Urban Development

According to Arianna McBride, the recipe for good community design must effectively balance community wisdom with expert knowledge. She shares three ways that planners can facilitate the type of participation that leads to great places.

April 24, 2013 - Citizens' Institute on Rural Design

The General Services Administration, which is looking for ways to fund a new FBI campus, has more ideas at its fingertips with three tantalizing proposals for redeveloping the Hoover Building in downtown Washington, D.C., writes Jonathan O'Connell.

April 24, 2013 - The Washington Post

Doug Henwood explains how "elite bodies", rather than pure "market forces", guide the growth of New York City. He begins his story with the Regional Plan Association's influential 1929 plan and focuses on the transformation of Downtown Brooklyn.

April 23, 2013 - The Nation

World Bank President Jim Yong Kim explains why climate change is a poverty issue - and why we must tackle it today to ensure that carbon emissions do not continue rising after 2016. Establishing a world price on carbon will be difficult to achieve.

April 23, 2013 - PBS NewsHour - The Rundown

In a quest to develop a plan to house the additional 1 million people expected to grow New Zealand's largest city in the next 30 years, Auckland is asking residents to submit ideas by using a "housing simulator" game.

April 23, 2013 - Fast Company Co.Exist

In a scathing op-ed for The New York Times, architect Robert Stern challenges the city's drive to densify East Midtown without paying the requisite attention to preservation, infrastructure, and the elements that give vitality to great cities.

April 23, 2013 - The New York Times

Although its inward-facing corporate design may be loathed by architects and planners, L.A. Live's success in helping to draw redevelopment and activity to South Park is indisputable. Can its successes be replicated in Seattle?

April 22, 2013 - The Seattle Times

From traditional stormwater management to storm surge abatement and conserving drinking water and watersheds, green infrastructure improves our cities, explains Adrian Benepe of the Trust for Public Land.

April 22, 2013 - Sustainable Cities Collective

With a new area plan oriented around the arrival of Denver's West Light Rail line, planners are hoping to spur a transformation of the city's Sun Valley neighborhood. Can the area diversify without displacing existing residents?

April 22, 2013 - The Denver Post

Frustrated by what's passing as "smart growth" and "transit oriented development," Bill Adams postulates ten refinements (or less subtly stated clarifications) of the principles of smart growth and new urbanism.

April 21, 2013 - UrbDeZine.com

Distinguished critic Paul Goldberger decries the Museum of Modern Art's recently announced plan to demolish the neighboring American Folk Art Museum. Meanwhile, social media campaigns are organizing opposition to the plan.

April 20, 2013 - Vanity Fair

Monday’s Boston Marathon bombing was “an attack on public space,” writes architecture critic Christopher Hawthorne. But that doesn’t mean we should respond by closing off the sidewalks and streets the bombers targeted.

April 19, 2013 - Los Angeles Times

Chris Bentley describes the first piece of an ambitious plan to return portions of Minneapolis' Mississippi River coastline to a more natural state, and encourage public access and redevelopment in the process.

April 18, 2013 - The Architect's Newspaper

Segregated schools are an enduring problem in urban America. But with young affluent (often white) professionals flocking to cities, and enrolling their children in public schools, a historic opportunity exists to create diverse schools.

April 18, 2013 - The Atlantic Cities

Today's suburbs have discarded the human-scaled patterns they once promised. This newly resurfaced series of paintings from Atlanta artist Meg Aubrey will leave you longing for the world we neglected to build.

April 16, 2013 - PlaceShakers

Lawrence Vale and Annemarie Gray compare the cases of communities displaced by the Olympics in Rio de Janeiro, where redevelopment for the 2016 Games is underway, and Atlanta, 20 years ago.

April 16, 2013 - Places Journal

Emily Badger explains why the demolition of El Paso's high-rise city hall this past weekend was a cause for celebration, as the first step in a multimillion-dollar redevelopment that promises to transform the city's downtown.

April 16, 2013 - The Atlantic Cities

Heather Haddon examines the effect that the Garden State's prohibition-era liquor laws, which restrict the number of liquor licenses per town, are having on efforts to revitalize small downtowns across New Jersey.

April 16, 2013 - The Wall Street Journal

In San Francisco, the relatively affluent are vocal in their denunciation of the "gentrifying" effects of the more affluent. This debate clouds the city's fundamental problems in housing its poor and working class residents, says Ilan Greenberg.

April 15, 2013 - The New Republic

With an "unprecedented" amount of development applications waiting for review, and the impending arrival of light rail linking to downtown L.A., seaside Santa Monica is growing up, literally. Sam Lubell examines the city's "development tsunami."

April 14, 2013 - The Architect's Newspaper