Cities

play fountain

Family-Friendly Downtown Living

What helps make a downtown family friendly? Safe places to play, safe streets, good schools and attainable housing, writes Jennifer Hill.

April 14, 2015 - Community Builders

Report Finds Surging City Center Job Growth

For half a century, suburbs surpassed city centers in population and job growth. These economic and demographic trends appear to be reversing. America's cities have grown faster than outlying areas and new research that jobs are coming with them.

February 24, 2015 - Surging City Center Job Growth

How Defensive Fortifications Shaped Cities

A post on Gizmodo traces the long and evolving history of defensive fortifications and how they influenced how cities were built and how people lived.

December 31, 2014 - Gizmodo

Street in La Laguna, Canary Island Tenerife, Spain

Top Planning Trends – 2014

A deeper look at the traffic data on Planetizen reveals trends from the planning and urban design conversation of 2014.

December 31, 2014 - James Brasuell

The old and the new

Is Mismanagement the Cause of Legacy Cities' Decline?

One common argument against attempts to control sprawl near declining cities is that the problem is the fault of mismanaged city government.

December 29, 2014 - Michael Lewyn

The Unique 'Fingerprints' of 131 Cities

An article on big think examines a project to find the unique qualities of urban street grids as an exercise in the potential of Big Data.

December 9, 2014 - Big Think

Library

Top 10 Books - 2015

Planetizen is pleased to release its list of the ten best books in urban planning, design, and development published in 2014.

December 8, 2014 - James Brasuell

New York Housing

Interview: Edward Glaeser Makes the Case for Cities

In a lengthy discussion shared by Marquette University, author and Harvard Economics Professor Ed Glaeser lays out the thinking behind his book "Triumph of the City," as exemplified by cities around the country and the world.

December 2, 2014 - Medium

Pew Study: U.S. Cities Still Recovering from Recession

A new Pew Charitable Trusts report discusses the ongoing recovery of American cities from the 2008 Great Recession, more than five years after it officially ended.

November 13, 2014 - Bloomberg News

Employment Growth in Large, Dense Cities Paces Recovery

A study from the Oregon Office of Economic Analysis finds evidence that large, dense metropolitan areas have experienced the most complete recovery following the Great Recession.

October 22, 2014 - CityLab

More than 60 Percent of B Corps Located in Cities—What's Their Impact?

B Labs, the nonprofit that oversees and assesses B Corps, reports that, compared to other sustainable businesses, B Corps are 68 percent more likely to donate at least 10 percent of their profits to charity.

October 18, 2014 - ICIC

Chicago El

A Planner's Guide to Chicago

Pete Saunders, blogger with the Corner Side Yard and professional planning consultant, wrote a post explaining Chicago for the U.K. publication Guardian Cities.

August 27, 2014 - Guardian Cities

Decline or Dispersal? Standardizing the Size of American Cities

Ben Schulman and Xiaoran Li lead an interesting thought experiment about the populations of cities around the country. That is, what would happen to the population of American cities if all their sizes were standardized?

August 12, 2014 - Belt Magazine

Maine-Montparnasse Tower Paris

6 'Epic Architecture Fails'

Jason Fargo follows the announcement that the FBI will soon set up shop outside of the infamous and despised J Edgar Hoover Building in Washington D.C. by listing six buildings that residents of cities "love to hate."

August 10, 2014 - Guardian

New York Skyline Fisheye

Survey Says: What Makes a City Great?

The results of a survey commissioned by Sasaki Associates reveal key insights into what makes cities great for those who love them, as well as where planners and urban designers should focus their efforts in improving the urban experience.

July 29, 2014 - ASLA The Dirt

Chicago Metra and Highway

Transit, Density, and Congestion

The most transit-oriented metro areas often have lower levels of traffic congestion than one might expect based on their size.

July 8, 2014 - Michael Lewyn

Strip Mall

Is it a Suburban Exodus Yet?

A new report finds that suburban areas are losing residents to urban areas like New York City and Washington D.C., even well past the point when people would have traditionally made the choice to return to the suburbs.

April 18, 2014 - New York Times

How Cities Prohibit Annoyances

The 5,000 local ordinances that prohibit “annoyances” often focus on the fraught intersections of the public and private. And it’s probably no surprise that public employees often seek legal protections from annoying (or annoyed) citizens.

March 30, 2014 - The Wall Street Journal

Lost Our Home

Which Cities Segregate Poverty Most Completely?

For the second installment in a five-part series on economic segregation in U.S. metros, Richard Florida examines the cities where poverty stays most hidden from "everyone else."

March 28, 2014 - Atlantic Cities

A Call for Urban Infrastructure Investments

A recent article laments the missed opportunity of President Obama’s recent calls for increased spending on infrastructure: a lack of acknowledgement that cities are the best places to spend those dollars.

March 13, 2014 - Governing

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.

Top Books

An annual review of books related to planning.

Top Schools

The definitive ranking of graduate planning programs.

100 Most Influential Urbanists

The who's who of urbanism, according to Planetizen readers.

Urban Planning Creators You Should Know

A short list of voices on social, video, and podcasting platforms.