Josh Stephens

Josh Stephens is a contributing editor of the California Planning & Development Report (www.cp-dr.com) and former editor of The Planning Report (www.planningreport.com)

Member for
19 years 9 months

Contributed 304 posts

Full Bio

Josh Stephens is the former editor of, and current contributing editor to, the California Planning & Development Report, the state's leading publication covering urban planning. Josh formerly edited The Planning Report and the Metro Investment Report, monthly publications covering, respectively, land use and infrastructure in Southern California.

As a freelance writer, Josh has contributed to Next American City, InTransition magazine, Planning Magazine, Sierra Magazine, and Volleyball Magazine. Josh also served as vice president of programs for the Westside Urban Forum, a leading civic organization on L.A.'s fashionable and dynamic Westside. Josh also served as editorial page editor of The Daily Princetonian and, briefly, the editor of You Are Here: The Journal of Creative Geography while he studied geography at the University of Arizona. He earned his BA in English from Princeton University and his master's in public policy from Harvard University's Kennedy School of Government.

Josh can often be found gazing from high vantage points wondering what it all means.

The Frontier in American Politics

<span style="border-collapse: separate; font-size: 16px; font-style: normal; font-variant: normal; font-weight: normal; letter-spacing: normal; line-height: normal; orphans: 2; text-indent: 0px; text-transform: none; white-space: normal; widows: 2; word-spacing: 0px; font-family: 'Times New Roman'; color: #000000" class="Apple-style-span"><div style="font-family: Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif; font-size: 10px; background-color: #ffffff"><span style="border-collapse: collapse; font-size: 13px" class="Apple-style-span"><p class="MsoNormal">With due respect to <a href="http://xroads.virginia.edu/~Hyper/TURNER/" target="_blank">Frederick Jackson Turner</a>, the American frontier closes on Tuesday. This time, for good.</p>

Searching for Subversion in Boston

<div> </div> <div> I've always wanted, but never quite had the cred, to go to Burning Man. Instead, I went to this year's rendition of <a href="http://www.parkingday.org/" target="_blank">National Park(ing) Day</a> in the hopes that it would provide a reasonable, if diminuative, substitute in temporary parks across the country. Creative minds can do a lot with 180 square feet, especially when there are straight-laced passers-by to shock and paradigms to subvert. <br /> </div>

The Mystery of Ground Transportation

<p> Despite the rising costs of belonging to the jet set, I took my share of flights for a few business trips and boondoggles this summer. Though most of my plane tickets were paid for, my transportation to and from my respective airports were not. Like any good urbanist, I approached each airport as a challenge to see how cheaply and quickly I could get from the airport to my in-town destination. <br /> <br /> These were challenges that I -- or, rather, the cities -- failed more often than they passed. <br />

Marketing the Bus

Not until this month did a bus pass ever make its way into my wallet.

Capitalism Sprawls Into Russia's Frozen Expanse

<p>American-style malls are cropping up in Siberia, and gobbling up land, to enable once-isolated Russians to consume in ways that might have been unimaginable a generation ago.</p>