United States

The Dream Team Behind America's Transportation Revolution

In the first of a five-part series, Angie Schmitt pays tribute to three "visionary bureaucrats" who are changing the face of transportation in the United States.

April 20, 2012 - Streetsblog

Refuting the Recent Food Access and Obesity Findings

Allison Karpyn, Ph.D., director of research and evaluation for the Food Trust, shares her doubts about the overall implications of recent studies questioning the concept of Food Deserts and their connection to obesity.

April 20, 2012 - Next American City

Ranking America's Hipster Havens

Katrina Brown Hunt ranks America's top ten cities for hipsters with the help of Travel + Leisure readers, who voted in the magazine's annual America’s Favorite Cities survey.

April 19, 2012 - Yahoo! Travel

The Tech Start-Up Revolutionizing Parking

Ariel Schwartz profiles Streetline and their suite of applications that are collectively transforming the way we manage, locate, and reserve parking.

April 19, 2012 - Fast Company Co.Exist

Celebrating America's Top Main Streets

Writing in Travel + Leisure, Wayne Curtis surveys 15 of America's greatest Main Streets.

April 19, 2012 - Travel + Leisure

Planting Social Change One Garden At a Time

Emily Wax explores how guerrilla gardeners in Washington D.C. are taking over vacant lots and creating space for neighborhood gardens and vegetable patches, and building community along the way.

April 19, 2012 - The Washington Post

Retrofitting Buildings in Bulk

Emily Badger looks at how a simple idea in energy retrofitting can be tailored to work for the largely untapped market of small to mid-size commercial properties.

April 18, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

Studies Shoot Down Concept of Food Deserts and Their Link to Obesity

Gina Kolata reports on the findings of two new studies that question the very concept of food deserts in poor neighborhoods, and the connection between fresh food access and obesity.

April 18, 2012 - The New York Times

Why Some Electric Vehicles Are No More Green Than Gasoline-Powered Ones

Paul Stenquist analyzes the surprising influence that geography has on the carbon footprint of electric vehicles.

April 18, 2012 - The New York Times

Is Walking a Liberal Value?

Will Oremus investigates an occurrence he noticed recently in Tom Vanderbilt's series on walking – that the cities with the highest "walk scores" were all liberal – and asks why conservative cities don't walk.

April 18, 2012 - Slate

Who's Benefitting From Historic Preservation?

As wealthy communities learn to use historic districts to inflate property values, socially conscious urbanists must think twice about the purpose and place of preservation, Will Doig reports.

April 18, 2012 - Salon

The Designers Behind a Landscape Revolution

Rebecca Messner looks at the groundbreaking work being done by the present generation of landscape architects, and wonders why the only one most people can name died more than a century ago.

April 17, 2012 - Grist

Leading the Charge Against Public Investment in Mass Transit

A recent opinion piece in The Wall Street Journal on the reasons why "Americans don't want to live in Ray LaHood's car-free utopia" is garnering a lot of attention in the planning and transportation worlds.

April 17, 2012 - The Wall Street Journal

Proving That More Bike Lanes Equals More Bikes

If you've always thought that the primary way to encourage more bicycling in your city was simply to build more bike lanes and bike paths, you'll be happy to read about a new study that finally proves your point.

April 17, 2012 - The Washington Post

Why Sense of Place is Worth Caring About

Edward T. McMahon explores the importance of community character, and why it is one of the key elements to a city’s economic success.

April 17, 2012 - Urban Land

Is The Era Of Smart Growth Over?

Maybe not. But smart growth experts appearing at the APA in Los Angeles say it may be morphing into whatever the "next big thing" is.

April 16, 2012 - California Planning & Development Report

GOP Up To Its Old Tricks on Transportation Bill

Tanya Snyder explores the recent horse-trading being proposed by House Republicans, in which they've expressed a willingness to pass the Senate transportation bill in exchange for Senate approval of the Keystone XL pipeline.

April 15, 2012 - Streetsblog D.C.

Planning to Walk

In the final installment of his series on "Walking in America" on Slate, Tom Vanderbilt looks at why so much of the built environment is hostile to pedestrians, and how planning can change that.

April 15, 2012 - Slate.com

Studying the Surprising Correlation Between Big-Box Stores and Hate Groups

Emily Badger reports on an intriguing new study that shows big-box stores may be even more closely correlated with the presence of hate groups than many of the factors that have long been used to explain them.

April 14, 2012 - The Atlantic Cities

Scoring Your Walkability

For the third installment of his series on America's pedestrian problem, Tom Vanderbilt profiles Walk Score, the venerable walkability website and evaluation system.

April 14, 2012 - Slate

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.

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.