Exclusives

BLOG POST

<p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana">Some of you may remember my observations in an earlier post on the wonderful event I participated in earlier this year, with New York&#39;s Forum for Urban Design. Its rare indeed to get the opportunity to discuss and debate issues of urbanism over 2 days with the chief planners for New York, Boston, London, Singapore and Toronto. Months later, I&#39;m still thinking about some of the perspectives I debated about with my peers in these great cities. You can see my earlier comments on the discussion, titled &quot;World Urbanists take Manhattan: Lessons learned and left&quot; at: </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 10pt; font-family: Verdana"><a href="/node/24956">http://www.planetizen.com/node/24956</a> </span></p>

November 1 - Brent Toderian

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal">As education has become more expensive students wonder about what they are getting for their money. Evaluations of faculty, rankings of programs, and internet chat-room gossip all aim to find how to purchase the best value for money given a specific set of preferences. However, it is a misunderstanding to see students as primarily consumers of instruction. Rather the best students collaborate with faculty and other students to produce their own learning. </p> <p class="MsoNormal">What does this mean? In planning, as an applied profession, the activity of producing learning has a number of components. The following represent just a few of these mechanisms.</p>

October 31 - Ann Forsyth

BLOG POST

<p>Over the past three months, my girlfriend and I have made three trips to the suburbs of Miami. Twice to the Whole Foods we desperately lack on Miami Beach (Yes, Wild Oats is okay, but for us food snobs it just does not compare) and once to the brand new, soul-killing, 283,000 square foot IKEA to partially outfit our 450 square foot South Beach studio apartment. </p>

October 30 - Mike Lydon

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font size="3"><font face="Trebuchet MS">You drank the Kool-Aid; you know that if you link transit and land use to create transit-oriented development (TOD) the result is fewer car trips and a host of benefits. From Portland to Miami, Boston to Los Angeles, a record number of TODs are being built in the US. Yet most bankers, developers and regulators are drinking from a different cup. As a result the majority of new development adjacent to transit stops in America has been built in a manner oblivious to the fact that a rail stop is nearby.

October 29 - G.B. Arrington

FEATURE

Seattle activist Jim Diers takes his expertise on cultivating neighbor power 'Down Under'.

October 29 - Mark Tirpak

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">How sustainable is the internal combustion engine? The answer depends, in part, on your historical perspective. This point becomes startlingly evident in a recent article by UCLA doctoral student Eric Morris in the most recent issue of </font><a href="http://www.uctc.net/access/access30.shtml"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#800080">Access magazine</font></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">. The magazine publishes accessible versions of academic research and is published by the University of California Transportation Center at Berkeley. </font></p>

October 24 - Samuel Staley

BLOG POST

<p> I spent a few days last week in Newcastle, England - a real gem of a town for tech history enthusiasts and urbanists. Newcastle is where the first steam trains and railways were built at the dawn of the industrial revolution. It was the <a href="http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/victorians/launch_ani_rocket.shtml">demonstration</a> of Robert <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenson's_Rocket">Stephenson&#39;s </a><em><a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stephenson's_Rocket">Rocket</a></em> in 1829 in Newcastle that you might mark as the beginning of mass mechanical mobility.

October 23 - Anthony Townsend

BLOG POST

<p><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Verdana">I had the opportunity to spend a day at the <a href="http://www.vacantproperties.org/index.html">Vacant Properties</a> conference late last month which, if you’re not familiar with the “movement,” you should be.<span>  </span>Granted it’s not for everyone.<span>  </span>At the opening plenary session, the moderator asked “who is here from a weak market city?”<span>  </span>A room full of hands went up with a collective giggle.<span>  </span>It felt like an AA meeting for cities.<span>  </span>Admitting you have a problem is the first step toward addressing it.<span>  </span></span><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Verdana"> </span></p>

October 23 - Scott Page

BLOG POST

<p>Most people don&#39;t know anything about planning. Sure, they may understand the general gist of it, but many planning concepts just haven&#39;t yet made it into the public consciousness. In an effort to accelerate the education of the public, here&#39;s an easy-to-use pictorial guide that relates some of those not-so-familiar planning concepts to something we&#39;re all familiar with: food.</p>

October 22 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Technology creates new challenges and opportunities, and this came home to me a couple of weeks ago when I was previewing a rough cut of </font><a href="http://www.reason.tv/video/show/6.html"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#800080">Gridlock: Hell on Wheels</font></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">, a video on traffic congestion released by </font><a href="http://www.reason.org/"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3" color="#800080">Reason Foundation</font></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> today. In the video, Comedian Drew Carey makes the following off-the-cuff comment on a morning drive-time radio show: “I would love to own a freeway in LA.” </font></p>

October 16 - Samuel Staley

BLOG POST

<p> There are lots of Wi-Fi buses popping up in Northern California. The <a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/10/technology/10google.html">Google shuttle</a> from San Francisco to the Valley has been running for a while and I think Yahoo! has a similar service, but I saw this <a href="http://www.actransit.org/news/articledetail.wu?articleid=ae8a49cd">Wi-Fi enabled AC Transit bus</a> (that's Alameda County folks) crossing the Dumbarton Bridge last week. Apparently, the service is being subsidized by a grant from the Alameda County Congestion Management Agency. </p>

October 13 - Anthony Townsend

FEATURE

October 8 - Nate Berg

BLOG POST

<p> To paraphrase the New York Times&#39; summation of the Anaheim Angels&#39; rhetorical exodus to Los Angeles a few years ago: some ideas are so stupid that you just have to stand back and watch. To that I would add, some things are so stupid that they deserve derision no matter how long ago they occured. Though it crawled out from the Senate floor in the summer of 2005, SAFETEA-LU -- the $240 billion federal transportation bill -- has, for the past two years, gotten off way too easy. </p>

October 1 - Josh Stephens

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Janson Text'">I live a ten-minute cab ride from the airport. I love it. Many a morning, I have stumbled down the porch steps in flip-flops and a business suit, carrying an overnight bag and high heels to make a flight in an hour’s time. Several weeks ago, I stepped into a cab and chirped my usual, “Good morning—National Airport, please!” and settled back into the seat, ready to finish applying eyeshadow. </span></p><p><span style="font-size: 11pt; font-family: 'Janson Text'">“Do you know how to get there?,” the driver asked.</span></p>

September 30 - Jess Zimbabwe

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal">The newest Texas Transportation Institute <em><a href="http://mobility.tamu.edu/">Urban Mobility Report</a></em> was recently released, stimulating discussion of congestion costs and potential solutions. Here are some things you should know when evaluating these issues.</p>

September 27 - Todd Litman

BLOG POST

<p><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman">We all saw it on the Internet—the fellow at a public meeting being hauled away from the microphone before getting wrestled to the floor and tasered during a Q&amp;A with John Kerry. Fortunately, silencing argumentative speakers with a taser is not a common occurrence at most public meetings. While I might confess that there have been meetings where, in retrospect, one might have secretly wished one was armed with a stun gun, facilitators generally try to avoid confrontation. Yet there’s no denying that sometimes people show up at public meetings looking for a fight, begging for outrage, and hoping to irritate and inflame.

September 27 - Barbara Faga

BLOG POST

<p><span style="font-size: 9pt; font-family: Verdana">Since making the switch from architecture to planning / urban design, I’ve been fascinated by the continuing dialogue that surrounds what we do to explain… what we do.<span> </span>There is less emphasis on this dialogue in architecture of course as the tacit assumption is that architects build.<span> </span>(I would say not all great architects need to build but this is a debate for a different setting.)<span> </span>What did often emerge in architecture was the common concern that “design” is not valued to the degree that it should.<span> </span>And why not?<span> </span>Architects spend anywhere from 5-6 years in school the majority of which is spent in studio learning how to design.<span> </span>Who wants to then enter the profession feeling like their education mis-led them?<span>

September 25 - Scott Page

BLOG POST

<p style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt" class="MsoNormal"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">What if the utility company asked you how much you made when you called to start service in a new home?<span>  </span>What if they wanted this information to tie your bill to your salary and not to how much gas, electricity or water you used? <span> </span>Would that seem fair?<span>  </span>That’s how some communities are treating developers when determining how much stormwater they should be required to manage. <span> </span>But regulations that link stormwater standards to the developer’s ability to pay are neither fair nor efficient. <span> </span>Environmental regulations and their costs should be directly linked to the impact on the environment, not to profit margins.</font></p>

September 25 - Anonymous

BLOG POST

<p class="MsoNormal"> Many students choose planning over business school because they want to serve the public and change the world. However, saving the world is a complicated task. What kind of school will prepare you? As in many parts of life there isn’t a simple answer but a few key points can help frame your search. And remember, you don’t need to answer all these questions before you apply—get a good enough list and then investigate them some more once you have real offers. </p>

September 24 - Ann Forsyth

FEATURE

Nathan Glazer's <em>From a Cause to a Style: Modernist Architecture's Encounter with the American City</em> reveals how this influential social movement's good intentions shaped the look of the 20th century.

September 24 - Josh Stephens