Social Media
Retired Faculty: Keeping Up With Them Via Blogs
With the proliferation of new media planning practitioners have new ways to find out about the continuing work of planning faculty members who have retired. Not all of them blog of course, but the list below demonstrates some of the variety of these efforts.
Planning Programs Using Social Media: A Useful Window for Prospective Students
As readers of this blog will know I encourage people to find out about planning programs in multiple ways. Reading the work of faculty is a crucial first step as is reading the program’s web site. Visiting open houses or connecting with students (programs often set up some kind of chat space around admission time) are also options. Increasingly schools are using multiple forms of social media to reach current students and alums providing a useful window onto the programs for prospective students. This list highlights a few of these sources used specifically by planning programs.
Saving Detroit One Playground at a Time
A group calling itself the "Detroit Mower Gang" has gone rogue on the city's poorly maintained playgrounds, attacking them with weed wackers and riding mowers to get them back into shape for the city's kids.
Courtin' Participation With a Bluegrass Music Video
To kick off its Legacy Plan update process, the Winston-Salem and Forsyth County, NC planning board made a music video featuring an original song, a bluegrass band and some familiar scenes.
Transit Discovers Social Media
Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube are becoming standard components of transit agencies' strategies for outreach and keeping riders informed.
Locals vs Tourists Mapped Through Photography
Eric Fischer uses Flickr geodata to visualize where photos are taken in cities, and by whom. The result is a colorful divide between tourists and locals in a variety of cities around the world.
Will Social Media Revolutionize the Planning System?
Joe Peach understands "that online technologies and the city are becoming increasingly integrated," and argues that social media should have a democratizing effect on the planning process.
Free Tools to Connect Your City
Why build your own? There are several free web applications out there that help cities interface with their citizens. Christian Madera picks the best.
Cities Breaking New Ground in Social Media
A growing number of cities and towns in the Atlanta area are not only using social media, but using it innovatively, reports Shane Blatt.
AASHTO Picks Top 10 Transportation Projects
American Association of State Highway and Transportation Officials (AASHTO) selects its issues to look for in the year ahead, including more legislation aimed at distracted drivers and the use of social media by transportation agencies.
City Twitters
The City of Santee is using Twitter and Facebook to protest a planned prison expansion on nearby county land.
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.
Caltrans
Smith Gee Studio
Institute for Housing and Urban Development Studies (IHS)
City of Grandview
Harvard GSD Executive Education
Toledo-Lucas County Plan Commissions
Salt Lake City
NYU Wagner Graduate School of Public Service
