Exclusives

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<p class="MsoNormal"><font face="Trebuchet MS" size="3">Last week I was at an interview for a potential real estate developer client who wanted transit-oriented development (TOD), but weren’t sure he wanted transit. This was a progressive developer who wanted more density, a mix-of uses and walkability. How could it be he wasn’t sure he wanted the planned transit line? Is it possible the developer had it right? </font></p>

April 18 - G.B. Arrington

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<p class="MsoNormal"> In my hometown—and yours, too, I&#39;m sure—a small, one-story house was for sale, and then it was gone. The guy who bought it promptly tore it down and then, because the new house he had designed was too big for the site, let the hole sit there for a year, a broken tooth in the 1950s neighborhood. Of course, the house he built was still too big for the lot, but there it stands, three feet from his seething neighbors: a McMansion. </p>

April 17 - Margaret Foster

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I had heard stories about this the last time I visited Japan in 2004, but this month's Tokyo city briefing from <i>The Economist </i> brought this trend back to my attention. It seems retiring boomers are abandoning their suburban bedroom communities to return to the metropolitan core - presumably to be near friends, cultural attractions, and other amenities (health care? education?). I've seen rumblings of this as well in the New York metro area.

April 17 - Anthony Townsend

FEATURE

April 16 - Andrea Broaddus

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<p>(Prefatory musing: As the title implies, this is Part 1 in a series. I haven&#39;t yet mapped out any of the other parts, but considering the boundless errata that clutter American cities, I anticipate little trouble finding objectionables to raise my ire next time my monthly deadline approaches. I welcome my fellow Interchangers to follow suit.) </p>

April 13 - Josh Stephens

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<p>This message is brought to you by the frustrated residents of a city where strip malls prosper and the stock of affordable housing struggles to keep up with demand. </p><p><img src="/files/u5174/20070407-housingcrisis.jpg" alt="Housing Crisis In L.A." title="Housing Crisis In L.A." width="400" height="272" align="middle" /></p><p>A new strip mall being constructed at the intersection of Venice Blvd. and Western Ave. in Los Angeles inspired this public display. </p><p>Strip malls are in no short supply in L.A., and this is just one example of yet another being built in the city. Unmixed-use retail developments like this are popping up all over the place. Much less new housing is being built. And a sharply lower amount of new <em>affordable</em> housing is being built. </p>

April 13 - Nate Berg

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<p class="MsoNormal">The built environment is a significant contributor to community health – a fact that researchers, planners, public health practitioners, and advocates around the country are becoming increasingly aware of. We know, for example, that people who live in more “walkable” communities are in fact more likely to walk. Research has demonstrated that living near a grocery store increases consumption of fresh fruits and vegetables. Children who live near freeways may suffer from respiratory problems for the rest of their lives. These facts should be particularly important in shaping land use decisions as we face rising costs from <span style="font-size: 12pt; font-family: 'Times New Roman'">the obesity epidemic and other chronic diseases.<span> </span></span><span> </span></p> <p class="MsoNormal">This leaves public health advocates wondering just how best to dig into the world of planning.

April 12 - Lisa Feldstein

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<p class="MsoNormal">The <a href="http://www.pps.org/info/newsletter/april_first_2017/time_idea_of_the_year" target="_blank">Project for Public Spaces</a> has been sending around the e-mail circuit a mock-up of a <em>Time </em>magazine cover dated April 1 (no fooling) 2017, with a “Placemaking” headline acclaiming the triumph of smart growth principles. 2017? They’re being way too modest.</p>

April 12 - Anonymous

FEATURE

When membership is not much more than a subscription and decisions are made with little group input, the APA needs to adjust the way it interacts with its members, according to self-proclaimed "APA lifer" Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP.

April 11 - Leonardo Vazquez, AICP/PP

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<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">The recent exhibitions on Robert Moses at the Museum of the City of New York, the Queens Museum of Art, and Columbia University have revived old debates about Robert Moses, most of which have boiled down to the question: when all is said and done, was he good or bad? When I visited the exhibitions, trying to figure out my own answer, I remembered my father’s favorite saying (lifted from <em>Oedipus Rex</em>): “Would you condemn me for that which made me great?&quot;</font></p>

April 10 - Anthony Weiss

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<div> <p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 12pt; color: black">People often ask me if a building has to be old or look historic to create a sense of place. I always answer with a definite &quot;No!&quot; While it may be easier to find older buildings where public activity flourishes, their success is not due to age or a particular architectural style. The main factor is actually how the base of the building is treated. A building with a well-designed (and well-managed!) ground floor can be a great place regardless of the style in which it is constructed. <span class="640540921-06042007">Let&#39;s look at </span>two places which I think illustrate this point quite effectively: Country Club Plaza in Kansas City, and Rockefeller Center in New York.</span></p>

April 9 - Anonymous

FEATURE

April 9 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p>In the last few years, a set of interactive, web-based technologies has reinvented the web. Myspace, Meetup, Wikipedia, Youtube have become household words, and millions of people worldwide are surfing social networking websites, writing blogs, and collaborating online in new ways. These so-called &quot;Web 2.0&quot; technologies were the inspiration for TIME&#39;s person of the year: You. What the true impact of these technologies will be, we must conceded it is, as <a href="http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1569514,00.html">TIME says</a>, &quot;a massive social experiment.&quot; </p>

April 7 - Robert Goodspeed

BLOG POST

<p>The corner café on North Second Street in the Northern Liberties neighborhood of Philadelphia aspires to Euro-style café culture though it lines a little-trafficked street of row houses showing every year of their century and a half of existence, and faces a vast empty, chain-linked block where a brewery once stood. <br /><img src="/files/u10275/DSC_0054.jpg" alt="" width="320" height="212" />

April 7 - James S. Russell

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<!--StartFragment -->If you are a student planning travel to next week&#39;s national APA conference, you may be thinking about how to get the most out of the experience. Here are some ideas that have worked for others...

April 6 - Bruce Stiftel

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<p class="MsoNormal">Getting stuck in traffic is fast becoming one of those necessary evils that everyone complains about but seldom does anything about it.<span> </span>Or at least anything that seems terribly effective.<span> </span>Neither additional road building nor public transit seemed to have had a major impact on traffic congestion in places where these types of remedies have been attempted.</p>

April 5 - Lance Freeman

FEATURE

Many say Los Angeles is a city that grew without any rational planning. In reality the planning was there -- but much of the best planning never quite materialized.

April 5 - Christian Peralta

BLOG POST

<font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">My local community recently got into political spat as the city, county and state negotiated the terms of a deal to attract a major corporation to bring a facility to the community. In the interest of high-quality growth, tens of millions in dollars and various perks were offered to attract a very well-heeled corporate player. In the meantime, Floridians frustrated with the inability of government to be willing or able to keep up with growth in terms of providing the requisite infrastructure; sewer, water, transportation, etc., increased the pressure on governments to have new development pay for growth rather than having it increase the tax burden on existing residents. Let&#39;s see:

April 4 - Steven Polzin

BLOG POST

<p>Travel a few miles outside of Santa Barbara and you’ll encounter a truly rare scene – rare for coastal California in the year 2007, that is.

April 3 - Diana DeRubertis

BLOG POST

<p>Here&#39;s an item that should be more than enough to make you spew your morning latte all over the Starbucks: </p><p> In a <a href="http://www.mercerhr.com/summary.jhtml?idContent=1173105" target="_blank">survey</a>, conducted last year and released yesterday by Mercer Consulting, ranking the top 50 global cities by quality of life, not a single American city cracks the top half. Zero. </p>

April 3 - Josh Stephens