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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists

My weekly curation of news and views for urbanists:

A Bicycle made of Lego. (Click on image for link)

The Value of Transportation Enhancements; Or, Are Walking and Cycling Really Transportation? An important current policy debate concerns whether the next U.S. federal surface transportation reauthorization should require spending on “enhancements,” which finance projects such as walkways, bike paths, highway landscaping and historic preservation. (Planetizen)

Planned Communities Are People, Too: The future of planned communities will involve lessons learned by the industry’s greenfield pioneers that can be applied to smaller, denser, and more complex projects in the urban core and inner ring. (Urban Land Institute)

The Canadian Government’s New Web 2.0 Guidelines: the Good, the Bad & the Ugly: For those uninterested in reading the 31 page, 12,055 word guidelines document here’s a review (David Eaves)

The Lure of the City—A Review by Edwin Heathcote: This collection of essays edited by Austin Williams and Alastair Donald mounts a defence of life in urban space. (Financial Times)

Building diverse communities: ‘Ethnic enclaves’ are raising concern all over the world, but can they be good for a city? (Calgary Herald)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [Oct 22nd-28th]

This week’s curated collection of news and views for urbanists:

Designing for Density Doesn’t Have to Be Ugly, or Scary: Few architects take the challenge of density done right as seriously—and creatively—as David Baker (Atlanctic Cities)

Public Participation: More than an “Orgy of Public Process” Criticism of participation is not new, but the increasingly strident tone of anti-participation sentiment should worry citizens and policy makers alike. (Next American City)

Encore for Vancouver: What started as a sawmill and railroad town now attracts urban planners from all over the world (At Lincoln House)

Jan Gehl on the Past 40 Years of Urbanism: Famed urbanist Jan Gehl looks back at the writing and thought on how people use the urban environment — including his own — over the past 40 years. (Planetizen)

The Citizen Experience Needs Us: Why UX practitioners should join the Government 2.0 movement: The idea that government is inefficient and unpleasant to deal with is almost axiomatic at this point, but it doesn’t have to be that way. (UX Magazine)

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The Tragedy of Urban Renewal [Weekend Watch]

A libertarian take on urban renewal. Filmmaker Jim Epstein read The Power Broker—the biography of Robert Moses—and set out to document one of the communities destroyed by Moses’ urban renewal of the 1950s.

From Planetizen:

Epstein found a number of folks who lived in a black community up on West 99th Street that was cleared by Moses’ Manhattantown project:

“In 2007, Epstein started digging through the archives and interviewing residents to learn more about the neighborhood that had vanished. From this work, he created a 7-minute documentary portrait of the old community…”

Cross-posted on Jane’s Walk Phoenix.

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [September 17th-23rd]

This week’s news and views for urbanists… (and a few from last week too!)

Photograph courtesy Ian Lockwood, via Atlantic Cities

Debunking the Cul-de-Sac: The design of [North] America’s suburbs has actually made our streets more dangerous. (Atlantic Cities)

5 Things That Inspire Me: During these harsh economic times, planner Melissa Hege looks at 5 things that have inspired her inner planner. (Planetizen)

Five Solutions to the “War on Cars” Madness: Seattle city councillor Sally Bagshaw looks at some actions we can collectively take to promote détente. (The Stranger)

Digital Placemaking–Authentic Civic Engagement: Digital placemaking is the integration of social media into placemaking practices, which are community-centered, encouraging public participation, collaboration, and transparency. (Project for Public Spaces)

Modeling Open Source Cities: Peter Sigrist looks at the open source movement as a promising approach to urban development and governance. (Polis)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists [September 3rd-9th]

Here is this weeks slate of articles for urbanists. It seems that kids weren’t the only ones going back to school this week. journalists and bloggers also picked up their game! It was really hard to keep it to just 5 this week.

Photography: Josie Withers | via Broadsheet Melbourne

A Dispatch from the World’s Most Liveable City: Melbourne, Vancouver, and the social benefits of an undefined identity. (Broadsheet Melbourne)

A cultural civics lesson: In order to change today’s gridlocked public dialogue, Gregory Rodriguez suggests skipping the town hall for the concert hall. (LA Times)

Reconsidering the City Since 9/11:An important lesson we can take from the history of 9/11 is that towns and cities are resilient. (Planetizen)

People Are Pedestrians By Design: People’s bodies and minds are designed to participate in a pedestrian lifestyle. (DenverUrbanism)

Demographics as Destiny: The new demographics are found in two generations deeply influenced by suburbia.

What was your favourite article this week? Please let me know in the comments.

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Friday 5: Articles of Urbanists [August 6th-12th]

Here’s this week’s edition of news and news for urbanists:

Redefining Creative Space: Because it provides high-paying jobs and tends to recycle old commercial buildings for creative space, the entertainment industry is among the most desirable economic drivers for cities and states. The article features my friends at Co+Hoots in Phoenix! (pictured) (Urban Land)

Why Apple’s ascension to world’s largest company is great for cities: Mobile devices are uniquely suited to the urban environment. They are such powerful connectors of people that they are literally replacing their need and desire for cars. (SmartPlanet)

The Passionate Minority: As frustration mounts with government, there is a passionate minority aimed not at yelling or leaving, but rather at making change. (Code for America)

Universal Principles for Creating a Sustainable City: Freiburg, Germany has become a stunning model of sustainability, thanks in part to Wulf Daseking, the city’s Head of Urban Planning since 1984. Sven Eberlein visits Daseking in Freiberg for this interview. (Planetizen)

Planning for a Range of Housing Options in our Cities:The prolonged economic downturn has had many impacts, but the most jarring for many Americans is the realization they are not as affluent as once thought. The planning profession can play an important part in helping Americans adjust to an age of austerity. (This Big City)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists (June 4th-10th)

Here is this week’s curated selection of articles for urbanists:

kevygee/flickr

The Financial Benefits of Living in Transit-Friendly, Walkable Areas: The neighborhood you live in can have a huge effect on your ability to spend or save, do the kind of things you really want to, and navigate the ongoing economic crisis. (The Atlantic)

The new New Urbanism: Fast, nimble, flexible, and tactical: The next generation of urbanists is dealing with a crappy economy. Big projects are hard to come by. That’s not stopping them from innovating. (Grist)

A Stupid Attack On Smart Growth:The National Association of Home Builders states that, “The existing body of research demonstrates no clear link between residential land use and GHG emissions.” But their research actually found the opposite. (Planetizen)

Why smart cities need smart stories: Whether our urban solutions are high-tech or low-tech, what makes them work is human scale and human understanding. People need to grasp the relevance and the connection with their lives. (Living with Rats)

Old Buildings Combine Sustainability, Preservation: Studies suggest the greenest building is the one already built — a pleasing message for historic preservationists. (Miller-McCune)

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Friday 5: Articles for Urbanists (May 27th – June 3rd)

Here’s this week’s collection of articles for urbanists:

Are Championship runs good for a city’s urbanism? It’s not often that an entire city is focused on one thing. In Vancouver it happened during the 2010 Winter Olympics. A year and a half later here, it’s happening again. (Planetizen)

An Infusion of Commons Thinking Can Transform the Future of Our Communities: David Motzenbecker of the Minneapolis Planning Commission explores participatory planning. (On the Commons)

Peak car use: urban planning needs to change: Peak car use suggests that we are witnessing the end of building cities around cars – at least in the developed world. (The Fifth Estate)

Can Social Enterprise Create Better Cities? A look at the potential of social enterprise and community leadership to enhance the design, delivery and management of better places.

What makes a city lovable? Just because a city has phenomenal restaurants, leafy streets, or great trout fishing within an hour’s drive doesn’t make it livable, or even lovable. (MinnPost)

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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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