Exclusives

BLOG POST

<p> Hey, Las Vegas. Good to see you! Tough break about all those foreclosures... But, hey, I hear you&#39;ve got a new mega project opening up. That&#39;s cool! I bet those other broke cities are super jealous. Yeah, this new project&#39;s gonna bring you back to glory, eh? Oh, what&#39;s that? What did you just call it? CityCenter? The Capital of the New World? An urban community? <br /> <br /> Let me stop you right there.<br />

December 16 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> You may have noticed that over the past few years we&#39;ve learned a lot more about how the brain works. This is mostly due to advances in functional neuroimaging (fMRI), which makes brain scanning much less onerous and dangerous (no radiation involved). Researchers are using this new access to the brain to send it through various puzzles and thoughts and seeing where and how the brain reacts.  </p> <p> Josh Greene is an assistant professor at Harvard, and he has used his research to explore questions of moral judgement and decisionmaking. One puzzle he&#39;s looked at is called the &quot;Trolley Problem.&quot; Here&#39;s the setup:  </p>

December 16 - Tim Halbur

FEATURE

December 14 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> Conventional wisdom dictates that middle-class families would find urban schools more tempting if we only “fixed the schools”- a concept that implies that urban public schools are simply unable to educate anyone, because they are either horribly underfunded (in the liberal version of this claim) or horribly mismanaged (in the conservative version). </p>

December 12 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

<p> The display of yellow ribbons in remembrance of friends and family serving far away goes back hundreds of years. Dr. Gavin Finley has an <a href="http://images.google.com/imgres?imgurl=http://endtimepilgrim.org/yellowriboak.jpg&amp;imgrefurl=http://endtimepilgrim.org/yellowrib.htm&amp;usg=__Ksf0tpiIRNuBejziPwNGMPQdJfw=&amp;h=384&amp;w=248&amp;sz=54&amp;hl=en&amp;start=13&amp;um=1&amp;tbnid=naMNZ7Kvgpah_M:&amp;tbnh=123&amp;tbnw=79&amp;prev=/images%3Fq%3Dyellow%2Bribbons%2Baround%2Btree%26hl%3Den%26rlz%3D1T4SUNA_enUS286US270%26sa%3DN%26um%3D1">interesting website </a>on the history. The American Folklore Center at The Library of Congress has more intriguing history and also cites the 1949 John Wayne and Joanne Dru film, <em>She Wore a Yellow Ribbon</em>. </p>

December 11 - Dwight Merriam

BLOG POST

<span style="font-size: 11pt; line-height: 115%; font-family: 'Calibri','sans-serif'"> <p style="margin: 0cm 0cm 10pt" class="MsoNormal"> <span style="font-family: Calibri">Here is good news for anybody looking for smart ways to reduce climate change. </span><a href="http://www.vtpi.org/wwclimate.pdf"><span style="font-family: Calibri; color: #0000ff">&quot;Win-Win&quot; transportation emission reduction strategies</span></a><span style="font-family: Calibri"> can provide substantial energy conservation and emission reductions in ways that also help achieve economic and social objectives.</span> </p>

December 10 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

<p> A recent event organized by <a href="http://www.good.is" target="_blank" title="Good Magazine">Good Magazine</a>, <a href="http://www.sheridanhawkes.com" target="_blank" title="Sheridan/Hawkes Collaborative">Sheridan/Hawkes Collaborative</a> and <a href="http://www.popsiclesforeveryone.org/" target="_blank" title="The Public Studio">The Public Studio</a> brought together about 30 civic-minded designers, planners and architects to come up with some ways to improve the urban environment of Los Angeles. It was a big question to tackle in one afternoon, with a huge array of possible solutions. The crowd was split up into five separate groups and surprisingly, each came up with a similar answer: taco trucks. OK, not taco trucks specifically, but the essence of taco trucks and what they bring to the city.

December 10 - Nate Berg

FEATURE

Vacant properties are considered blight instead of potential, argues John Kromer of the Fels Institute. By acting strategically and thinking smaller, officials can revitalize their cities and attract new, more stable investment.

December 10 - John Kromer

BLOG POST

<span>Yesterday, as a part of my university’s community outreach efforts, I delivered a lecture at a suburban retirement home on the theme of sustainable cities. I discussed Smart Growth, New Urbanism and the need for greater urban densities, all framed by the current events unfolding in Copenhagen at the <a href="http://en.cop15.dk/">United Nations Climate Change Conference</a>.<span>  </span></span> <p class="MsoNormal"> <span>At the end of my talk, several elderly ladies came up to chat with me and thank me for the lecture. On her way out, one turned to me and said, “You take care of the world for us. We’re not going to be around much longer – it’s up to you young people.”<span>  </span></span> </p>

December 9 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

<p>For a myriad of personal and professional reasons I moved to New York City this fall. Part of the reason I uprooted myself from the pastel, sun soaked streets of Miami Beach to the chaos of New York is because Gotham has made such incredible strides in becoming one of America&#39;s most bicycle-friendly cities. </p>

December 9 - Mike Lydon

FEATURE

Jay Walljasper reflects on the glorious urbanism of Rome, and what planners and architects in North America can learn from it.

December 7 - Jay Walljasper

BLOG POST

<p> I am prompted to report on this issue I came across in a <a href="http://www.philly.com/philly/wires/ap/news/state/pennsylvania/20091125_ap_papastorseeksokforsonsgraveonchurchland.html">news item</a> last week. A Baptist minister in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, buried his 18-year-old son, who died three days after a car crash on July 12, in the backyard of the pastor’s church. While state law doesn’t prohibit this, some county and local ordinances do, and this county, Fayette County, only allows burials on large parcels zoned for agricultural use. The church has only five acres and is in a residential zone. </p>

December 4 - Dwight Merriam

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> <span> I recently read an article containing a World War II-era poster: “When You Ride Alone You Ride With Hitler.” The authors of the article asked whether governments could use similar powers of persuasion today to discourage energy consumption and thus address climate change. </span> </p>

December 3 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

December 3 - Christopher Corbett

BLOG POST

This Saturday, Nate Berg and I will be taking part in <a href="http://www.good.is/post/good-event-la-2-0-refresh-reinvent-re-imagine/">LA 2.0: Refresh, Reinvent, Re-Imagine</a>, an event hosted by <a href="http://www.good.is/">GOOD Magazine</a>, <a href="http://www.sheridanhawkes.com/">Sheridan/Hawkes Collaborative</a> and The Public Studio. <span> </span>The goal is to brainstorm innovative solutions to improve the physical environment of Los Angeles.

December 1 - Tim Halbur

BLOG POST

The short answer to the question about whether someone needs professional or activist planning experience before graduate school is yes!

December 1 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

<p> Those of us whose professional lives are inextricably linked to the real estate development economy in one way or another have had plenty of time in the last year to twiddle our thumbs and attempt to figure out what the heck happened. This much we know — there was a housing bubble some places, it burst, and the economy collapsed. Have you ever slipped and fell – one those unexpected spectacular aerial feats where your feet fly out from underneath you, you look down your legs and see your toes at eye level pointing to the sky, and you say to yourself “this is really going to hurt when I land”? That’s what this year has been like for many, some of whom are still waiting to hit hard because they had projects in the pipeline and they are grinding their way through “inventory” of unfinished work. Plus, we started from a high plateau. Wall Street types call the unexpected but apparent life in the market during the first part of a recession “<a href="http://www.investopedia.com/terms/d/deadcatbounce.asp">dead cat bounce</a>” which Forbes defines as “a temporary recovery from a prolonged decline or bear market, after which the market continues to fall.” Even a dead cat dropped from a very high place will bounce a little when it hits the ground… </p>

November 30 - Dwight Merriam

BLOG POST

<p> New Jersey&#39;s prized gateway communities along Long Beach Island - South Jersey&#39;s extra-special vacation spot better known to the planning community for its prescient example as human habitation threatened by natural erosion in Ian McHarg&#39;s planning tome “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/Design-Nature-Wiley-Sustainable/dp/047111460X">Design with Nature</a>” - are facing an entirely man-made threat in the form of ill-conceived plans to effectively double the roadway “capacity” of the one and only bridge connecting this 18 mile barrier island to the mainland.  If NJDOT is left to its own devices, and <a href="http://www.app.com/article/20091117/NEWS/911170348/1070/NEWS02">local community officials rush them along</a>, a proposed new bridge will have the complete opposi

November 30 - Ian Sacs

FEATURE

In the battle against climate change, cities will be even more important than we think, says Michael Mehaffy, managing director of the Sustasis Foundation. Research presented in Copenhagen shows that Vehicle Miles Traveled (VMTs) are only part of the story, and should not be considered in isolation from other factors.

November 30 - Michael Mehaffy

BLOG POST

<p> So, I&#39;m out at a site visit with the city engineer last week and we&#39;re talking about ways to implement curb extensions to reduce pedestrian exposure to vehicular traffic.  We&#39;re discussing inexpensive ways to accomplish this, and then on queue, as is the right and obligation of all civil engineers, the ugly villain subject of all things bumped-out rears its head: drainage. </p>

November 23 - Ian Sacs