Exclusives

FEATURE

Carpooling: What the Census Doesn't Show

Recent census data analysis shows that the number of carpoolers has been declining over the last thirty years. But further study of carpooling's history, as well as social, demographic and economic trends, shows that there is more to carpooling numbers than a downward slope, writes Cynthia Armour.

September 26 - Cynthia Armour

BLOG POST

Digging (in) Detroit

Detroit is the darling of the media.

September 21 - Barbara Knecht

FEATURE

Save the Partnership for Sustainable Communities

September 19 - Geoffrey Anderson

BLOG POST

5 Things That Inspire Me

During these harsh economic times I’ve read about some of the most creative and inspiring planning and design projects in my career. Whether they are the product of the underemployed looking for a creative outlet or a resetting of our values and goals, something magical is happening in the world of planning. Below are 5 things that have inspired my inner planner.

September 15 - Melissa Hege

FEATURE

Seeking the Top 100 Public Spaces in the U.S. and Canada

September 15 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

The false hope of comprehensive planning

It is conventional wisdom in some circles that “comprehensive planning” and sprawl are polar opposites- that planning is the enemy of sprawl. But in fact, a comprehensive plan is almost as likely as a zoning code to be pro-sprawl. Many of the land use policies that make suburbs automobile-dependent (such as wide roads, long blocks, low density, single-use zoning, etc.) can just as easily be found in a comprehensive plan.

September 15 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Manhattan Urbanism, 9/11, and the "Security-Silo"

September 13 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

Making the Most of an Internship

Recently I’ve had a number of undergraduate students ask how to make the most of internships—over the semester and in the breaks. The following represents some advice for current students.

September 11 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

Risk Versus Dread: Implications for Planners; or Let's Not Let The Terrorists Win

“The only thing we have to fear is fear itself—nameless, unreasoning, unjustified terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance” – President Franklin D. Roosevelt, 1932 This being the decade anniversary of the World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist attacks, it seems a good time to consider how our society responds to such threats, and what planners can do to maximize safety.

September 11 - Todd Litman

FEATURE

Board Games for Urban Planners

Mark Ferrall is on a mission to get planners away from their computer screens and collaborating again - over a good board game. Here, he presents three he thinks you and your colleagues will enjoy.

September 8 - Mark Ferrall

BLOG POST

Lapped on Urban Sustainability - can the US ever catch up?

Summer travel took me out of the US and back to Sweden for the first time in five years. While my initial reaction was that things seemed much the same, I quickly realized that the Swedes had quietly pushed forward a number of projects that, if located in the US, would be on the vanguard of sustainability. But over there it's just called urban planning.

September 7 - Walker Wells

BLOG POST

Reconsidering the City Since 9/11

We all remember that day: How we first heard, whom we were with, how we felt as we watched an iconic American cityscape transformed into a burning, toxic wreckage, knowing that thousands were surely dead, many never to be found. We can all too easily recall how our disbelief quickly turned to horror, sadness and then fear – a fear that the world was now a fundamentally different place, and what that would mean for ourselves and our children.

September 7 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

Evaluating Smart Growth Benefits and Costs

This is the third in a series of columns that respond to recent claims by the National Association of Home Builders (NAHB) that smart growth policies are ineffective and harmful. The first was, An Inaccurate Attack On Smart Growth [...]

September 5 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

Are TODs Really PODs?

For a while now, I've wondered if we have been mislabeling the development around well functioning transit stops as transit-oriented developments (TODs). This may seem odd, because numerous studies have shown that property values can increase by 20% to 40% percent around transit stops, particularly rail stations (although the increases are uneven).

September 4 - Samuel Staley

FEATURE

Skyscrapers and the World of Tomorrow

Are skyscrapers the way to achieve great density, or a form of retro-urbanism that should be retired? With a debate simmering in the planning world over the energy efficiency and urban necessity of tall towers, Planetizen's staff decided to determine the answer once and for all.

September 1 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

The Coming Urban Data Revolution

Historically, data sources for urban planning have remained relatively stable. Planners relied on a collection of well-known government-produced datasets to do their work, including statistics and geographic layers from federal, state and local sources. Produced by regulatory processes or occasional surveys, the strengths and limitations of these sources are well known to planners and many citizens. However all this is beginning to change. Not only has the U.S. Census Bureau's American Community Survey introduced a bewildering variety of data products, all with margins of error, three interrelated categories of new data are growing rapidly: crowdsourced, private, and "big" data.

September 1 - Robert Goodspeed

BLOG POST

Bringing New Value to Wastewater

Much of the inefficiency surrounding our use and misuse of water derive from entrenched habits formed during previous eras of presumed inexhaustibility of water supplies. Our wastewater treatment approach has traditionally relied on an infrastructure of centralized municipal water plants where tertiary effluent is recycled. These plants consume considerable energy and cost to restore all of the water they process.

August 26 - Rick Abelson

BLOG POST

The Urban Legacy of Jack Layton

On Monday, August 22nd, the leader of Canada’s New Democratic Party, Jack Layton, succumbed to cancer and passed away, mere months after leading his left-leaning party to unprecedented electoral success as the official opposition to Prime Minister Stephen Harper’s Conservatives. Since then, the public expressions of loss, and the celebration of his life, have been extraordinary: impromptu memorials have sprung up in cities across Canada, <a href="http://www.toronto.ca/jack_layton/index.htm">especially in Toronto</a> where he sat as a city councilor for almost 20 years before moving to federal politics.

August 26 - Michael Dudley

FEATURE

BOOK REVIEW: For the Love of Cities

Urbanist Peter Kageyama's new book suggests that the "loveability" of a city as a factor in its success is greatly underappreciated. Mike Lydon has this review.

August 25 - Mike Lydon

FEATURE

The Vertical Garden City: Towards a New Urban Topology

The true evolution of Ebenezer Howard's Garden City has yet to be realized, says Chris Abel, and today's digital design technology is poised to create a revolutionary vertical version.

August 18 - Chris Abel