World
Global issues, U.N., etc.
5 Ways Technology Can Improve Urban Design
Technology is a great benefit for urban design and urban planning. Not only does it help boost productivity for design and urban planning teams, but it also increases team collaboration, citizen engagement, attention to detail, and accuracy.
Friday Night Lights: NASA Can See Your Holiday Lights from Space
One of the first things researchers noticed when nighttime images from the Suomi NPP satellite were beamed back to Earth: the planet's ambient lighting changes drastically during certain holidays, like Christmas and Ramadan.
Urban vs. Suburban: The Debate Continues
However your read the tea leaves, if it's true the 'burbs are reinventing themselves in the new era, it’s walkable, compact urbanism that's providing a game plan.
The Most Popular Planetizen Posts of 2014
We've been collecting data on the posts you made the most popular for the year 2014.
Study: 'It's hard to beat gasoline' on Air Quality
A University of Minnesota study published in PNAS looks at alternatives including ethanol and electricity and determined that "it's hard to beat gasoline." Even electric vehicles can do better or worse depending on how utilities source electricity.
Mapping the Locavore's Food Supply
FiveThirtyEight and ESPN recently produced a short documentary about the creators of Falling Fruit—a website that maps food sources in cities around the world.
Op-Ed Critiques Architecture: from 'Infinitesimal Specks' to 'Sprawling Dreck'
Steven Bingler and Martin C. Pedersen pen a withering critique of the architecture profession's obsession with glamorous contracts at the expense of context-sensitive, community-focused designs.
Urban Mobility Plans Key To More Efficient and Integrated Planning
"Urban Mobility Plans – National Approaches and Local Practice," a new guidebook by the Sustainable Urban Transportation Project, describes specific policies and planning practices to maximize urban transport system efficiency.
International Climate Accord Reached in Lima
Known as the Lima Accord, after the capital of Peru where representatives from 200 nations met for two weeks, a deal was reached to reduce greenhouse gas emissions in preparation for talks to be held in Paris in December. But is it strong enough?
A Map of Worldwide Speed Limits
Do you have a need for speed? Or at least a need to know the speed limit anywhere in the world? Greater Greater Washington has just the map for you.
Growing Suburbs for the Good for the World
The Economist has published a pair of feature articles examining the growth of suburbs around the world in the hopes of avoiding the mistakes of the West.
Op-Ed: Urban Design Should Mind the Line Between 'Cute' and 'Safe'
Sarah Goodyear writes a dissenting take on the "cutestification" of urban design—calling for a priority on clean and safe over "fun."
Six Helpful Apps for Urban Designers
Leslie Clagett shares a list of apps for urban designers (helpful to project managers, too) "to streamline design problems, decision making, and materials selection."
The Unique 'Fingerprints' of 131 Cities
An article on big think examines a project to find the unique qualities of urban street grids as an exercise in the potential of Big Data.
Can Agile Thinking Create Outstanding Plans?
Planning exercises typically require intense baseline data collection, extensive community engagement, visioning, number crunching, analysis, modeling, forecasting, more analysis, tradeoffs, revisions to the baseline data collected at the onset
Top 10 Books - 2015
Planetizen is pleased to release its list of the ten best books in urban planning, design, and development published in 2014.
Report: Bus Rapid Transit Up 383 Percent in Ten Years
Jarrett Walker shares news and analysis of a recent study by the Institute for Transportation & Development Policy (ITDP) finding explosive growth in the construction of bus rapid transit lines around the world in the last ten years.
Friday Eye Candy: Stunning Visualizations of Civilization in Space
Dan Malouf shares a collection of still images taken from the four-minute film Wanderers showing "what human civilization might look like with colonies on Mars, in the asteroid belt, and on the moons of Jupiter, Saturn, and Uranus."
35 New Cities Named as 100 Resilient Cities Members
After its 2013 announcement of support for the first 33 of the 100 resilient cities, the Rockefeller Foundation has announced its next round of member cities: 35 cities, including six from the United States.
The United Nations Studies Urban Emissions Monitoring
Urban emissions researchers have been invited to speak at the UN Climate Conference in Lima. Their findings: through focused and networked monitoring, cities can make real inroads on cutting carbon.
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.
Eagle County Government
Harvard University Graduate School of Design
Nashville Planning Department
The Architects Foundation
University of Cincinnati Online
The Pocatello Development Authority
The Urban Renewal Agency of the City of Pocatello
Journal of the American Planning Association
