Exclusives

BLOG POST

Once Again, Planners Descend On New Orleans

It’s been said before, but it’s worth repeating – the reconstruction of New Orleans is both a planner’s dream – and a planner’s nightmare. Even before the flood waters subsided, planners and architects from around the globe descended on the Crescent City to give their take on the road to recovery. Close to two years later, a host of plans lay in the wake of the constant ebb and flow of professionals in and out of the city. Local residents are exasperated with the proposed plans and the progress of the recovery. Meanwhile, the rest of the country has seemingly lost interest.

June 1 - Christian Madera

BLOG POST

Street Beat

4 tools that support community building at the street level.Just heard from my co-worker, Chris Haller, who is at Where 2.0 that Google has announced yet another cool tool for visualization. Street View provides panoramic views embedded as an additional view to g-maps. Initially this tool is only available in 5 cities: Denver, Las Vegas, Miami, New York and San Francisco. Was able to locate the following YouTube <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=91wuBqlny50">demo</a>. Corny video, but cool technology.

May 30 - Ken Snyder

BLOG POST

Summer Academics: Finding Faculty Blogs

With the coming of summer, students finish courses, faculty head off to do research, and practitioners think about vacations. However, for those interested in keeping up to date with academic issues in planning, a number of bloggists provide useful insights into the politics and hot issues in planning education. For students they are a window into the work of educators and for practicing planners they are an easy way to keep up to date with what’s happening in the schools.

May 29 - Ann Forsyth

FEATURE

Building A Home Everyone Can Visit

May 29 - Wayne Senville

BLOG POST

Madrid’s Alternate Suburban Universe

Houston or Holland? The rapidly growing suburbs of Madrid uncomfortably (and instructively) amalgamate some of both. I was lucky to receive a recent tour from David Cohn, a long-time colleague and 20-year resident of Madrid; Sylvia Perea, a post-doctoral student and, until recently, an editor at the journal Arquitectura Viva, and Emilio Ontiveros, a young architect of the local Research Group on Social Housing. <img src="/files/u10275/DSC_0122_0.jpg" alt="" width="320" height="212" />

May 28 - James S. Russell

BLOG POST

Ontario’s leaders look for “Places to Grow”

Think big. That’s what the people of Ontario and the Toronto region set out to do more than 5 years ago when they began a visionary planning process for the area known as the Greater Golden Horseshoe in southern Ontario, Canada. (The Greater Golden Horseshoe is the area around Lake Ontario that stretches from roughly Peterborough to the east, west through metropolitan Toronto, and around the west tip of the lake to the southern side and Niagara Falls — hence the horseshoe shape.)

May 22 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

Underwriting Fun

“We underwrite fun,” says Naomi McCleary, Manager of arts for the Waitakere City Council, one of the municipalities that make up the Auckland (New Zealand) metropolitan region. She is referring to the practice of involving artists in the thinking and creation of public places, buildings, streets, bridges; they take an equal seat at the table from conception to completion. According to Ms. McCleary, the results are remarkable. Fun is a partner of beauty and happiness, it is a means toward the creation of objects and places that are beautifully usable. Around the world it is possible to find municipalities that are underwriting this kind of fun, but for every found opportunity, we have several more that are lost.

May 22 - Barbara Knecht

BLOG POST

Does planning = zoning?

I would like to think that the overwhelming response to the question posed in the title would be a resounding, "No!" I never gave the issue much thought before last week because frankly, I didn't really need to. Working in a city like Philadelphia where the overwhelming percentage of proposed projects requires a zoning variance, we've trained ourselves to work within an imperfect system and make the best of what's at hand. (It should be noted that Philadelphia is about to embark upon a process to re-vamp the zoning code, but that is for another post in the future). More importantly, the issues faced by some neighborhoods go a lot deeper than zoning. So why this post?

May 21 - Scott Page

FEATURE

Sex and the City, Pregnancy and the Suburb?

If a correlation exists between birth rates and urbanization, does the post World War II baby boom owe its existence to urban sprawl?

May 21 - Sriram Khé, PhD

BLOG POST

Is Community Just Another Commodity?

A commodity is something that is normally bought and sold. Not everything is a commodity. Sure, most people need to purchase a certain amount of food, clothing and housing, but many other things that we value are not for sale.  For example, simply purchasing exercise equipment will not make you physically fit – it requires effort. Similarly, health, safety, education, rewarding personal relationships, community and our satisfaction with life are aspirations that depend more on our behavior than on how much we spend.

May 17 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

Frozen Assets in Arizona

Don't know if you've heard, but Arizona voters passed a new law in November, a nameless one called Proposition 207. And here's what preservationists have to say about it:"With Prop 207, we're dead in the water," Debbie Abele, Scottsdale historic preservation officer, told the East Valley Tribune.It's modeled after Oregon's controversial property-rights law Measure 37. In a nutshell, it allows property owners to seek compensation from the state for infringing on their right to use, divide, sell, or possess their property via a land-use law.

May 14 - Margaret Foster

BLOG POST

Equitable Utopias - Thoughts on Walking Away from Omelas

In the short story The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas, Ursula LeGuin depicts a utopia that is made possible by the transference of all misery to a child who is kept in a cellar. Some in the community ignore the scapegoat’s existence, choosing the easy life of bliss that is offered to them. Those whose consciences do not allow them to live in willful ignorance often chose to leave Omelas and live complete, full lives that include awareness, and shouldering their own pain.

May 14 - Lisa Feldstein

FEATURE

Rent Regulation: The Right Tool for the Right Job

Far too many discussions about the 'failures' of rent control don't take into account what such regulation is really designed to do -- namely, provide housing stability and protect against displacement. Before allowing rent control regulation to wither in New York City and elsewhere, it's a good idea to consider how much residents and society overall benefit from these imperfect policies.

May 14 - Greg Smithsimon

BLOG POST

Chinese urbanism and the scale of development

SHANGHAI, CHINA--I've been a fan of New Urbanism for several years, but I've always considered myself an urban "pluralist"--someone who doesn't believe there is an "objective" or general urban form that is persistently successful over long periods of time. Indeed, Bob Bruegmann's thesis in <a href="http://www.amazon.com/Sprawl-Compact-History-Robert-Bruegmann/dp/0226076911/ref=sr_1_1/103-6037660-7039810?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1179060172&sr=8-1" title="sprawl: a compact history">Sprawl: A Compact History</a>, suggests that urban form changes and evolves over time, although generally in a less dense direction.

May 13 - Samuel Staley

BLOG POST

Reading, Writing, And Planning: Urbanism In High School

The high school curriculum overlooks a great many subjects, so we could go on at length pointing out its ironies and shortcomings. But the topic at hand happens to be urban planning, so let's stick with that.

May 10 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

Communist China's GPS congestion management capitalism

BEIJING, 9 MAY 2007--Anyone questioning China's potential to become the dominant player in the 21st century and beyond need look no further than the <a href="http://www.bjjtw.gov.cn" title="Beijing Transp. Info Ctr">Beijing Transportation Information Center</a>. The entrepreneurial leader of the center, Mr. WANG gang, has lead the development of the most innovative system for managing traffic congestion I've seen, putting U.S. systems to shame and leapfrogging over London's cutting edge signal coordinatin system. Rather than try to regulate congestion by limiting automobile use, they have figured out a way to use technology to make its use more efficient.

May 10 - Samuel Staley

BLOG POST

The Urban Freeway Conundrum

Planners regret them, neighbors dislike them, and they gobble up valuable real estate in the center city. The downtown expressway is a much-disliked reality in most American cities. Now's the time to do something about them.

May 9 - Robert Goodspeed

BLOG POST

Beijing's traffic nightmare and public transit

BEIJING--When I first learned that I wouldn't be able to rent a car in Beijing, I was disappointed. That's how I usually break away from the business "bubble" to learn something about a city. But, it didn't take more than an hour to realize that I was better off with a local driver than tackling it myself. Driving habits, combined with roads choking with pedestrians, cars, buses, and taxis, convinced me I needed to leave the driving to a "pro".

May 9 - Samuel Staley

FEATURE

Urban Planning and the Informal Sector in Developing Countries

Rather than seeking to eliminate the presence of the informal sector, urban planning should seek to accommodate this important component of urban economies.

May 7 - Deden Rukmana

BLOG POST

Atlantic Yards and the Perils of Community Benefit Agreements

Just east of downtown Brooklyn on a 22 acre site Forest City Ratner is proposing a mega-project that would transform the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) Vanderbilt rail yards and a few adjacent blocks into 6,430 units of housing, 336,000 feet of office space, 247,000 feet of retail space, a hotel and an arena that would be the new home of the NBA New Jersey Nets. Like almost any mega-project proposed in a dense city like New York, Atlantic Yards is raising the ire of many. In this case, however, the names and roles of the usual suspects have changed. At least some view the developer as a savior and champion of the inner city poor, while many of the project’s opponents are viewed as reactionary elites only concerned about the potential loss of their parking spaces. This reversal of protagonists is due in large part to the Community Benefits Agreement (CBA) negotiated between the developer and several community groups.

May 7 - Lance Freeman