World
Global issues, U.N., etc.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
'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.
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.
Top Architecture Websites
The Life of An Architect website recently published its second list of “The Best Architectural Websites in the World.”
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?
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
How to Fund City Growth? Value Capture
Governments should look to land value tax to fund large city-building projects.
Why Urban History Matters
Chuck Wolfe's recent reconnaissance of Edinburgh provides a foil for his rallying cry: Going forward, let’s not discount the influence of history’s recurring themes in how we redevelop the urban realm.
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
