Europe
Dublin's Bike Sharing System Finding Early Success
A new bike sharing system in Dublin is turning out to be a surprise success in the Irish city.
How To Design Your Own Speed Bump - In German
A German homeowner is frustrated with the traffic in his neighborhood, so he designs and installs his own speed bump for his street. While there are no English subtitles, the pictures and sounds illustrate the directions and results all too well.
Barcelona Residents Make Major Planning Decision By Popular Vote
Barcelona, Spain is planning a redesign of La Diagonal, an important boulevard, and is asking citizens to make the final choice between two alternatives or no change at all.
People Rarely Leave 6-Mile Circle
In a study in Europe using cellphone GPS data, researchers discovered that people rarely leave a six-mile area around where they live. GPS cellphone data is being used for a host of urban planning studies like this.
New Argument for Public Transit: Better for Texting?
In a recent piece in Wired, Clive Thompson suggests that the solution to the problem of texting while driving is not to stop texting, but to stop driving. The popularity of texting is a good reason to support public transit.
Spain's High Speed Rail Uses Luxury to Lure
Spain's high speed rail system is consistently beating out airlines for inter-city travel. But it's not through low prices.
Ghetto-ization: Avoiding the Pitfalls of Density
At first glance, the historic Ghetto streetscene in Venice is an appealing new urbanist community. In another place at another time, the virtues of compact, walkable and dense were the very isolation we now abhor.
Friday Funny: Yield to Drunks
In the face of a recent surge in accidents, a small town in Romania has installed new traffic signs warning drivers about drunk pedestrians who may be laying in roadways.
China's Cross-Continental Rail Plan
China has announced plans to extend its high speed rail network Wetsward across the continent, connecting its eastern shores to Europe.
High Speed Rail Creates Social Cohesion
A European report shows that high-speed rail is creating social cohesion and accessibility for remote places. Could the same effect happen in the U.S.?
Multi-Family Housing to Cure Loneliness
The Swedish, apparently, long for community. Kjellgren Kaminsky Architecture has proposed a redesign for an abandoned sanitarium, turning it into a green, multi-family community.
Public Trees: Landscaping, or Food Source?
An art group called Fallen Fruit promotes the idea of public fruit trees for general consumption by all. But on a trip to Madrid to plant trees, the government refused their intervention, saying that trees were architecture for the city, not food.
Sprawling Madrid
While Madrid's urban core is highly dense, the city has sprawled out over the last two decades much further than its growing population requires, says Madrid resident and planning consultant Marco Adelfio.
Dropping Bombs and Dropping Parking Lots
This post from The Overhead Wire looks at the impact of parking lot sprawl in American downtowns -- and finds a striking resemblance between those downtowns and bomb-ravaged cities from World War Two.
Reinventing Mobility in Detroit
PBS documents Detroit's attempts to overcome its history as "the Motor City" to create new ways of getting people around. Transit advocates play a big part in this preview, which includes renderings of projected transit options.
Complaints Grow Over Increasing "Ugliness" of Paris
A press conference was held in Paris to draw attention to the problem of "increasingly large and unsympathetic buildings" cropping up around the City of Lights.
Resort Planned in Russian Nature Preserve
Environmentalists in Russia are fuming over plans to construct a resort in the middle of a nature preserve near the 2014 Winter Olympics host city of Sochi.
Birth Rates Falling and Cities Failing
Birth rates are dropping across Europe, and some cities are on the verge of collapse because of it. Exhibit A: Hoyerswerda, Germany.
Will HSR Jobs Go Overseas?
Joan Lowy suggests that the Obama administration's claim that the high-speed rail initiative will create jobs overlooks the fact that the expertise is in Europe and Asia and foreign firms will likely be needed to develop HSR quickly.
The Density Game - On YouTube
Dan Zack, downtown development coordinator for Redwood City, CA, gave a 50-minute presentation on Delightful Density to a Palo Alto audience on Nov. 5. This 12-minute excerpt is composed of 17 buildings - get out your pencils and guess their density.
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.
Clanton & Associates, Inc.
Jessamine County Fiscal Court
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
