World

Global issues, U.N., etc.

Airport

Where’s the Nearest Airport? New Diagram Shows—for Every Place on Earth

"Each region is closer to a particular airport than any other," explains the creator of what's called a spherical Voronoi diagram. The diagram illustrates just how far that airport is.

April 13, 2014 - The Washington Post - Wonkblog

Impact Investing for Community Development

Lisa Hall gives an overview of impact investing in this enlightening, introduction-type piece. She shares the potential and the new opportunities for community development that are coming out of this emerging field.

April 11, 2014 - Shelterforce

Friday Eye Candy: Revisiting the Sites of Famous Album Covers

For the music aficionados: a recent article in Guardian Cities dug up the Google Street Views of the exact locations of iconic album covers, laying the album cover over the current condition.

April 11, 2014 - Guardian Cities

Open Street Events Around the World

Inspired by the ciclovías of Bogotá, Colombia, open street events are growing in popularity around the world. Here’s a survey of nine events from around the world that close streets to cars and open them up to humans.

April 10, 2014 - Gizmodo

Housing Policy Repair for a New Era: Let’s Review

Communities across the U.S. are increasingly frustrated at the persistence of mid-20th-century thinking about housing among local leaders even in the face of a mountain of 21st-century evidence that times have changed.

April 8, 2014 - PlaceShakers

Kid on Bus

Crowd-Sourced Infographic Rates Ten Transit Systems

An interactive map featuring a combination of ESRI's Story Maps, Yelp, and TripAdvisor posts shows ten popular subway systems as rated by transit riders.

April 5, 2014 - Mashable

Los Angeles Sunset

Top Urban Instagram Feeds

Marta Bausells and the readers of Guardian Cities collaborated to create a list of top Instagram photographers from around the world.

April 4, 2014 - Guardian Cities

New York Historic map

Friday Eye Candy: New York Public Library Releases Thousands of Historic Maps to the Public

“For the historic cartographile, Christmas may have come late, but here it is,” writes Daniel Stuckey.

April 4, 2014 - New York Public Library

Climate Change Harms People, not just Polar Bears, Warns IPCC in Exhaustive Report

The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) issued a follow-up report to another in September that focused on the cause of climate change. The report released Monday focuses on the disruption that climate change will cause human society.

April 2, 2014 - Slate

'People Habitat': Kaid Benfield Takes Smart Growth to a Higher Level

Kaid Benfield has a new book out, which Scott Doyon found positively uplifting. In ways beyond what you might be thinking.

April 2, 2014 - PlaceShakers

Nightmare

Top Ten Fake Futures Most Likely to Destroy Planning As We Know It

The following is a list things that are never going to happen, because if they did, urban planning as we know it would cease to exist.

April 1, 2014 - Planetizen April 1st Edition

Top Architecture Websites

The Life of An Architect website recently published its second list of “The Best Architectural Websites in the World.”

March 31, 2014 - Life of An Architect

Air Pollution Kills 7 Million Annually

In September, 2011 the above title read two million. Figures from both years are based on reports from the World Health Organization, a United Nations agency. Is air quality getting worse, or are more deaths being attributed to air pollution?

March 30, 2014 - The Atlantic Cities

Young Planners

A Call for a Youth Movement in the Planning Process

Most millennials and Gen Xers are either too busy or too disengaged to realize how the future of their hometowns is being shaped by people much older than they.

March 27, 2014 - Vancouver Sun

Rewarded for Doing Good: Shigeru Ban Wins Pritzker Prize

The 2014 Pritzker Architecture Prize had been awarded to Shigeru Ban. Ban is best known for his innovative use of paper as a construction material and for relief work in disaster areas.

March 25, 2014 - The Architect's Newspaper

Happy

How Urban Design Begets Happiness

A new book by Charles Montgomery makes the case that many of the best possible outcomes for the built environment require human interaction—whether commuting to work or walking around residential neighborhoods.

March 24, 2014 - The Globe and Mail

Living Cities Screen Grab

Seven Apps to Improve Quality of Life in Cities

It’s no secret that more and more people are using smart phones to get the most out of their urban experiences—at home or while traveling. Guardian Cities lists some of the best urban apps and launches a contest to find the best apps worldwide.

March 11, 2014 - Guardian Cities

Citi Bike Rack

How Smart Cities Encourage Citizen Engagement

The extent to which cities will build data collection systems into the infrastructure—or how much we’ll voluntarily gather and share information from our smartphones—has yet to be determined. Here is a survey of what some cities have launched so far.

March 6, 2014 - Woodhouse

Imagining a Future Vertical City

Not everyone is sold on the idea of vertical cities, populated with futuristic skyscrapers beyond the proportions of earlier eras. But for as long cities bear the brunt of the world’s population growth, explorations of verticality will continue.

March 5, 2014 - Sourceable

Can OpenStreetMap Overthrow the Google Maps Hegemony?

A recent long-read describes the current state of the competition for primacy in the world of online mapping tools. The champ—Google Maps. The challenger—OpenStreetMap.

March 5, 2014 - The Next Web

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.

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.