Exclusives

FEATURE

Invest in Nature’s Infrastructure

According to the Census Bureau, the United States will have over 400 million people by 2040. How will population growth – 100 million more Americans over the next three decades – impact the quality of your environment? The answer will depend on the choices we make as a society, says James A. LaGro, Jr.

January 19 - James A. LaGro Jr.

BLOG POST

Affordable And Efficient Communities for 2013

Just getting started here, so I hope you’ll give me time to set my voice and you will tune in to provide a thoughtful dialogue. Like many of you, I am an urban planner with a distinguished background. My current emphasis is on new community development that will begin to emerge in the United States by 2013. Over the past two years, I was lucky enough to have a patron who sent me all over the world to see and record the best places, and meet with experts in energy efficiency, health care delivery, workplace transformation, learning and transportation demand reduction.

January 18 - Rick Abelson

BLOG POST

Anybody For Some Duck Duck Goose?: Planning School, Semester Two Begins

On Friday, in the first week of my second semester of planning graduate school, we did the hokey-pokey. We put our right foot in, put our right foot out, put our right foot in, and then we shook it all about. We turned ourselves around. That was what it was all about. The demonstration was all about pointing out common ground and how people were rooted in order to approach problem solving and conflict resolution. It sounds a little squishy, I know. But it got the point across, and more important, it introduced the dance to one international student who had never heard of the hokey-pokey.

January 18 - Jeffrey Barg

BLOG POST

Quest to Grad School: The Beginning

I decided to apply to graduate schools in urban planning before I had even finished up with my undergrad work. Urban planning spans many topics, and when I minored in it in college I realized I had a lot still to learn about architecture and design, the environment, and public policy. What really got me interested, however, was when I saw how planning intersects with community organization. I first saw the two forces at work while I volunteered with a philosophically grassroots, non-profit planning organization. I think we did some good work in some not-so-glamorous places, which still encourages me as I think about my career goals.

January 14 - Judy Chang

BLOG POST

Death and "De-Planning" in Gaza

Like all of us I have been watching the carnage in Gaza with concern and growing despair. And like many people, I have struggled with how best to understand this conflict, fraught as it is with historic hatreds, accusations and counter-accusations. If it is at all possible I would like to attempt a pragmatic view, starting with the recognition that the historic conflict over Palestine concerning land ownership, use and associated rights may be seen as falling within the spectrum of issues related to land use planning.

January 13 - Michael Dudley

BLOG POST

A weak link

A common refrain among environmentally-minded planners is: policy X will reduce global warming. So why would anyone be dumb enough to oppose policy X? But often, global warming will be the weakest, not the strongest, argument for policy X.

January 11 - Michael Lewyn

FEATURE

Critics May Miss The Green Point of the SmartCode

Communities aren't going to get a green code implemented, or any code, without that code appealing to developers, says Sandy Sorlien. They're building our new sustainable places and infilling our old ones.

January 11 - Sandy Sorlien

BLOG POST

Water City Design - Copenhagen and Vancouver

In 2008 I took a wonderful trip to Copenhagen, Rotterdam, Amsterdam and Malmo, Sweden. Although the occasion involved invitations to speak on Vancouver's waterfront achievements and challenges, it was really an opportunity for me to learn from these dynamic cities, and see the best and worst of European waterfront design and master-planning.

January 9 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

Helping is Hurting

Protecting the poor and protecting the environment are two areas we haven’t quite figured out yet. Put them together, and we’re really up a creek. And we are, because these two silos are actually linked very closely. The relationship between poverty and environmental degradation is incredibly complex, but you wouldn’t guess it by looking at some recent policies gathering support out there in the world. Solutions, it would seem, are incredibly simple. But most of these ideas, though well-intentioned, address only one side of the poverty-environment relationship -- and really hurt the other.

January 8 - Nate Berg

FEATURE

TOD Q&A With John Renne and Jeff Wood

Transit oriented development experts John Renne, PhD, and Jeff Wood recently fielded questions from Planetizen readers about TOD, its current applications and its future.

January 8 - Planetizen

BLOG POST

Travel and Cars – Fun with Numbers for 2008

Transportation and its relationship to the economy have been headline media topics for most of 2008 as we have seen unprecedented swings in fuel prices and travelers responding with declines in vehicle miles of travel (VMT) and unprecedented slowing in new vehicle sales. Transit and Amtrak have seen noticeable ridership growth and there have been cutbacks in demand for and supply of airline capacity. What is increasingly looking like an historic recession combined with a plummeting of gas prices late in 2008 has confounded the diagnosis of energy price impacts on travel.

January 5 - Steven Polzin

FEATURE

Down on the Corner

Solutions to our global ills can be found in your local neighborhood, says Jay Walljasper. Great examples can be found in communities from South Bend, Indiana to Mississauga, Ontario.

January 5 - Jay Walljasper

BLOG POST

A Semester in Review, New Year Resolutions, Building Blocks and Toy Cars

In the dawn of the New Year, I cannot help but reflect on my pivotal moments in 2008, and look forward to 2009. I wrapped up – no, survived – my first semester in the Master of City Planning program at MIT. I am being a little dramatic here, but the program is really very rigorous. One thing I learned was that with such a rigorous program there is no need to make it unnecessarily more challenging. When I arrived in Cambridge, I was very excited to be in school again – I graduated from college ten years ago – and I registered for five and a half classes. Three and a half of the classes were required and two were electives. It was recommended that we take only one elective, but I was psyched and I was going to take MIT by storm!

January 4 - Tamika Camille Gauvin

FEATURE

Top Planning Issues Of 2008

January 1 - Abhijeet Chavan

BLOG POST

Sweet Spot Density for Livable Neighborhoods

Single-family detached homes typically epitomize sprawl, while 4 or 5 story apartment buildings now seem to be the utopian ideal for livable neighborhoods. But some of the most livable and walkable neighborhoods I know are largely comprised of single family homes.

December 30 - Diana DeRubertis

FEATURE

Pain at the Pump, Suburban Blues and the Resurgence of Compact Growth

A paradigm shift is occurring in the development patterns of American cities -- even the inner cities that have struggled for decades with decay and abandonment, writes Kofi Sefa-Boakye of the Compton Community Redevelopment Agency.

December 29 - Kofi Sefa-Boakye

BLOG POST

A few feet

Because of President-elect Obama’s plans to spend billions of dollars on infrastructure, some recent discussion of smart growth has focused on proposals for huge projects, such as rebuilding America’s rail network. But walkability often depends on much smaller steps, steps that require changes in tiny increments of space.

December 27 - Michael Lewyn

BLOG POST

Is Your Planning Department Passionate?

As we move into a 2009 full of staggering urban challenges - economic, environmental, social, and leadership challenges - do our planning departments have the passion, creativity and leadership to be what our cities need them to be?

December 23 - Brent Toderian

FEATURE

The Social In Security

The recent terrorist attacks in Mumbai are inspiring calls for heightened security and a less open society. Himanshu Burte argues that this is the wrong approach, and that throwing up boundaries would be a mistake.

December 22 - Himanshu Burte

BLOG POST

Becoming a Calvinist: First Semester Wrap-Up

Four months, thousands of pages and $60 worth of printing later, my first semester of planning school is over. Really? That’s it? Not that I was understimulated. Plenty of big assignments kept me up later than my girlfriend would’ve liked. But in the working world, four months isn’t that long—it’s a big project, a new initiative. In grad school, apparently, it’s reason enough to take a month off. So without any further ado, a few highlights and lowlights from the first semester. Not too many lowlights, though. A few of my professors read this blog.

December 21 - Jeffrey Barg