Category: Planning and Design

Last year about this time I wrote on the subject of NIMBYs and laid out a challenge to the NIMBY nation. It’s time to stop talking about what you don’t want, I said, and start talking about what you do want. In short, it’s time to develop the criteria under which a Not-In-My-Back-Yarder will say yes. And to that... Continue Reading

Like its larger cousin the mall, the strip mall has become a symbol for our dysfunctional car-focused suburban environments. Ask any born-again urbanite why, and they’ll tell you that the strip mall’s most damning offense is putting all that parking in front of the store, creating a horrible car-focused environment. ... Continue Reading

David Byrne noted in last Sunday's NY Times that people get hooked on cycling because of pleasure, not health, money, or carbon footprint. "Emotional gratification trumps reason." Ben Brown agrees, using Byrne's "Stop Making Sense" as a blog title on the subject of community engagement and how special interest groups... Continue Reading

A number of recent conversations with Stefanos Polyzoides, Howard Blackson, and Matt Lambert regarding density and residential types has me thinking about building typology as one solution to visualizing and embracing density. (more…) Continue Reading

The rise of 21st century social technology, in combination with the loss of our 20th century economy, has contributed to the closing of many neighborhood civic buildings -- libraries and post offices -- and to the private development that inevitably replaces them. (more…) Continue Reading

Last October, I wrote a piece commemorating a PlaceShakers milestone -- 100,000 reads -- which took us 32 months to amass. Today, I write to mark our next one: 200,000. This time, it took less than 8 months. Clearly something is up. If reads are increasing, that means interest is increasing. If interest is increasing,... Continue Reading

The Congress for the New Urbanism’s annual convergence of giganto ideas and fine-grained pragmatism wrapped Saturday night with a party in a bar. The four days in West Palm Beach, Florida, marked the 20th anniversary of such gatherings, most of which also involved spill-over debates in venues with liquor licenses. As... Continue Reading

PlaceShakers gets put on ice this week as we, together with most of the urbanists we know, head to West Palm Beach, Florida, for CNU 20: The New World, this year's installment of the annual Congress for the New Urbanism. Will you be there? As summarized by the CNU, "The New World confronts the challenges of peak oil,... Continue Reading

Most folks with an interest in planning issues are no doubt familiar with the pedestrian shed or ped shed. The idea is simple. Experience has shown us that the average person will walk, without hesitation or undue kvetching, to destinations they can reach in under five minutes -- in practical terms, about a quarter mile... Continue Reading

Okay, I’m not confident David Byrne would be all that excited about turning an ironic subtitle from the Talking Heads’ 1984 tune into a community engagement tactic. But stay with me here. Over the last few months, the urban planning universe has been all atwitter (literally) with concern over how “those people,”... Continue Reading