Smart Growth
At long last, California law will consider the amount of driving, rather than vehicle delay, when evaluating the environmental impacts of new developments. This is a more common-sense approximation of their environmental impacts.
Streetsblog California
Blog post
In a modern, post-industrial society, economic opportunity depends on disadvantaged households’ ability to find suitable housing in an economically successful city. Planners can make that happen.
Can't tell New Urbanism from YIMBY? This post tries to help.
Greater Greater Washington
Blog post
Many jurisdictions have vehicle travel reduction targets. Integrated Smart Growth policies can help achieve these and other planning goals.
San Francisco is planning for new population growth and new housing developments on the West Side of the city, and is also expecting high quality public transit to fill the mobility needs of current and future residents.
San Francisco Examiner
The Vision 2050 plan, which charts the growth for King, Pierce, Snohomish, and Kitsap counties in Washington State, would focus almost all the growth meant to accommodate 1.8 million new residents inside urban areas.
The Urbanist
Blog post
It is important to focus on forests rather than individual trees when evaluating trade-offs between infill and sprawled development.
As more people head to Idaho to escape cities they cannot afford, Boise is encouraging growth and also grappling with the consequences.
Curbed
Charles Wolfe calls attention to similarities between contemporary urbanism and yesterday's debunked utopias. The two may differ in substance, but both tend toward a certain level of dogma that isn't necessarily helpful on the ground.
Public Square: A CNU Journal
Blog post
Conventional planning is static, designed to lock in existing land use patterns. We need more dynamic planning to respond to changing household needs and community goals.
Breakthrough Institute co-founder, Ted Nordhaus, explores the etymology of "carrying capacity" from a shipping term to a biological term, but objects to its application to human population. Richard Heinberg of the Post Carbon Institute responds.
Aeon
The U.S. has lower average life expectancy than most peer countries. New research indicates that this results in part from sprawl. Life expectancy, economic mobility, mobility options, personal health and safety all improve in less sprawling areas.
International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health
A look at the relationship between sprawl and climate change mitigation in the fast-growing North Carolina city.
Yale Climate Connections
An excellent primer (refresher for many) on Smart Growth and the history of planning generally, by former San Francisco Planning and Urban Research Assoc. Exec. Director Jim Chappell
UrbDeZine
The Puget Sound Regional Council (PSRC) released a new "Regional Centers Framework."
The Urbanist
Blog post
The International Housing Affordability Survey is biased in ways that make urban-fringe housing seem more affordable and infill seem less affordable. Anybody who uses this analysis should be warned.
The International Housing Affordability Survey rates affordability in selected urban regions. Although presented as objective research, the IHAS is actually propaganda. Users of this information should be warned about its biases
True Affordability. Critiquing the International Housing Affordability Survey
Blog post
Parking requirements are the dark matter of the urban universe: they affect transport and land use in mysterious ways. These fun facts illustrate the costs and impacts of economically excessive parking supply.
A huge public response shows that the booming city is defining a new future with smart growth.
CityLab
Blog post
Despite numerous traffic safety programs, traffic death rates have not declined in a decade and recently started to increase. We can do better! A new paradigm identifies additional safety strategies that reduce both crash rates and risk exposure.
