Cities
How Will Changing Cities React?
Cities are undergoing major changes in terms of demographics and development patterns. How cities will react to these changes remains up in the air.
Universities Reconnect with Cities
Universities across the country are reviving their connections to their host cities, participating in urban renewal projects and investing in their cities' futures.
Cities Don't Need Special Treatment
This opinion piece from The Boston Globe calls for an end to the special treatment and unfair taxes levied on city residents.
Undressing the naked city
Often times I’m struck by the advances we’ve made in mapping, modeling and depicting our cities. What was once the purview of mapmakers, surveyors or architects is now a democratized, engaging process that brings unexpected results. And the more advanced the technology, the more transparent our cities seem to become.
A Planning Contrarian's Reading List
Transcontinental flights are a great time to catch up on reading, and a recent flight from San Jose to Chicago inspired this blog post. As I was reading book #1 (below), I realized that a number books have been published recently that have important things to say about cities although they might be dismissed too easily as reactionary, ideological, or simply not relevant to urban planning.
It's Summer, Inspire Me...
Most people use the Summer months to re-connect with pastimes forgotten during winter months. It is this time of the year that sales soar both at the box office and in bookstores. Most normal people I know take trashy novels with them to the beach or submerge themselves in an entire season of 24 (which thanks to Netflix can be accomplished in a few intense evenings). I tend to lean toward the other extreme (although I have indulged in bad TV from time to time). My wife calls me a design geek because my bedside table is always full of design magazines, books and theory.
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.)
If You Lived In This Inner-Ring Suburb, You'd Be Home By Now
This week, a few stories circulated around our office that generated some discussion. One was a piece in The New Yorker by Nick Paumgarten on commuting in America entitled "There and Back Again". The tease at the beginning sums up the entire piece: "People may endure miserable commutes out of an inability to weigh their general well-being against quantifiable material gains."In this story, the writer accompanies commuters in Manhattan and Atlanta while attempting to understand the life of an "extreme commuter."
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.
City of Albany
UCLA Lewis Center for Regional Policy Studies
Mpact (formerly Rail~Volution)
Chaddick Institute at DePaul University
City of Piedmont, CA
Great Falls Development Authority, Inc.
HUDs Office of Policy Development and Research
