what the people of Ontario and the Toronto region set out to do more than 5 years ago when they began a visionary planning process for the area known as the Greater Golden Horseshoe in southern Ontario, Canada. (The Greater Golden Horseshoe is the area around Lake Ontario that stretches from roughly Peterborough to the east, west through metropolitan Toronto, and around the west tip of the lake to the southern side and Niagara Falls — hence the horseshoe shape.)
If You Lived In This Inner-Ring Suburb, You'd Be Home By Now
This week, a few stories circulated around our office that generated some discussion. One was a piece in The New Yorker by Nick Paumgarten on commuting in America entitled "There and Back Again". The tease at the beginning sums up the entire piece: "People may endure miserable commutes out of an inability to weigh their general well-being against quantifiable material gains."In this story, the writer accompanies commuters in Manhattan and Atlanta while attempting to understand the life of an "extreme commuter."
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.
KFH Group Inc.
Greater Baltimore Committee
Eagle County Government
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
