Urban Design
Reducing Crime With Public Spaces in London
Officials in London are relying on the creation of 86 new public spaces throughout the city to cut down on criminal behavior.
How could Ventura transform?
A short documentary exploring the development challenges that the City of Ventura faces.
Creating Livable Cities
This episode of The Diane Rehm Show explores efforts underway to make the world's cities more livable.
New Film Documents a Living Detroit
A documentary currently touring the country sets out to show that Detroit is not dead, highlighting the entrepreneurs, artists and activists that are currently reclaiming and rebuilding Detroit.
Redefining a Planning Department
The L.A. Department of City Planning is experiencing radical changes in leadership, planning process, and organizational structure. The leaders--past, present, and, future--of planning in L.A. gathered in August to discuss a vision for the future.
The Search for Scientific Validation: When Our Feelings Are Just Not Good Enough
Planners are taught to be analytical thinkers who use quantitative data, but also qualitative research. Remember the Myers Briggs personality test? It assesses an individual’s personality based on four preferences: A focus on the outer world (extraversion) or inner world (introversion); basic information (sensing) or interpretation and meaning (intuition); making decision based on logic (thinking) or people and special circumstances (feeling); dealing with the outside world with clear decisions (judging) or staying open to new information and options (perceiving). As planners, we are constantly in conflict with these preferences as we straddle the world of technician and analyst.
In Oregon, Students Seek Key to a Sustainable City
Roughly 600 University of Oregon students will take part in the university's Sustainable Cities Initiative, which pulls together students of architecture, planning, law, journalism and business to make a plan to fix downtown Salem.
A New Ethic for Urban Reinvention
In a unique collaboration, an American lawyer and a Venezuelan architect merge thinking on holistic design, planning and regulation
Making Sense of Neighborhood Structure
Planner Sam Gennawey details a public participation exercise he regularly uses, taken from the ideas of Christopher Alexander, that makes complex ideas simple for public understanding.
All-Ages Design in Toronto
Designing cities for all age groups means designing places where everyone from kids to seniors can feel safe walking, according to this column. Groups in Toronto are calling on mayoral candidates to get behind that idea.
Designing Urban Areas to Hear the Sounds of the City
Cities make more sounds than just cars driving by or factories humming. Trevor Cox says we should embrace the subtle sounds of cities, and update our urban design to make sure we can.
City of Columbus Adopts Far-Reaching Downtown Plan
Building on the urban renaissance of the last decade that saw residential population increase for the first time since 1950, the City of Columbus has set a bold vision for the future with the adoption of the 2010 Downtown Columbus Strategic Plan.
False Friendliness: Photoshopped People in Public Spaces
Proposals for new projects arrive on city desks everyday showing vibrant public plazas full of people. But too often those spaces fail to attract people in the way they were portrayed. Are Photoshopped people a deliberate falsehood?
Walkability Makes You Healthier and Wealthier
Conrad deFiebre sums up the benefits of living in a walkable neighborhood, from improved health to improved wealth, both via higher property values and less of hard-earned dollars paid out to oil and car companies.
Citizens Fight Cookie-Cutter Design in Birmingham
Residents of Birmingham, Alabama are rallying against a drive-through Chick-fil-A going up in their neighborhood, showing a growing awareness of the effect of development on the character of their community.
Remaking Southern California Cities
A video created for the Southern California Association of Governments (SCAG) presents a serious look at what infill development would look like in Ventura and Fullerton.
I Am Not a Monkey, and Other Lessons From Planning School
Tomorrow morning, I'll don a long black robe, a funny-looking hat and an atrocious brown hood to cap off an adventuresome journey through planning school. Almost two years ago, I decided to leave a healthy career in journalism to enter a field that, by contrast, might still have careers a decade from now. It's been 21 months of angst, overwork, undersleep, and hours-long battles with American FactFinder. And it's been completely, totally worth it. Here are a few of the best lessons learned from two hard-fought years of planning education.
The Magic of a Passageway
A humble passageway through a building to a parking lot became a favorite public space with just a deli, a Starbucks, and some patio tables.
Miami’s Visit from the Planning Heavens
Let’s face it, we all get into planning ruts. A public meeting gone awry, a discontented client, a community that just doesn’t get it. I like to call it planning fatigue, and up until a month ago, I was headed down that path. But a meeting of the minds which converged in my hometown, Miami, brought me a little closer to god, the planning god, that is. Joe Riley, the mild mannered and poignant mayor of Charleston brought me to planning euphoria. If you’ve heard him speak, then you know what I mean. If you haven’t, well let me bring you up to speed.
Walkable Los Angeles
Walkable Los Angeles. Casual visitors may be surprised to learn that this is not an oxymoron.
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
