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Friday Five: Articles for Urbanists [April 2nd-7th]

Five interesting articles on urbanism from the past week:

Twaffic: Tom Vanderbilt looks at whether Twitter—and tweets about traffic—will change the way we drive? (Slate)

Ignorance was Bliss: How my urban learnin’ almost ruined everyday places: How an understanding of what makes places great can be annoying (PlaceShakers and NewsMakers)

Cities thrive on interaction: Urban economists have recognized that the strength that comes from human collaboration is the primary reason why cities exist and flourish. (Cincinnati.com)

Deep Walkability: A look at the challenges of measuring true walkability (Alex Steffen)

Renewed Urbanization Will Drive Change in Retail Strategies: How changing demographics and shifting land use patterns will influence retail investment strategies. (National Real Estate Investor)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [March 26 - April 1]

This week’s round-up of articles on urbanism:

The Myth of the Cyclist as Urban Warrior: The rhetoric around the bike has reached untenable heights. Not only is it completely unproductive, but it works to make both motorists and bicyclists unsafe by stoking anger and fear. (Spacing Toronto)

An Upbeat Voice in Newark, Spoken or Not: Mayor Cory Booker, coming soon to a media platform near you, has a Twitter feed that is a time capsule of contemporary American politics and mores. (New York Times)

The City in Mind: Phoenician-in-exile Jon Talton, takes a look at the future of cities. (Rogue Columnist)

How Not to ‘Save’ a City: The record of top-down schemes to revive cities by remaking neighborhoods is littered with disastrous unintended consequences. (New York Times Room for Debate)

Urban centers draw more young, educated adults: Educated 20- and 30-somethings are flocking to live downtown in the USA’s largest cities—even urban centers that are losing population. (USA Today)

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Friday 5 is Back! (March 19th-25th)

Here is this week’s list of articles for urbanists:

City of Angles | Todd Heisler/The New York Times

200th Birthday for the Map That Made New York: Described by some historians as the single most important document in New York City’s history, the right-angled layout spurred unimagined development. (New York Times)

City Livability Rankings, and the struggle for the Complete City: Vancouver’s Director of City Planning, Brent Toderian, looks at Vancouver’s status as the worlds’ most livable city and the work left to be done. (Planetizen)

The Increasing Importance of Physical Location: Why information technology will increase the value of dense urban areas and accelerate the movement of people into cities. (Harvard Business Review)

Why Cities? But cities don’t thrive or survive when approached with an attitude framed by individual or corporate (the new “individual”) necessity. (CityTank)

Can’t I just be pro-transportation? Erza Klein takes a critical look at the current transpiration wars brewing across America (The Washington Post)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [March 5th-11th]

My weekly round-up of five great articles for urbanists:

Todd Hido for The New York Times.

Threats of Gridlock are Greatly Exaggerated: A look at how traffic studies greatly exaggerate estimated congestion costs and lead to poor reduction strategies (Planetizen)

Broke Town, U.S.A. Everybody’s suddenly petrified about municipal debt. But the fate of bondholders ought to be the least of our worries. (New York Times Magazine)

James Howard Kunstler: The old American dream is a nightmare: The peak oil prophet and dystopian talks with us about the end of suburbia and the turmoil in the Middle East. (Grist)

Cities, mobilized human energy, and housing: In the middle east right now, human energy is motivated toward bringing political change. But what’s been happening back in North America? How has this mobilized human energy been shaping metro area housing? (All About Cities)

Bad news for cities, good news for urban centers: Some cities continued to bleed population, others gained residents. Regardless, urban centers are thriving. (New Urban Network)

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Articles for Urbanists (Feb 4th-11th)

Selected readings for urbanists:

The Splendor of Cities: David Brooks looks at the strengths specific to city governance and urban politics. (New York Times)

Walking the Turtle: A look at the idea of the ‘speed’ of the modern metropolis. (landscape+urbanism)

Creating the Perfect City Is About Illusions: A city planner and an urban designer talk about making American cities more vibrant and livable. (Co.Design)

How Skyscrapers Can Save the City: Besides making cities more affordable and architecturally interesting, tall buildings are greener than sprawl, and they foster social capital and creativity. (The Atlantic)

The Plight of Canadian Cities: Formed as a primarily agrarian nation, Canada is now seeing its cities crippled by constitutional arrangements that leaves its cities underfunded and with only minimal support from the federal government, writes John Macfarlane. [ed:The United states is facing similar challenges] (The Walrus)

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Friday 5: Urbanism Reading List for the Week of Jan 22-28th

There were a lot of great articles and post on urbanism this week. Here is a cross-section of the best:

When coworking comes to town: Many co-working spaces are in urban locations or in centers of communities, in part because independent workers who want contact with others gravitate to those settings. (New Urban Network)

Why Street Art Matters: Street artists and muralists bring with them vibrant and new perspectives that architects or designers may not have. (The Cool Hunter)

The soul of a city is in its people: We’ve got to figure out how to make our cities more livable and sustainable without triggering the seemingly inevitable march of gentrification. Because without diversity, cities are a lot less beautiful. (Grist)

Baby & Hood: Studies suggest urban areas are less risky for children: A growing body of research shows that the traditional family dream home—a large house on a big lot in a quiet suburb—may actually be more dangerous for children than many inner-city neighborhoods (National Post)

Monkey See, Monkey Don’t: Economic Development as a Whole New Animal:The neighborhood is the unit of sustainable urbanism. But what if we went back to the notion that the region is the unit of sustainable economic development? (PlaceShakers and NewsMakers)

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Friday 5: Urbanist Reading List for the Week of Jan 15-21st

Every Friday I handpick five articles on urbanism and related topics that I think my readers will find interesting. Here’s this week;s crop:

Study: Biking Infrastructure Projects Create More Jobs Than Auto-Based Initiatives: Bicycling is cleaner, more efficient, and in many cases more fun than driving a car around the city. Now a study from the Political Economy Research Institute says that building bike infrastructures creates up to twice as many jobs than auto-based infrastructure projects. (Fast Company) Related: Designing and Funding a Bicycle Revolution in our Cities.

Coruscant at night2 525x201 Friday 5: Urbanist Reading List for the Week of Jan 15 21st

Via Urban Omnibus

Against a Notion of Urban Science: A well-reasoned rebuttal to New York Times Magazine’s article. “A Physicist Solves the City” that looked at the work of Geoffrey West. (Urban Omnibus)

On Beyond Infill: The planning profession largely pays obligatory homage to infill in plans and reports, but in practice, the concept is largely discarded. Charles Marohn looks at why. (Strong Towns)

You Can Do Better: Designer Bruce Mau takes self-pitying architects to task, arguing that if architecture is largely irrelevant to the great mass of the world’s population, it is because architects have chosen to be. (Architect Magazine)

Growth Without Growth: In an excerpt from his new book, Bill Fulton suggests that it’s time for America’s cities to focus on prosperity, not population. (Planetizen)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists

Here’s the first edition of my urban news and views in 2011:

Austin, TX (1887). Photo Credit: Augustus Koch; Public Domain

The 5 Smartest Policies Enacted by American Cities in 2010: A look at 5 policies enacted by 5 cities last year that are making a difference. (AlterNet)

The Ever-Rising Cost of America’s Highways: Gas taxes, tolls, and auto registration fees no longer ensure that our highways ‘pay for themselves’ (if they ever really did). Richard Florida asks “What can be done?” (The Atlantic)

Cities on the Prowl: City leaders visit other cities around the world because they know that learning from others is cheaper and less risky than pursing untested ideas and ending up in false starts. (Citiscope)

Measuring the historical diversity of a neighborhood: Jane Jacobs celebrated mixing the old and the new together. Wouldn’t it be cool if we could develop a measure of a neighborhoods historical diversity? (Grist)

The Future of Urban Development: How can we turn cities into even greater engines of innovation and models of sustainability? (The Globalist)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists (Nov 26 – Dec 3)

Urban news and views from the past week:

A Santa Barbara bike fashion show (bikesd.org)

The Talking Head Rides to the Rescue: The former leader of the Talking Heads and current solo artist is an unabashed advocate for two-wheeled travel. David Byrne talks about using a bicycle as his primary mode of transportation. (Wall Street Journal)

‘Riding Pretty’: bikes as fashion accessories: Why women being intent on looking good while bicycling around town is a sure sign that a new age of biking has arrived. (Crosscut)

Can Super Tall be Super Green? The second in a two-part Q+A with Peter Weingarten on why super tall buildings an important building typology for tomorrow’s cities. Part one is available here. (GenslerOnCities)

Urban Nation: A look at the Obama administration’s approach to urban policy, including transforming the Housing and Urban Development. (Next American City)

The Re-Emergence of the Public Square: More and more, public squares and urban parks, not expensive mega-projects, are emerging as the best way to make downtowns more livable. (Project for Public Spaces)