Education

18-Year-Old Appointed to Planning Commission

Megan Lavalley may be the youngest planning commissioner ever, appointed to serve in Manchester, Vermont beginning Oct. 22nd.

October 14, 2009 - The Manchester Journal

Pittsburgh Preps for its Debut on the World Stage

Why the decision to host the next G-20 summit in Steel City is a good one.

September 8, 2009 - Forbes.com

United States of Bankruptcy

Budget issues are causing major issues for a handful of states. Neal Peirce argues these budget woes are a sign that states are making the wrong investments and that they idea of a state may be out of date.

July 12, 2009 - Citiwire

Community Colleges Set Green Workforce Training Mission

Already a national leader in green building and looking to expand its leadership, the Los Angeles Community College District is launching several collaborative efforts to train a new, green workforce.

June 28, 2009 - The Planning Report

Drawing Blanks: Urban Design and the Power of the Pen

With just two weeks to go in my second semester, I like to think that I know just about everything about being a planning student by now. But when 100+ prospective students came to our campus open house last week, an easy question stumped me: “What about drawing?” At first I thought she was asking if she needed to have an art background coming into school. A thousand times, no. But instead she was looking to learn how to draw as a planner, which is a much trickier proposition.

April 15, 2009 - Jeffrey Barg

When The Planners Go Marching In

There’s just one problem with academia. Sometimes it can be so … academic. In the interest of getting out into the world, I’m writing this post from Nawlins (nee New Orleans), where 16 other Penn planners and I are spending our weeklong spring break doffing our tops for beads and booze doing pro bono city planning work. For most of us, it’s been nothing short of a paradigm shift—and the week ain’t over yet.

March 12, 2009 - Jeffrey Barg

Anybody For Some Duck Duck Goose?: Planning School, Semester Two Begins

On Friday, in the first week of my second semester of planning graduate school, we did the hokey-pokey. We put our right foot in, put our right foot out, put our right foot in, and then we shook it all about. We turned ourselves around. That was what it was all about. The demonstration was all about pointing out common ground and how people were rooted in order to approach problem solving and conflict resolution. It sounds a little squishy, I know. But it got the point across, and more important, it introduced the dance to one international student who had never heard of the hokey-pokey.

January 18, 2009 - Jeffrey Barg

Becoming a Calvinist: First Semester Wrap-Up

Four months, thousands of pages and $60 worth of printing later, my first semester of planning school is over. Really? That’s it? Not that I was understimulated. Plenty of big assignments kept me up later than my girlfriend would’ve liked. But in the working world, four months isn’t that long—it’s a big project, a new initiative. In grad school, apparently, it’s reason enough to take a month off. So without any further ado, a few highlights and lowlights from the first semester. Not too many lowlights, though. A few of my professors read this blog.

December 21, 2008 - Jeffrey Barg

Grad School: Like a Conference, but With Less Sex

Most of the time it’s not that hard to kind of forget that I’m a grad student. It often feels like a long, ongoing conference, but without nametags: We hear speakers (sometimes known as professors), have long lunch breaks, do exercises, then retire to the bar at night to talk about all of it. More similarities: None of our classrooms would be mistaken for hotel conference centers, but a bunch of them are windowless and characterless. People are cordial, but also kind of angling for a job. Everybody’s friendly, and sometimes, people hook up. Then reality comes crashing down like a pile of books: oh yeah. Exams. We have to take those.

December 1, 2008 - Jeffrey Barg

Urban Design After The Age of Depression

Hey, have you heard we’re all screwed? Last week Penn hosted the “Reimagining Cities: Urban Design After the Age of Oil” conference. If you were there, or if you read the liveblog of the event, you saw speaker after speaker tell of the doom and gloom facing the planet. Climate change! Carbon emissions! Decaying infrastructure! Nine billion people! In the words of the classical philosopher Shawn Carter, we got 99 problems, but a bitch ain’t one. Frankly, it’s all a little depressing.

November 14, 2008 - Jeffrey Barg

Candidates Take Stance on Urban Issues

City Limits breaks down the differences between the two presidential candidates with a focus on urban issues.

November 2, 2008 - City Limits

Skills in Planning: The Time vs. Quality Opportunity Curve

Recently I’ve been writing about skills that planners need—the findings from surveys of employers and the key role or writing in the planning skill set. Skills like writing, graphics, data analysis, and the ability to listen are obviously important. As Ethan Seltzer and Connie Ozawa’s 2002 survey found, however, several more general skills are also key. I reported these in an earlier blog and they include: working well with the public and with colleagues, being a self-starter, being able to finish work on time and on budget, and understanding public needs.

November 1, 2008 - Ann Forsyth

A Vote for the City

The answer is: “Because people today would rather not work and instead just sit at home collecting welfare checks.” And the question? If you guessed, “What should you not say in a room full of city planning students?”, congratulations! You win. We would have also accepted, “FDR began a ton of new federal programs during the New Deal. As long as we have a $700 billion financial bailout, what programs would you enact or not enact as part of a New Deal today?” Thanks for playing. We have some lovely parting gifts for you.

October 16, 2008 - Jeffrey Barg

Orientations, Courses, and Riding the Figurative Bike

This week will be my first full week of classes at MIT; however, I have actually been here for three.  I arrived into Cambridge at the end of August to attend the weeklong department orientation, which was as orientations are – full of very important yet-easy-to-forget information. Alone, the pressure of learning nearly 65 names can induce periodic episodes of amnesia. 

September 11, 2008 - Tamika Camille Gauvin

Master's Planning: How to Pick an Industry That’s Growing, Not Shrinking

Just after 2008 began, I realized my profession of choice was dying. I’d spent the previous seven years at Philadelphia Weekly, a fairly typical alternative newspaper: you know, magazine-style lefty bent, where-to-go-and-what-to-do listings, porn ads in the back. The usual.

August 27, 2008 - Jeffrey Barg

Adaptive Reuse: Historic Courthouse To Charter School

The 93-year old Bronx Borough Courthouse will soon become a charter school.

March 9, 2008 - The New York Times

A Manual For The Future

The Wacker’s Manual of the Plan of Chicago: Municipal Economy, first written in 1911 as a way to educate Chicago students about the City’s Plan of 1909, provides remarkable insight into America’s diminished socio-cultural ambitions.

January 11, 2008 - Mike Lydon

Summer Academics: Finding Faculty Blogs

With the coming of summer, students finish courses, faculty head off to do research, and practitioners think about vacations. However, for those interested in keeping up to date with academic issues in planning, a number of bloggists provide useful insights into the politics and hot issues in planning education. For students they are a window into the work of educators and for practicing planners they are an easy way to keep up to date with what’s happening in the schools.

May 29, 2007 - Ann Forsyth

If Paul Davidoff has Email Should I Write?

Information Strategies for Answering Fundamental Planning Questions In universities in the northern hemisphere, April and May are months for completing work and moving closer to graduation. Assignments are due. Exams are looming. Students are too tired to write well and professors are too tired to notice. In the crunch for time, enterprising students look to the power of new information and communication technologies to reach out beyond their harried contexts to experts who can help them answer important questions. If Paul Davidoff (now dead) had email, they reason, he would have been happy to respond.

March 17, 2007 - Ann Forsyth

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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.