Exclusives
BLOG POST
Building Websites For Nonprofits With Open Source Content Management Frameworks
<img src="http://66.28.40.163/images/NTEN/RegConfLogos/Logo_NTEN_Conferences.gif" align="right" alt="NTEN Conference Logo" />Abhijeet presented last week at the <a href="http://www.nten.org/">Nonprofit Technology Enterprise Network</a> (NTEC) 2005 San Diego Regional Conference on open source content management frameworks for building websites for nonprofit. He published his fabulous presentation online under a creative commons license:<br /> <br /> <a href="http://www.urbaninsight.com/~chavan/2005/nten/">Building Websites For Nonprofits With Open Source Content Management Frameworks</a><br /> <br /> He really knows what he's presenting on, since much of his presentation is based on his hands-on experience with a massive project we just completed here at Urban Insight.
BLOG POST
Community Billboards
When recently working in a distressed community in Philadelphia, we were thinking of the best ways to communicate what we were planning for the area and guide residents toward local resources that exist but are rarely used. As a cost effective solution, we worked with the <a href="http://www.klip.tv">Klip Collective</a> to implement a video installation within a vacant storefront. The installation runs every evening. Besides providing some valuable information, we used the installation to instill some street activity along what was once an active commercial corridor.
BLOG POST
Why Open Source? Ask Massachusetts
<img src='http://www.planetizen.com/tech/files/20050922openoffice.png' alt='OpenOffice' align="right"/><br /> <br /> Open source is not just about lowering costs. It's about staying in control of your own data. For governments, it is important to specify open file formats for storing public data. Eric Kriss, Massachussets' secretary of administration and finance asks an important question about long-term archiving of public documents created with Microsoft Office. "Will those documents still be legible 10 years from now, or in 50?" The state of Massachusetts has given some thought to that question and is taking action.
BLOG POST
Mambo is dead…
…here comes Joomla. There was a lot of uncertainty about the future of the Content Management System Mambo over the past months. Finally the Developers now left Mambo and started Joomla.<br /> <br /> As <a href="http://www.eweek.com/article2/0,1895,1851367,00.asp">this article in eWeek</a> points out, "the original owners [Miro], wanted to regain control of the project. The developers, realizing that they were being cut out of executive management, decided to take the code and run…â€<br /> <br /> The outcomes might describe the state of open source today.
FEATURE
Recovering New Orleans
FEATURE
Book Review - 'Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination'
Bob Ransford reviews the magical and often paradoxical relationship Vancouver shares with its natural surroundings as described in Lance Berelowitz's Dream City: Vancouver and the Global Imagination.
FEATURE
Greening of the Campus VI Conference
Can a campus community become a "green" model for society as a whole? Educators, students, and professionals meet at an interdisciplinary conference to promote sustainability in education, research, operations and affiliated service organizations.
BLOG POST
Dead Cities, part 2
Joel Garreau weighed in yesterday on whether New Orleans should (or can) be rebuilt. He's always smart and readable; if you haven't read <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0385262493/qid=1126558443/sr=8-2/ref=pd_bbs_2/002-4208330-1388856?v=glance&s=books&n=507846"><em>Edge City</em></a> you should go get it. It's a brilliant, well-reported take on urban theory and how cities are changing. Anyway, <a href="http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/09/09/AR2005090902448_pf.html">here</a>
FEATURE
Planning for the Unplanned
BLOG POST
Tragedy and Technology
A Los Angeles Times article titled "<a href="http://www.latimes.com/news/printedition/la-fi-internet10sep10,1,1004073.story?ctrack=1&cset=true">Web Proves Its Capacity to Help in Time of Need</a>" documents the importance of the Web as a communications medium. <br /> <br /> <blockquote><br /> It reunited families and connected them with shelter. It turned amateur photographers into chroniclers of history and ordinary people into pundits. It allowed television stations to keep broadcasting and newspapers to keep publishing. It relayed heartbreaking tales of loss and intimate moments of triumph...<br /> <br /> The Internet has played a larger and larger role in every major news event of the last 10 years...In the aftermath of Katrina, use of the Internet is more vital and varied than ever.<br /> </blockquote>
BLOG POST
The New York Times on the Life and Death of Cities
Two stories in the <em>New York Times'</em> science section today relevant to our game here. First, Dennis Overbye takes a historical trip to cities that died, <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/06/science/06lost.html">here</a>. Good bits:<br /> <br /> <blockquote>"Cities rise and fall depending on what made them go in the first place," said Peirce Lewis, an expert on the history of New Orleans and an emeritus professor of geography at Pennsylvania State University.<br /> <br /> Changes in climate can make a friendly place less welcoming. Catastrophes like volcanoes or giant earthquakes can kill a city quickly. Political or economic shifts can strand what was once a thriving metropolis in a slow death of irrelevance. After the Mississippi River flood of 1993, the residents of Valmeyer, Ill., voted to move their entire town two miles east to higher ground.<br /> <br /> What will happen to New Orleans now, in the wake of floods and death and violence, is hard to know. But watching the city fill up like a bathtub, with half a million people forced to leave, it has been hard not to think of other places that have fallen to time and the inconstant earth.</blockquote>
FEATURE
Car-less in the Eye of Katrina
BLOG POST
Collaborative Mapping Of Hurricane Damage With Google Maps
Mapping enthusiasts are using Google Maps and Google Earth and other data to compile maps of the devastation caused by Hurricane Katrina. <br /> <br /> <blockquote>One Web site, <a href="http://www.scipionus.com">www.scipionus.com</a>, is combating the confusion by encouraging users to annotate a Google Map of New Orleans with information about specific locations. Collectively, the community is creating a collaborative map Wikipedia. Anyone with something to add can enter a street address and leave a marker on the map at that location, providing a few lines of text about conditions at that spot.
BLOG POST
URISA GISCorps Volunteer Positions Filled
URISA <a href="http://www.giscorps.org/">GISCorps</a> got a good response to their <a href="http://www.planetizen.com/tech/archives/2005/09/01/316/">call for GIS volunteers</a>. All volunteer positions are now filled. Volunteers will be going to Jackson, Mississippi. <br /> <br /> <blockquote><br /> "Seven of the volunteers are map production experts. There is a lab in Jackson where they can start <br /> their work with hardware and software ready to use. They have some data and more is coming. The <br /> second group of volunteers will be in the field with GPS equipment. The group in Jackson will be <br /> mapping the field data as soon as they can and hand it over to the emergency personnel."</blockquote>
BLOG POST
URISA GISCorps Needs Volunteers For Hurricane Katrina Relief Efforts
Urban and Regional Information Systems Association's (<a href="http://www.urisa.org/">URISA</a>) GISCorps coordinates volunteer GIS services to underprivileged communities. <a href="http://www.giscorps.org/">GISCorps</a> is looking for GIS professionals to volunteer for emergency and relief efforts in the region affected by <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hurricane_Katrina">Hurricane Katrina</a>.<br /> <br /> <blockquote><br /> "The immediate need is for 5-10 volunteers at this point. These volunteers must have enough GIS experience to work effectively in an emergency situation. Volunteers must have expertise in map production, performing analysis, data management, and etc. Expertise in disaster management and working with GPS equipment is highly desirable."<br /> </blockquote>
BLOG POST
Dead Cities
Let's take a moment for New Orleans, folks. Better coverage elsewhere -- check out <a href="http://www.boingboing.net/">Boing Boing</a> for links in the blogosphere. So here, you just get an observation: nature, abetted by dumb human decisionmaking, has killed that city.<br /> <br /> In a lot of ways, New Orleans is -- maybe was -- a great place. Tremendous food and music. Like Las Vegas, it was a place where Americans kept their decadence, like a precious thing in a box. In Europe, every city and town blows up into a party Carnival; in the US, we keep our Carnivals going non-stop, 24/7, but they're geographically confined.
FEATURE
The Smart Sprawl Strategy
Heyer Gruel & Associates PA
City of Moreno Valley
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
City of Cambridge, Maryland
Urban Design for Planners 1: Software Tools
This six-course series explores essential urban design concepts using open source software and equips planners with the tools they need to participate fully in the urban design process.
Planning for Universal Design
Learn the tools for implementing Universal Design in planning regulations.
